Debate Analysis

Wisconsin needs a new governor. That much is certain. To start off, I'll go out on a limb here and say that all the farmers and freaks with "I stand with walker" signs would have been quite at home in Soviet Russia. Submitting to authority and aggressing against whatever groups that authority dislikes is part and parcel of right-wing authoritarian followers. It is also why anyone standing with walker should automatically be dismissed as undeserving of a say in our future. Luckily, over a million Wisconsinites stood up against authoritarianism and recalled scott walker. For you conservative curmudgeons out there, recall exists for elected officials who deceived the public to gain office and execute that office contrary to the public interest. This is, after all, what a republic is, a government formed to carry out the public's interest. It has been the great coup of social dominating republicans to convince so many citizens that teachers are a special interest while the koch brothers are the public's interest.

So, the machinery has worked the way it was supposed to. A governor who campaigned on jobs but then "dropped the bomb" as the oft-repeated phrase from last night put it, on working people will face a recall election. Walker even threatened to call out the national guard if anyone dared oppose him as though he was a robber baron in the Nineteenth Century. Sorry scotty, this isn't the Soviet Union yet. Recall is an extreme provision, meant to be difficult to accomplish but walker has proved at every opportunity that he is unfit to govern in a democracy. That is also why republican attempts at recall have been more difficult, you can disagree over policy while still serving the public interest. Let them continue to agitate, the more the public sees of it, the more they will understand that republican recall efforts are simple power grabs and not a safeguarding of the public interest.

Last night, four Democratic office-holders met to debate issues of the day. Each made their case for unseating walker and why they should be his successor. The choice has come down to Democratic conservatism, trying to hang on to or restore a system that worked rather well for over two generations, or republican authoritarianism. The koch brothers, ALEC, and the management complex believes the Republic exists to serve them alone, and they are willing to spend any amount neccessary to take it from us. There used to be a saying that what is good for GM is good for America, and there may have been some truth in that when capitalism actually meant making things and building things. After three decades of Bain-style speculative and predatory capitalism, however, this is as untrue as saying America needs a monarch.

Tom Barrett, Kathleen Falk, Doug La Follette, and Kathleen Vinehout debated the issues of the day last night, not these larger philosophical questions. They were united in the effort to replace walker and shared 90% of commonwealth and public interest positions. Because any one of them would be an incredible improvement on what walker has done, and none of the candidates "won" in the conventional sense, it is a difficult choice. But those million voters who oppose walker's blatant abuse of power must coalesce around one and only one opponent.

What we really need is an anti-walker, someone who will fight for the commonwealth and public interest just as ferociously as walker fought for special interests and power. Just as America really needed an aggressive liberal after bush slinked back to texas. What we got nationally was a constitutional law professor, capable of great speeches but technocratic in nature and unable for much of his term to confront the ideological war going on. What we need is someone with "fire in their belly" who will stop apologizing for being a Democrat. What we will probably get is a grandfather type, most likely unequal to the task of overcoming vehement obstruction to simply reverse nearly two years of vicious undermining of our state and society. Yes, I voted for Barrett last time and will gladly vote for him again. But he is not the leader we need. In a more normal time, he would have a long career managing the state in a pragmatic fashion, similar to the way Tommy Thompson did. This is not to say he will simply be a manager the way President Obama has been for most of his term, but he is not the leader who can push the koches and their authoritarian machine out of the limelight and back into the closet where they belong.