Scrooge-ism in Wisconsin, part 2

By Harold Meyerson

The pas-de-deux between Chuck Lane and myself, which has now become a long day's journey into night and the subsequent morning, has touched on a number of topics raised by Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's attack on public-sector unions -- but not on the full range of political consequences that will follow if Walker's denial of collective bargaining rights is enacted. Walker argues that it's fiscal necessity that's driven him to his stance, but a dispassionate look at what he's actually proposed suggests the real reason is political opportunity.

For one thing, Walker's proposal lets police and firefighter unions retain their collective bargaining rights and, thereby, their institutional clout, even though their taxpayer-supported pensions are among the most generous in the state. Not coincidentally, a number of police and firefighter unions supported Walker in the last election, and such unions tend to endorse more conservative candidates than, say, teachers' unions. So what Walker is really doing is going after unions that support Democrats.

Moreover, the big public sector unions, particularly the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) not only turn out their own members come election day. In tandem with the AFL-CIO, they also, and always, wage the biggest and most successful get-out-the-vote campaigns in minority communities -- communities that tend to vote heavily Democratic. Thus the political consequences of shrinking those unions, as Walker would do, or getting rid of them altogether, which Lane supports, go well beyond issues of budgets. They effect the racial and class composition of the electorate in ways that Lane -- who insists in his post that he is committed to progressive values -- presumably would not be crazy about. Diminishing those unions would yield a whiter, richer electorate. That's not what Lane is seeking, if we take him at his word. It is absolutely what Walker is seeking, however. Such an electorate is far more likely to elect Republicans. It's far more likely to elect Scott Walker.

By throwing out not just the bathwater of generous pensions but the baby of unions, too, Walker not only strips a category of workers of rights they've held for half a century, he also reshapes the electorate to his liking. It's a partisan power grab that reconfigures much more than state budgets. That's why President Obama spoke out against Walker's proposal on Thursday, and that's why I don't think Lane has fully grappled with all the changes that his position entails.