Mark Follman

The showdown continues in Wisconsin pitting public-sector labor unions against Republican governor Scott Walker, who aims to eviscerate collective bargaining rights. As of this writing the state’s Democratic lawmakers apparently are still MIA. Days of large protests in Madison and even the involvement of the Super Bowl champion Green Bay Packers have indicated the high stakes. Recently on Talking Points Memo, which was ahead of most national media on the Wisconsin story, Josh Marshall made a persuasive case that Walker’s anti-labor offensive could have a big impact on national politics:

Whichever side of the policy issue you’re on, I think the outcome of this situation is going to have ramifications across the country. Republicans came out of the 2010 election pumped up and feeling that they had a huge mandate to fundamentally change government in this country. I don’t think the elections really told us that at all. But these things are decided by results post-election not by analysis of the election returns. And that’s what’s being determined right now.

If Gov. Walker (R) is able to push through big, big changes to collective bargaining rights and makes it stick, that will be picked up in many other states and it will shape perceptions of the public mood going into the 2012 election — from the top of the ticket all the way down to the bottom. On the other hand, if he gets shut down and the idea takes hold that he overreached, that will have similarly widespread effects in other states as well as in shaping the political terrain going into 2012.

As TPM’s Brian Beutler has pointed out, similar fights already are brewing in Tennessee and Ohio. (Also instructive is Beutler’s rundown of how Walker ginned up the budget shortfall in Wisconsin per his partisan agenda.)

It’s important not to romanticize organized labor in this battle; its history is peppered with abuses and cronyism on par with those of the most cunning politicos, leaving the American public skeptical of unions with reason. But Paul Krugman today crystallizes what’s important about the Wisconsin showdown as well as anyone I’ve read to date:

You don’t have to love unions, you don’t have to believe that their policy positions are always right, to recognize that they’re among the few influential players in our political system representing the interests of middle- and working-class Americans, as opposed to the wealthy. Indeed, if America has become more oligarchic and less democratic over the last 30 years — which it has — that’s to an important extent due to the decline of private-sector unions.

And now Mr. Walker and his backers are trying to get rid of public-sector unions, too.

There’s a bitter irony here. The fiscal crisis in Wisconsin, as in other states, was largely caused by the increasing power of America’s oligarchy. After all, it was superwealthy players, not the general public, who pushed for financial deregulation and thereby set the stage for the economic crisis of 2008-9, a crisis whose aftermath is the main reason for the current budget crunch. And now the political right is trying to exploit that very crisis, using it to remove one of the few remaining checks on oligarchic influence.

A great place to follow continuing events on the ground in Wisconsin is Mother Jones’ handy blog-explainer, led by reporter Andy Kroll.