I am always amused when Democrats — the party that bends over for government employees, unions, environmentalists, aggrieved interest groups of the left, ad nauseam — are accused of being not liberal enough.

I’ve known Madison Democrats and I know non-Madison Democrats. I disagree with the latter group on most issues, but they for the most part are grounded in reality. Here’s an example of the delusion of the former group that the People’s Republic of Madison seems to breed from Jack Craver of Isthmus:

What’s incredible, however, is how willingly the American people entertain the notion that the Democratic Party is anti-business or left wing. Let’s be clear: There is no American left. There used to be. But the right has taken over the dialogue in the last 30 years, and convinced us that any move towards an economic system championed by Roosevelt, Truman or Eisenhower represents an attack against American capitalist values.

One wonders what’s in the air wherever Craver works. Raising taxes on business isn’t anti-business? Raising income taxes on people who directly pay their S corporation’s income taxes isn’t anti-business? Attempting to give this state the worst possible legal environment for business (see Loophole Louie Butler and lead paint) isn’t anti-business? Restricting developers from turning a trash-strewn vacant lot into a job-creating business (see Bass Pro Shops) isn’t anti-business?

Had I been Craver’s editor, I would have told him to pull that final paragraph, not because I don’t enjoy fiction, but because it distracts from Craver’s much more interesting point, a possible sign that Wisconsin’s left believes the recall elections are going to go badly for them, however they define that:

WTDY, the radio station where I work part-time, can’t get in touch with Democratic candidates for Senate. They’re apparently not interested in discussing why “big labor” is only a big issue for Republicans now. Democrats make little mention of the issue that brought about this historic opportunity to take back the State Senate.

A while back I said that Walker’s war against collective bargaining has as much to do with the Democrats as the governor. Some agreed, but some were incredulous. One commenter argued that Walker’s union-busting was so outrageous that nobody could have possibly expected it.

And yet, we see the Democrats neglecting the issue yet again, suggesting that the debate over collective bargaining is not one they want to have during an election. If the major center-left party is unwilling to engage in labor issues, how can we possibly be surprised when the right cracks down on labor? Republican anti-union efforts are enabled by Democrats who either believe organized labor to be a thing of the past or are told by consultants that it is not a winning issue.

Democrats get tons of money from unions, but they get even more from corporations. I would argue that the party’s current posture on unions is evidence of its attempt to straddle straddle both interests. It shows its support for labor by working for the existing unions, mainly found in iosolated pockets of the economy, especially the declining manufacturing sector and the public sector. However, it does not show vocal support for efforts to expand unionization, especially in the service economy.

What that final paragraph proves is that politically corporations — that is, publicly traded corporations that get involved in politics — are, above anything else, pragmatists. For all the pejorative references to Wall Street against Main Street, answer this question: which party did Wall Street banks give more money to in the 2008 election cycle? The answer: Democrats. The party big corporations generally favor is the incumbent party.

What Craver wrote above is his second examination of the subject, after he first brought it up last week:

I thought it was all about collective bargaining.

Wasn’t that the idea when activists began circulating recall petitions for eight Republican senators in the days following Gov. Scott Walker’s introduction of the infamous budget repair bill, which stripped most public employee unions of most of their collective bargaining rights?

Make no mistake; the recalls would never have been possible without the union issue. It’s true that progressives, especially in Madison, have mobilized against just about everything else the GOP has done in the past six months, including the concealed-carry bill and cuts to education and health programs. But none of those issues could have spurred the Capitol protests in February and March, which recalled Vietnam War-era fury. …

And yet, with all the momentum from the union issue, Democrats running in recall elections have decided that just about everything else is more important than collective bargaining. …

Does anybody remember Tom Barrett bringing up labor issues last fall? He didn’t, because who would have cared?

Maybe the nearly 40% of union members who voted for Scott Walker.

Talking about unions certainly carries risks. Too much talk about such a small segment of the population can leave the other 86% feeling left out. That was certainly Walker’s thinking when he proposed busting the unions. A politician who can motivate the majority to resent a minority is invincible.

However, Democrats tacitly play into his game. Instead of articulating how unions benefit the general population, they speak in the vaguest terms about the importance of preserving the rights of public workers.

And that’s exactly what Walker wants. The public will not respond kindly to the preservation of a tradition it believes is to its disadvantage. He wants the hairdressers, the laid-off GM workers and others to believe the public-sector unions are a privileged class of people who have earned the support of the Democratic Party through political connections.

The average state employee costs the state $71,000 in salary and benefits. According to the U.S. Census, the median family income in Wisconsin in 2009 was $49,994. Per capita income growth in Wisconsin has trailed the national average since the Carter administration. Money income per capita in Wisconsin in 2009 was $26,447. In comparison to those whose taxes pay their salaries and pay for their benefits, members of public-sector unions are a privileged class.

A similar theme about the recalls can be found in the Letter from Here:

Democrats feel they already have the labor vote. But talking about it too much risks alienating Republican and independent voters. Why rock the boat? But it’s possible to be too tactical for your own good, and Democrats both nationally and on the state level have been doing too much of it lately. Especially in last fall’s gubernatorial race, as Craver notes. …

Sure, speaking up involves risks. But the alternative is worse. You risk being perceived as standing for nothing. That happened last fall. Scott Walker wasn’t elected because of any great conservative tidal wave. He was elected because the Democrats ran a weak, mushy campaign that was short on issues that connected with people. The union vote for Walker says it all. …

If there’s a legitimate reason for the recalls, it’s all about political principle, not partisan politics. Democrats are not going to win by listening to the same old campaign consultants and campaigning in the same old way. They need to sustain the passion and the solidarity that fueled the protests and the recall drives in the first place.

If they don’t, they’ll play right into the Republicans’ contention that this is about nothing but an expensive exercise in politics as usual. And they’ll lose, just as surely as they lost last fall.

Independent of the fact that there is no legitimate reason for the GOP Senate recalls, perhaps those 40 percent were tired of seeing their state getting progressively worse under Democratic control. Some of those 40 percent saw Democrats ignoring their Second Amendment rights. Some of those 40 percent may have thought their jobs were on the line if things got worse for their employers. (The fact that union membership does nothing for the unemployed is demonstrated by the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association’s willingly throwing 350 of their own members under the layoff bus instead of agreeing to increasing costs for health care and retirement benefits. Some solidarity.)

Christian Schneider sees the façade of the Democrats’ solidarity theme:

In fact, with the television ad war in full swing, it appears that not a single ad is being run that addresses the collective-bargaining issue. As political scientist Ken Goldstein told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, “We had all this drama about collective bargaining, but what is driving the advertising is fairly straightforward messaging about taxes and spending.” Even liberal bloggers around the state have picked up on this curious meme.

Take, for example this ad, being run against popular Republican state senator Sheila Harsdorf (full disclosure: my former boss). It criticizes Harsdorf for supporting “cutting $800 million” from education,* yet there’s no mention of the collective-bargaining issue that landed Harsdorf in a recall election in the first place. This is especially notable given that the ad is being run by the unions themselves — the treasurer of the “We Are Wisconsin PAC” is Phil Neuenfeldt, president of the state AFL-CIO.

This pattern is being replicated statewide. The We Are Wisconsin PAC is attacking GOP senator Luther Olsen for “devastating cuts” to schools and health-care programs. They are going after Sen. Alberta Darling for approving a college tuition hike of 5.5 percent (while the previous governor, Democrat Jim Doyle, increased University of Wisconsin tuition by 18.2 percent and 15.4 percent in two successive years.)

Perhaps the most ridiculous ad of the recall cycle is one being run by Luther Olsen’s challenger, Democratic assemblyman Fred Clark, in which he vows to be an “independent voice” in the state senate. “I won’t take from our seniors or from our children just to reward some special interests,” Clark intones, presumably with a straight face. Of course, Clark is only in this race because Olsen angered the most powerful special interest in the state — the public-sector unions, who forced the recall election to begin with. Yet in Democratic circles, organized labor is never considered a “special interest.”

And while their folk songs may be execrable, the unions are very smart. They knew the collective-bargaining issue was provocative enough to get between 15,000 and 20,000 people per senate district to sign recall petitions (about 10 percent of each district’s population), but not enough to get any of their candidates elected. Unions know the people who signed recall petitions are already in their pocket — they had to quickly change gears and return to the more traditional Democrat talking points, in order to garner independent votes.

Schneider points to an example of left-wing delusion: that Democrats lose elections because they’re not liberal enough. Presidential elections disprove the delusion but prove the converse. Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were elected because they were seen as reasonable alternatives to the incumbents, or the White House incumbent party — hope and change, you’ll recall, in 2008. In contrast, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush were elected because they touted conservative principles. George H.W. Bush and John McCain lost in 1992 and 2008, respectively, because they failed to interest independents or charge conservatives to support them. (And once voters saw past the false image of U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold (D–Wisconsin) as an independent maverick, he became former Sen. Feingold.)

If Democrats don’t regain the state Senate, they will have failed in Recallarama. And if that happens (and I think it will), it will be fun to watch the Democrat vs. left wing circular firing squad of recrimination.

Someone who calls himself or herself “wifactcheck” left this comment here last week:

… When the Governor and his legislative allies ram through significant and radical changes to 50-year old labor laws without ever having campaigned on those issues, they should expect extraordinary pushback in the form of citizen recall elections. These recall elections are not about one vote. They are about the Governor and his legislative allies intentionally and willfully concealing their plans and misleading the public during the election campaign in order to get elected. …

Even the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel wrote in March: “Walker never campaigned on disenfranchising public-employee unions. If he had, he would not have been elected.” …

I eagerly await your explanation as to why Wisconsin voters should sit back and blithely accept the dishonest and fraudulent campaigns of Gov. Walker and the Fitzgerald Brothers without taking steps to hold them and their allies accountable for their blatantly dishonest campaigns.

The writer claims (as do others) that the Walker campaign and Republicans had a secret infernal plot to smash Wisconsin unions under their baby-seal-skin boots assembled by toddlers in Chinese sweatshops, or something like that.

I disagree with this assertion, which I will get to momentarily. This brings to mind an interesting thought exercise, though: Is it worse to do something you didn’t say you were going to do, or to do something you said you were not going to do? The latter refers to Gov. James Doyle, who famously said, “We should not, we must not, and I will not raise taxes,” and then signed a $2.1 billion tax increase into law.

Doyle’s defenders would claim that the state’s finances were so much worse when he was forced to raise our taxes than when he made his no-tax-increases pledge. (Which is not entirely correct either, given that Wisconsin was one of two states to run GAAP deficits every year during the first decade of the 21st century, which means every year Doyle was in office.) If you buy that rationalization, then you also must accept that Walker may have decided that state finances were so bad that he had to do something drastic about our state’s billions of dollars in red ink. State employees cost the state $4.9 billion in compensation every year, which is a major chunk of the state budget. Local-government employees cost counties, municipalities and school districts another $5.76 billion every year, which is the biggest chunk of their budgets.

Regardless of whether you accept my assertion, any voter who didn’t think things were going to be different under Gov. Walker than they would have been under Gov. Tom Barrett wasn’t paying attention not merely during the campaign, but during the nearly nine years Walker was Milwaukee County executive. It is instructive to note that unions refuse to give Walker credit for an alternative choice he could have made to eliminate the 2009–11 budget deficit, which reached as high as $136.7 million. Instead of cutting public employee benefits, he could have cut 1,925 state employees. Perhaps, given the Milwaukee Teachers’ Educators Association preference of 350 teacher layoffs vs. all teachers paying more for their benefits, unions don’t believe in “shared sacrifice” after all.

But you don’t have to buy either of my explanations, because Walker’s campaign hid nothing, except perhaps to the illiterate or deliberately obtuse voter.

Alert reader Donna from Berlin brings to your attention this section of the November newsletter of True (as in Three Rivers United Educators) Views, which is posted on the Wisconsin Education Association Council’s website, comparing the stances of Walker and Barrett (to which I added the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel links):

WRS Retirement

BARRETT: Mayor Barrett has not promoted legislation that would require public employees to pay the Employee share of the WRS contribution. Instead he has demonstrated a belief that any such changes should occur through the local collective bargaining process. (Barrett Campaign)

WALKER: One of Walker’s major campaign issues is to require all public employees to pay the Employee share of the pension contribution. This would mean a reduction in take-home pay of about 6.5%. “Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker said Thursday if elected governor he would save $176 million per year by requiring state employees to contribute toward their pensions.” (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 6/17/10)

Health Care

BARRETT: Barrett opposes legislation that would take school employees’ voices out of the decision making over health care by allowing school boards to unilaterally change employee health care coverage plan providers. “I believe in collective bargaining.” (WEAC Interview, 5/15/10)

WALKER: Walker supports a bill that would take away the right of unions to negotiate health care benefits. Ryan Murray, Campaign Policy Adviser for Walker, said “The way the proposal would work is we would take the choice out of the collective bargaining process.” (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 8/29/10)

This makes one wonder if union members pay attention to what their unions tell them. (It also makes one wonder if Journal Sentinel editorial writers read their own newspaper.) I’m not sure how the Journal Sentinel could have reported any more clearly that Walker wanted to require “state employees to contribute toward their pensions” as well as other public employees and “take away the right of unions to negotiate health care benefits.”

Whether the Walker campaign campaigned on cutting public employee benefits is up to the reader. It was up to the voter, and the voters made their opinions clear Nov. 2. But wifactcheck’s claim — which means the claims of those running against the six Senate Republicans in the next month, as well as those Democrats’ sycophants — that the Walker campaign and Republicans were “intentionally and willfully concealing their plans and misleading the public during the election campaign” is false. To paraphrase John Adams, Democrats and public employee unions are entitled to their own opinion; they are not entitled to their own facts.

Part two of the Recall Summer of 2011 includes two Republican primary elections and the first general recall election. (Or whatever it’s called.)

The two primaries are in the 12th and 22nd Senate districts, where voters should choose the best choices to unseat Sens. James Holperin (D–Conover) and Robert Wirch (D–Kenosha), respectively, on Aug. 16.

Both Kenosha County Board vice chair Fred Ekornaas and former small business owner Jonathan Steitz have the correct positions on taxes, jobs and Second Amendment rights. I prefer Steitz’s position on education slightly more than Ekornaas‘, which is why if I lived in the 22nd I’d vote for Steitz Tuesday. I would, however, be comfortable voting for either against Wirch Aug. 16.

A similar matchup can be found in the 12th Senate District between Lincoln County Sup. Robert Lussow and Northwoods Patriots founder Kim Simac. I’d like to be able to refer you to Lussow’s website, but he doesn’t have one, which makes one wonder how competent his campaign is in this century of ours.

There is one issue on which I prefer Lussow’s position to Simac’s, on term limits. Lussow opposes them, Simac favors them, and I believe that the best term limit is one applied by voters on Election Day. But that’s not a deal-killer for me.

One reason I prefer Simac (who does have a website) is her much more realistic position on the environment than those who regulate the environment:

Here in the Northwoods, our natural resources are one of our most precious commodities and they must be protected for the enjoyment and utilization of future generations. Our lakes and our forests offer a wealth of opportunity to those of the 12th District. Therefore, I believe local government should play an equal role in determining how our natural resources should be managed.

You’d have to be a moron to not grasp the importance of the environment to Wisconsin’s economy and quality of life. But environmental management in Wisconsin comes from the top down, and that has led to the state’s environmental agency being known as Damn Near Russia. The environment is not helped when the state expands its land purchases each year, spreading its environmental management resources thinner while simultaneously taking more land off the property tax rolls. If I lived closer to the North Pole than the Equator (which seems a bit attractive this week), I would vote for Simac.

That leaves the 30th Senate District race between Sen. Dave Hansen (D–Green Bay), one of the Fleeing Fourteen, and David VanderLeest of Green Bay.

First: Under no circumstances does Hansen deserve your vote. (Nor do Holperin nor Wirch.) And that is not merely because of the cowardly move to bug out of Wisconsin to avoid a vote Democrats were going to lose. Let us recall that under Democratic leadership of state government, this state had some of the worst finances of any state in the nation, as in:
A $2.9 billion GAAP deficit at the end of the 2009–10 fiscal year, second largest in the entire nation in per capita terms and in percentage of gross state product.
A GAAP deficit every year during the first decade of the 21st century. Thirty-five states never had a GAAP deficit in the past decade, but only Wisconsin and Illinois had GAAP deficits every year during the past decade.
Unrestricted net assets of $9.46 billion in the hole, better than only seven states in dollar amounts and, at 3.7 percent of GDP, better than only five states.

And all that occurred while Hansen voted for the $2.1 billion tax increase his party foisted on us overburdened taxpayers back in 2009. You would think a self-styled champion of the middle class wouldn’t increase taxes on the middle class, but Hansen voted for exactly that. (And I wonder how Hansen’s vote against concealed-carry went over in his district.)

Hansen’s watch also included various state business climate rankings that put Wisconsin in, at best, the bottom quarter of the states. Since employees prosper when their employers prosper, Hansen doesn’t win a friend-of-the-middle-class award here either. (Then again, Hansen appears to believe that state employees are part of the middle-class, but at $71,000 in salaries and benefits on average, they’re not.)

The problem for 30th Senate District voters is that VanderLeest doesn’t appear to be the candidate to vote for either. I can’t comment on the specifics of his relationship with his ex-wife and son, but attacking your ex-wife in print and filing lawsuits left and right don’t appear to me to be the correct solutions.

So who deserves the 30th Senate District vote if neither Hansen nor VanderLeest? State Rep. John Nygren (R–Marinette), who was removed from the Republican ballot after the state Government Accountability Board threw out petition signatures that left him two short of qualifying for the ballot. Political professionals might guffaw about that, but it’s worth noting that 89th Assembly District voters have voted for him three times.

Nygren opposes the job-killer known as combined reporting, which increases the tax burden of Wisconsin businesses, which (since businesses don’t pay taxes, their customers do) increases the cost of the products or services sold by Wisconsin businesses. Nygren also supported, before it became popular to do so, ending the Wisconsin Education Association Council’s monopoly on employee benefits.

Based on his record and accomplishments, Nygren deserves the write-in vote of 30th Senate District voters over both Hansen and VanderLeest. (That’s J-O-H-N N-Y-G-R-E-N for those writing in or using a touchscreen.) Yes, winning a write-in campaign is difficult, but this election “year,” anything’s possible.