Maddow: Democrats can’t win without the unions

Actually, I don’t disagree with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on this point, but I do disagree with her on what it means.  Maddow argues that efforts to roll back collective bargaining privileges for unions — which she defines too broadly — means that unions will have less cash to spend on political activism, and that without the influx of that cash, Democrats simply can’t compete.  But Maddow blames that on the reforms when she should be blaming it on the Democrats themselves:

“The Wisconsin Republicans, under Scott Walker, were using public policy to essentially dismantle public sector unions in Wisconsin. And that — however you feel about union rights in the country — it had one very practical, partisan effect, which is that the unions had been big supporters of Democratic candidates and Democratic causes and had had a lot to do with the Democratic ground game. So if they go away — in terms of whether or not that corporate money that’s disproportionately supporting Republicans can be answered — at least on the Democratic side, before there is some kind of reform, Democrats do not have a way to compete in terms of big outside money in elections. And that is the reality now in Wisconsin. It is the reality in states where they have essentially eliminated unions rights.”
“I think,” Maddow added, “structurally, that’s a pretty dire electoral situation for Democrats.”

Democrats have every opportunity to raise the same kind of cash that Republicans do.  There are no industry assignments for donors to parties.  Barack Obama is in the middle of a two-day trip to raise $15 million in California, mainly from the entertainment industry, for instance.  Democrats have launched super-PACs and have their own sugar daddies like George Soros and Warren Buffett to match the Koch Brothers.

Read more: http://hotair.com/archives/2012/06/07/maddow-democrats-cant-win-without-the-unions/