It's politics, not tyranny

Jonathan Chait catches Robert Reich in the act of labeling Wisconsin's assault on public workers' collective bargaining rights a "coup d'etat." It is, in fact, nothing of the sort. It's legitimate policymaking, as carried out by the duly elected majority in the Wisconsin state legislature and advocated for and signed by the duly elected Republican governor. Dramatic, sure. Radical, I'll buy that. But it's still legitimate and democratic.

We live in polarized times. Indeed, by just about every indicator we have, the parties have been growing further apart in recent decades and advocating for increasingly divergent things. One result of this is that when one party controls both the legislative and executive branches, it will push for things that many voters of the other party (and even many independent voters) will perceive as being outside the mainstream. And for all intents and purposes, they are outside the mainstream.

Parties push agendas. The Democratic Party has been pushing for health care reform for decades now, and the Republican Party has been pushing to limit collective bargaining rights for at least as long. So when voters give them control of a government, they'll try to enact those things. That doesn't make it tyranny. Calling what happened in Wisconsin a coup d'etat is about as accurate as calling the 2009 stimulus bill taxation without representation.

(via Bernstein)

Wisconsin's parties

I'm kind of kicking myself that I haven't been devoting my sabbatical time to researching partisanship in the Wisconsin statehouse. As it happens, this is on my research agenda, just not for this year. I've been interested in the state for some time since -- like California, Colorado, Nebraska, and others -- Wisconsin is a state where Progressive anti-party traditions run strong yet the parties have developed ways of adapting to rules designed to weaken them. Wisconsin was home to the first open primaries and campaign finance restrictions, yet it has one of the most polarized legislatures in the country.

I don't have a full grasp on the sources of legislative partisanship in Wisconsin yet. I conducted some interviews with legislators and lobbyists there a few years ago, but I really have a lot to follow up on. The stories I was hearing from respondents suggested that the source of partisanship could primarily found within the chamber. There is a great deal of party discipline actually enforced by party leaders within the legislature. Now, that perspective could be an artifact of the location of my interviews -- Madison. But it's being backed up today. Bringing an entire party legislative caucus out of the state and keeping them there away from their families requires party discipline. Voting for a dramatic change in labor policy when public opinion screams not to requires party discipline.

In the next year or so, I hope to investigate this further. If, say, a Democratic Wisconsin senator were having second thoughts about continuing to hide in Illinois, what's keeping him there? Is it the fear of disappointing his colleagues? The fear of a recall by disappointed Democrats in his district? The fear of labor unions who would never back his campaign again? (Similarly, what fate will befall Sen. Dale Schultz, the one Republican who opposed the effort to strip public employees of their collective bargaining rights?) I'm sure all of these things play a role, but I'm just kind of curious why party discipline is so much greater there than in almost any other state.

How legislators talk

Here's a lovely letter from Wisconsin's Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald to Democratic Senator Mark Miller, the minority leader, currently hiding somewhere in Illinois. An excerpt:

Your grasp of reality, and control of your caucus as minority leader, continues to amaze me.... Your stubbornness in trying to ignore the last election and protect the broken status quo is truly shameful. While we wait for you and your colleagues to finally show up, Senate Republicans continue to stand ready to do the job we were elected to do, here in Wisconsin. I hope you are enjoying your vacation, and your vacation from reality.

For the record, concerns about incivility among elected officials tend to be way overblown. Even if legislators don't like each other, they have longstanding rules and customs that allow them to address the people's business and make decisions about competing interests. I think it's fair to say that those rules are under considerable strain in Wisconsin right now.

(h/t Barry Burden)