Facing Facts in Wisconsin » Counterpunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

Facing Facts in Wisconsin » Counterpunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

"Obama not only didn’t put in a single visit to Wisconsin during this long recall campaign; he went out of his way to steer well clear of the state, not even dropping in during a visit to Minneapolis a week before the vote, when he was 15 miles from Wisconsin, less than 100 miles from Eau Claire, and less than 300 miles from the capital of Madison, the epicenter of the recall battle.

When asked at a press conference why the president had not weighed in on this epic battle for one of his key constituencies — the labor movement, and in particular the public employee unions — his press secretary lamely said that the president “hoped” that Walker’s Democratic opponent for governor, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, would “prevail.” The president’s other only effort (if it can even be called that) on behalf of the recall campaign was a limp Tweet that didn’t even mention the recall itself or the threat Walker posed to workers. In full, it said, “”It’s Election Day in Wisconsin tomorrow, and I’m standing by Tom Barrett. He’d make an outstanding governor. -bo”

Twitter may have helped to ignite the Arab Spring revolts in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere, but if those Arab Spring Tweets had read like that one, I’m sure Mubarak would still be pulling the fingernails off of and killing dissidents, instead of sitting in a prison hospital cell himself.

"As for the Democratic Party, it did exactly nothing to help progressives and labor unions in Wisconsin in this fight. Sure, the Democratic National Committee will claim that it send money to Wisconsin, but that was money that was equally budgeted to every state for the national election season, not extra money designated to fight the recall battle.

The Obama campaign and the DNC decided long ago that they did not want to get involved in the Walker recall. Partly, they didn’t want to risk being in support of a losing effort. More importantly, they did not want to be identified with union activists.  The truth is that the big money supporting both the DNC and the president’s campaign is corporate money, and those people simply don’t like unions. Also, the Obama “brain trust,” if you can really call these people smart after three and a half years of disastrous White House policies favoring the rich and the powerful, has decided that the way to a second term is by ignoring the poor, ignoring minorities, ignoring labor unions, ignoring working people, and instead focusing on “independent” and “undecided” voters." see link above for full article