We being today's roundup with Republican presidential candidate Scott Walker and his policy attack on working class Americans. From
Paul Waldman at The Washington Post:
I have no doubt that Walker is sincere in his desire to see every labor union crushed and every vestige of workers’ power banished — or, in his lingo, “flexibility.” I’d also be surprised if any of the other candidates objected to any part of it. So the plan is worth understanding if you want to grasp what today’s GOP is offering today’s workers.
While he doesn’t say so explicitly, what Walker seems to hope for is really a world without any labor unions at all, or at the very least a world where unions are so weakened that they are unable to advocate for anyone [...]
But here’s what we know: union membership has been declining for decades, while incomes have been stagnant and Americans have felt increasingly at the mercy of employers who treat them like interchangeable cogs who can be manipulated, surveilled, and tossed aside at the employer’s whim. There’s no question that Scott Walker succeeded in creating a politically beneficial showdown with public sector unions in Wisconsin. But how many Americans think that the problem with our economy is that too much power in the workplace lies in the hands of workers?
John Nichols at The Nation:
The measure of Walker’s political immaturity has not come in his missteps and fumbles. Few candidates jump onto the national stage with perfect grace, and if Trump’s run has proven anything, it is that this year’s Republican electorate is more than ready to forgive an over-the-top line or a misguided move.
Rather, the measure of Walker’s political immaturity has come in this electoral careerist’s inability to evolve his message beyond his comfort zone. [...]
In Walker’s imagination, if he can just be anti-labor enough he will be able to renew his candidacy. The problem for Walker, and for anti-union zealots in general, is that few Americans—be they Democrats or independents or Republicans—are so fiercely opposed to the right to organize and collectively bargain that all other issues become secondary.
More on the day's top stories below the fold.
And if you want to know why Walker released a plan so draconian even some on the right are criticizing it, Jordyn Phelps at ABC News explains how Walker went from frontrunner to "longshot candidate":
Walker is not the only candidate to have taken a hit in the polls since Trump’s climb, but he has fallen the furthest. [...] The issues on which Walker’s candidacy ride are not the issues that have been driving the conversation.
While Walker is acclaimed for his record of reeling in the power of public unions and pushing through bold, conservative fiscal reforms in his state, a good deal of his time on the campaign trail has been spent talking about issues on which he has no personal governing experience, such as foreign policy and immigration, and don’t play to his strengths. There has also been a good deal of time spent talking about Donald Trump.
Eugene Robinson says Hillary Clinton is still the one to beat:
The headlines screaming “Clinton’s Support Erodes” are true, but only in a relative sense. In the contest for the Democratic nomination, according to the polls, she has slid all the way from “prohibitive favorite” to something like “strong favorite” — not bad, given the way she has hobbled herself with the e-mail scandal. [...]
Am I ignoring the big picture? Have I somehow missed the fact that the major themes of the campaign thus far have been disgust with politics as usual and rejection of establishment candidates?
No, it’s just that I believe the internal dynamics of the two parties are quite different. Clinton fatigue among Democrats is one thing, but the total anarchy in the Republican Party is quite another.
On a final note, The Week's
Damon Linker takes on conservative intellectuals who hate Donald Trump:
From the rise of the talk-radio rabble rousers to Karl Rove's effort to build a permanent governing majority by mobilizing the religious right, from the founding of Fox News to starbursts for Sarah Palin and flattery for Tea Party furies, conservative intellectuals have been quite sure that they and the voters stand shoulder to shoulder on the same side of a chasm separating them from the liberal establishment. Hence the intellectuals' enthusiasm for building a conservative counter-establishment of think tanks, magazines, and other media outlets to do battle with liberal elites. Hence also the presumed wisdom of using these ostensibly conservative institutions to keep the grassroots whipped up into a state of perpetual indignation and agitation. After all, an angry electorate is an electorate that shows up to the polls on Election Day. What could possibly go wrong?
What, indeed.
Now these same intellectuals feel like they've suddenly awoken from a blissful dream of direct democracy to find themselves in a Madisonian nightmare in which the American people have been transformed overnight into a fickle, easily manipulated mob. [...]The conservative intellectuals threw in their lot with cultural populism a long time ago. Now they've finally gotten what they asked for and encouraged — a right-wing, anti-establishment, populist crusade — and they don't like it one bit.
They will have to learn to live with it. As will we all.