[WS:] That is not how I read it. In my view Dems make a truly heroic effort to salvage something for the public sector services for the working class in the environment of utter public hostility to such services. This is the simple truth beyond Walker's landslide victory in WI - Americans hate anything that smacks of public sector or public services. They voted for Walker because they saw as a guy who 'does the right thing' by taking it on the public sector and its unions.
One reason for that is that the self-perception of defines middle class in Amerika is the ability to pay your way instead of relying on public services. If you have to rely on public services in obtaining your transportation, housing, health care, education etc. - you are NOT middle class, you are a schmuck on a government dole. That does not mean that middle class do not use what is in fact public services, but that they are not perceived as public services. For example, a commuter bus for suburbanites to commute to their urban jobs as government employees or lawyers may be run by the same government agency that operates city buses - but these two services are operated in a way as to present them as two different animals. The commuter bus is typically contracted out to a private company that uses coaches, it is not called a "bus" but a "shuttle" or "commuter service", it is clean, fast and reliable. The buses - which serve the blow the middle class strata, are notoriously slow and unreliable, equipped with surveillance and generally crappy an inhospitable.
So the bottom line is that the very definition of middle class in Amerika is not relying on public services of any sort. In the economic times when such reliance becomes an unavoidable reality for many middle class folk, expressions of hostility to public services become a symbolic gesture signalling membership in the middle class. it works like this " I may be on unemployment, Medicare, or foodstamps -but as long as I express my hatred toward public services I may still pass for middle class.
Voting for Walker is such a symbolic gesture manifesting the "middle class" status by people who may be one paycheck from homelessness. In a way, this is reminiscent of the scene from the Lebanese film "Caramel" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caramel_(film) in which a post-menopausal woman conspicuously leaves stained feminine pads in public bathrooms to show that she still has periods.
In this context, we should thank Democrats for whatever little they do to preserve public services, because they do not just against the will of the capital, but also against popular will. -- Wojtek
"An anarchist is a neoliberal without money."