Obama's Cowardly Response to Wisconsin " Your On Your Own"

Tuesday voters in Wisconsin will go to the polls to vote in the recall election of Governor Scott Walker. While most polls have the race as being close they also all show Walker holding a slim lead.

You may remember that Wisconsin has become the biggest battleground in the battle for union rights. Walker, much like our Governor LePage, took office and immediately passed a tax cut for the wealthiest citizens of his state. Then claiming revenue shortfalls he and his Republican colleagues rammed a bill limiting state workers collective bargaining rights through the legislature.

Since that time Wisconsin has become the proxy battleground for all things left and right. It is estimated that Walker, funded primarily by the Koch brothers and other secretive conservative groups has outspent Bennett at least eight to one. One must ask this, with this kind of money advantage, if Walker wins by one point should we feel good about the influence a few rich men can have on an election.

This past weekend Bill Clinton appeared in Wisconsin. Nothing energizes our former President more than a chance to speak up for the working people of this country.

Barack Obama, well the President did visit Illinois and Minnesota last week. He could not , it seems, find time to make a stop in Wisconsin. The reasons are many you can be sure. The President does not want to put his prestige on the line for a cause that might fail. He does not want to be seen as stepping in a local race.

What it really means are a few other things. First the President still does not understand that his best chance of winning in November is to energize the base of his party. Right now he appears to be following the " Are you really going to vote for Romney? " approach to his base, and lack of attention to them. He is correct of course, they will not. What they might do is stay home. Ohio last year rebuked their own Governor John Kasich strongly by forcing a vote on his union limiting bill and the measure was repealed. Still Obama cannot seem to understand that he needs to stand with these union men and women if he wants them to stand for him.

His decision to not involve himself in Wisconsin is hypocritical and shameful. It might also be indicative of the fact that the President really does not understand the union experience. He does not really understand loyalty as a feature of an honorable politician.

One thing we can be sure of and this goes to one of my more recent columns. President Joe Biden would have spent this past weekend in Wisconsin. One should have no doubt about where he would have stood.

It really is true, people you have hope for can disappoint you much more than those you believed nothing good of in the first place. Barack Obama = Disappointing