Stunned!

I confess to being absolutely stunned by the results of the Wisconsin recall attempt. I shall have to wait further information but it appears at the moment that not only did Walker survive, but so did his Lieutenant Governor and all of the four Senators that were up for recall as well. I don’t understand it, Wisconsin is a Blue state, there was a massive turnout that should have favored the Democrats, and, according to the exit polls Obama is still favored to win over Romney. This makes no sense to me.

I guess one must conclude that the Fascists won. The corporate money, in collaboration with the Wisconsin government, just overwhelmed the opposition. It is said that Walker managed to outspend his opponent by a ratio of 7 or more to 1. This does not bode well for the 2012 election or, more importantly, for the future of the United States. In place of the democracy we like to believe we have we will now have a kind of Fascist Plutocracy where a small number of billionaires will be in control, tailoring things to their liking.

I find this terribly depressing as it seems to indicate that our individual votes will be increasingly more meaningless, a single billionaire will have potentially a billion votes compared to anyone’s single vote, as that is what seems to be implied by the idea that money represents speech. With this success the billionaires and their obviously sympathetic Supreme Court will have no incentive to change the ridiculous Citizens United ruling, and those with the obscene fortunes will continue to shower money on those willing to do their bidding. It worked in Wisconsin. There is no reason to suppose it will not work elsewhere, including the Presidential race.

Perhaps further analysis will reveal just what factors were in play to bring about this (to me) unexpected and mysterious result.