In accord with both morley's assessment of the dems and wojtek's take on middle class. Wisconsin shows that nixon's, i mean walker's silent majority, sees itself as individual taxpayers first and foremost and not as members of a community. Walker's ' the hardworking taxpayers of wisconsin' was repeated endlessly during the campaign along with the unchallenged 'reforms are working'.
Public sector workers learned the hard lesson that "we are your neighbors" means nothing when individuals' mini-ponderosas are at stake. Clearing brush (and snow), keeping dogs off the lawn and darkies out of the neighborhood is hard-earning wisconsin's m.o..(I thought i saw a spitting image of george zimmerman in one of walker's testimonial commercials!)
>From the gitgo a pitiful effort was made to make a meaningful nexus of solidarity between civil servants and the communities that are recipients of their service.
This is all the more problematic in the context of the racial concerns in wisconsin pertaining to the jungles of milwaukee. How one expects the black community to get behind correction officers, welfare workers, 'career' teachers etc is beyond me unless some real mutual respect can evolve. Again to the middle classers in the suburban ring of reactionary fire, there's nothing worse than their hard-earned tax dollars going to support milwaukee's dark populations' education and healthcare!
Anecdote: when walker mentioned milwaukee in his victory speech the crowd of supporters in waukesha booed and even in the heyday of madison, rallies cheers and clapping fell off noticeably whenever seemingly black and/or brown issues were mentioned. Not so when prison guards and police were lauded!
Anecdote: during a radioshow the afscme head bemoaned that the state was willing to raise the pennied wages of prisoners while taking money from the correction officers and making conditions more dangerous to the guards!
Finally, when cul-de-sac johnny nichols became the liberal media's go-to-guy and darling, one had to know the uprising was in trouble. The notion that history is driven by the 'wisconsin idea' ain't worth a smug nichols. Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T