When voters make a mistake - Wisconsin

“Are we coming to the endgame on Wisconsin? The Wall Street Journal has a report that quotes extensively from the state's Senate Democrats and suggests they're feeling the pressure to come home. "I think we have to realize that there's only so much we can do as a group to make a stand," said Sen. Bob Jauch. Talking Points Memo, however, notes that some of those same Senate Democrats are denying that report. "Unfortunately, the WSJ fished for the quote they wanted, skipping this key step in logic: we won't come back until worker's rights are preserved," Sen. Chris Larson said in a statement.

Poll after poll shows that Gov. Scott Walker's position is increasingly unpopular and Wisconsin's voters want to see a compromise. But Walker seems to be holding out. And the state's Senate Democrats can't stay away forever. In this way, their efforts have been a very traditional filibuster: Not the 60-vote pocket veto we're used to, where the minority simply refuses to allow a majority vote, but the talk-a-thons of lore, in which a determined minority feel so strongly about their opposition to a bill that they mount a physically exhausting and politically dangerous stand against it, bringing all the other business currently facing the chamber to a halt in a desperate attempt to win the public over to their side. You can't do that forever, and you can't do it to often -- but then, nor should you be able to. The election went how it went, and after you make your case and appeal to the public and try and shame the majority, you either have the votes or you don't.

Wisconsin's Democrats have been filibustering with their feet, and it's not clear how much longer they can keep it up. That's how it's supposed to be: thwarting the will of the elected majority is supposed to be difficult, not routine. What the Democrats have is the next election, not to mention the recall effort they've launched against a handful of Senate Republicans. "It's really up to the public to be engaged in carrying the torch on this issue," Jauch told the Journal. And shouldn't it be? The Democrats have shown the voters exactly what it is that they voted for in Walker. His effort to quietly gut collective bargaining in Wisconsin has been a huge failure. Democrats have turned up the volume in the Capitol to "deafening." But at some point, the state will have to move on. The question between now and then is whether the voters can persuade some of the Republicans to come to the middle, and if the Republicans refuse their entreaties, what sort of retribution the voters will visit on them for their stubbornness.”