Crushed by Feingold's Defeat

Crushed by Feingold's Defeat

 

By Matthew Rothschild,

The Progressive

November 3, 2010

http://www.progressive.org/wx1103b10.html

 

How ironic it is that Feingold, who more than any other

Senator tried to limit the poisonous influence of

corporate money in politics, succumbed to that very disease.

 

Progressives across Wisconsin, and across the country,

are feeling crushed by the defeat of Sen. Russ

Feingold, one of the finest Senators ever to represent

the Badger state.

 

Feingold lost 52-47 to Ron Johnson, a wealthy plastics

manufacturer with no political experience.

 

The old rules of politics no longer apply.

 

You can win every debate, as Feingold did.

 

You can get practically every newspaper endorsement in

the state, as Feingold did, including some very

conservative ones.

 

You can be a loyal and dutiful servant of your

constituents, coming home every weekend and visiting

every county every year, as Feingold did.

 

And you can still lose.

 

One reason is money, and the hideous Supreme Court

decision in the Citizens United case, which opened the floodgates.

 

"Common Cause of Wisconsin estimated the total spent at

$40 million to $45 million for the senate race, a

record amount. Outside groups spent about $5 million,

most of that on ads opposing Feingold," according to

the Wisconsin State Journal.

 

How ironic it is that Feingold, who more than any other

Senator tried to limit the poisonous influence of

corporate money in politics, succumbed to that very disease.

 

Feingold also has Barack Obama to thank for his defeat.

 

Obama failed to deliver the change he promised, failed

to deliver the jobs he promised, and cozied up to Wall

Street, so voters across the country took it out on

Democrats with a vengeance.

 

For instance, the AP ran a story about a Wisconsinite

opposing Feingold because she said he voted for the

bank bailout. When the reporter informed her that

Feingold actually voted against the bank bailout, that

didn't change her mind. She responded that the

Democrats still spent too much.

 

Poor Feingold. More than most Democrats, he was a

deficit hawk, but that counted for nothing on Tuesday.

 

Johnson ran a brilliant, vacuous campaign, with soft,

gauzy commercials and an "aw, shucks" regular guy appeal.

 

He drummed into voters' minds that Feingold's first

name was "career" and middle name was "politician."

 

And he stood in front of gorgeous Wisconsin scenery in

ad after ad, and talked about the need to cut spending

and to bring a businessman's perspective-not another

lawyers' perspective-to D.C.

 

Feingold's ads, by contrast, were often ineffective,

and he refused to go as negative as he could have, and

he told liberal outside interest groups not to

advertise for him.

 

As a result, voters didn't hear often enough, for

instance, that Johnson thinks man-made global warming

is "lunacy," that Johnson opposes extending

unemployment insurance because he doesn't want people

to have an incentive not to work. Most crucially, we

didn't hear at all that Johnson actually testified

before the state legislature earlier this year on the

side of the employers of pedophiles! Johnson wanted to

limit the financial awards that victims of pedophiles

could get from those employers. He sided against the

victims, and most candidates would have hammered him

for that. Feingold gave him a pass.

 

Now Feingold leaves with his dignity and his principles intact.

 

I didn't agree with Russ Feingold on everything.

 

He was too much of a deficit hawk for me.

 

And his reflexive defense of Israeli government

policies toward the Palestinians was at odds with his

otherwise stellar human rights record.

 

But he was a fantastic Senator.

 

You won't find a smarter, more diligent, more

independent, more courageous person in that chamber.

 

He was the reincarnation of Fighting Bob La Follette,

but with shorter hair.

 

He was the only Senator to vote against the USA Patriot

Act, and his speech against it could have come right

out of La Follette's mouth.

 

Said Feingold: "There is no doubt that if we lived in a

police state, it would be easier to catch the

terrorists. . . . But that wouldn't be a country in

which we would want to live, and it wouldn't be a

country for which we could, in good conscience, ask our

young people to fight and die. In short, that country

wouldn't be America."

 

He was the only Democratic Senator to vote against the

financial reform law because he said, rightly, that it

didn't do enough to prevent another banking crisis.

 

He led the fight against destructive trade deals like NAFTA.

 

He opposed the Iraq War.

 

He voted against the deregulation of Wall Street and

the repeal of Glass-Steagall.

 

He fought for media reform.

 

He railed against the malignancy of corporate power,

stressing, as La Follette did, that it is destroying

not only our economy but also our democracy.

 

Now Russ Feingold is gone.

 

And Wisconsin is a less proud place to live in today.

 

    If you liked this story by Matthew Rothschild, the

    editor of The Progressive magazine, check out his

    story "Why Jon Stewart's Speech Left Me Cold."

 

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