The “People United” Go Down In Flames

Via Media, Walter Russell Mead's Blog

Excerpts:

• The Walker reforms hurt AFSCME in Wisconsin almost as badly as Ronald Reagan hurt PATCO, the air traffic controller union he famously crushed in 1981.
• Two big things unite them: a general sense of being on the same side in opposition to the economic and social right, and the belief in a strong, well-funded state.[ comment: the left is self serving, not serving the larger purposes, but only themselves]
• But the dominance of the public unions in the left had consequences for the left itself — bad ones.
• To the extent that these unions shape the Democratic agenda, Democrats aren’t just the party of government; they are the party of inefficient, expensive, unresponsive, bureaucratic government.
• The left’s analysis of its loss in Wisconsin resorts to some classic tropes
• the American people are really so stupid and clueless that they docilely follow the big bucks[ comment: they are blaming others for their own failure--- does this appear familiar?]
• The left lost this election because it failed to persuade the people that its analysis was correct.
• We need a new future because the old one has turned into the past.
• And the lesson of the election isn’t that the right has too much money; the lesson is that while the left still has plenty of passion and fire, it has, thanks in part to the power of public sector unions, largely run out of compelling ideas.

Comment:

Blame everyone but themselves.  Assume that the whole world revolves around them and them alone.  The left is infantile.  They need to grow up.

There's a scene from the movie Braveheart that would have illustrated the point here.  In it, the character William Wallace says something like this:

There's a difference between us.  You think the people exist to provide you with possession.  I think that your possession exists to provide the people with freedom.  And I go to see that they have it.

Interesting that this playlist of video clips doesn't have this scene.  I can't find it.  Too bad, because it is powerful.  Like so many things, the point gets buried under a sea of irrelevancies.