Hijacking The Wisconsin Uprising

Why Electoral Politics Sold Out the Popular Uprising in the Badger State -- and Why It’s Not All Over 

By Andy Kroll, cross-posted from TomDispatch

The revelers watched in stunned disbelief, cocktails in hand, dressed for a night to remember. On the big-screen TV a headline screamed in crimson red: "Projected Winner: Scott Walker." It was 8:49 p.m. In parts of Milwaukee, people learned that news networks had declared Wisconsin’s governor the winner while still in line to cast their votes. At the election night party for Walker's opponent, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, supporters talked and cried and ordered more drinks. Barrett soon took the stage to concede, then waded into the crowd where a distraught woman slapped him in the face.

Walker is the first governor in American history to win a recall election. His lieutenant governor, Rebecca Kleefisch, dispatched her recall challenger no less decisively. So, too, did three Republican state senators in their recall elections. Democrats avoided a GOP sweep with a win in the sixth and final senate recall vote of the season, in Wisconsin's southeastern 21st district, but that was small consolation. Put simply, Democrats and labor unions got rolled.

The results of Tuesday's elections are being heralded as the death of public-employee unions, if not the death of organized labor itself. Tuesday's results are also seen as the final chapter in the story of the populist uprising that burst into life last year in the state capital of Madison. The Cheddar Revolution, so the argument goes, was buried in a mountain of ballots.

But that burial ceremony may prove premature. Most of the conclusions of the last few days, left and right, are likely wrong.


The energy of the Wisconsin uprising was never electoral. The movement’s mistake: letting itself be channeled solely into traditional politics, into the usual box of uninspired candidates and the usual line-up of debates, primaries, and general elections. The uprising was too broad and diverse to fit electoral politics comfortably. You can't play a symphony with a single instrument. Nor can you funnel the energy and outrage of a popular movement into a single race, behind a single well-worn candidate, at a time when all the money in the world from corporate “individuals” and right-wing billionaires is pouring into races like the Walker recall.

Wisconsin Post-Mortem

DonkeyHotey

"Money can't buy you love, but it sure can by you power."  As  Matt Rothschild says:

Walker raised seven-to-ten times as much money as Barrett did. The governor collected six-figure checks from a rogue’s gallery of the far right: Bob Perry of Swift Boat infamy gave $500,000. Sheldon Adelson gave $250,000, Richard Devos gave $250,000, Foster Friess gave $100,000.

A wrinkle in Wisconsin campaign finance laws, which allows for unlimited contributions to a candidate between the time recall papers are filed and the day that the election formally gets scheduled, gave Walker four and a half months to sit on the lap of every rightwing roofer in Missouri (two of whom gave him $250,000 checks), every conservative Wall Street financier, every reactionary Texas oilman that he could find.

On top of that, the Koch Brothers poured in millions through their front groups, and the RNC funneled money in, as did other Republican organizations.

Thus, John Nichols writes:

The Wisconsin result—which followed upon a campaign that saw Walker outspend his Democratic challenger by perhaps 8–1, as the governor’s billionaire backers flooded the state with tens of millions of dollars in “independent” expenditures on his behalf—should send up red flares for Democrats as they prepare for this fall’s presidential and congressional elections. The right has developed a far more sophisticated money-in-politics template than it has ever before employed. That template worked in Wisconsin, on behalf of a deeply divisive and scandal-plagued governor, and it worked.

But, as Nichols is quick to point out, organized money will not always beat organized people, and the anti-Walker forces had other disadvantages.  First, it must be noted, "they were let down by national Democratic players who never quite recognized that Republican National Committee chairman Reince Preibus and “independent” groups on the right were testing and perfecting strategies for November."

As Rothschild tells it, in contrast to the "rightwing moneymen and the Republican Party," who understood the importance of this election, "the DNC was stingy, and Barack Obama couldn’t find Wisconsin with GPS and a flashlight. Hell, he was in Minneapolis on Friday and didn’t even bother to drive across the Mississippi to set foot in Wisconsin. He never showed up. Neither did Joe Biden. All Obama did was send a tweet on election morning."

Another problem was the unpopularity of recall elections, generally.  Rothschild notes that exit polls showed that "60 percent of Wisconsin voters said recall should be used only for “misconduct” in office, and not for other reasons."

It is important to recognize, therefore, that Walker won not, as Republicans want us to believe, because of the popularity of their ideas, but because of their staggering financial advantage, because the organized right made Walker's victory a national priority, and due to legitimate concerns voters had about using the recall procedure. 

Nevertheless, as Greg Sargent states, "Scott Walker’s victory in tonight’s recall battle is a major wake-up call for the left, Democrats, and unions about the true nature of the new, post-Citizens United political landscape, and it should force a major reckoning among liberals and Democrats about what this means for the future."

Wisconsin Needs You

As Meteor Blades at Daily Kos puts it:

Wisconsin progressives have inspired us, invigorated us and built an aggressive fight against the right-wing's continuing efforts to smash unions, trash equal pay for women, give tax breaks to corporations, raise taxes on low-income people and make it harder for voters to actually vote. Today that battle culminates in the recall election against Gov. Scott Walker. But it's far more than just an effort in one state against one governor. Whatever its unique qualities, it epitomizes the struggle we face nationwide. Today, we progressives are all Wisconsinites.

If you're in Wisconsin, We Are Wisconsin has field offices around the state running canvasses you can participate in.  If you don't live in Wisconsin, you can still help get out the vote by clicking here and signing up for Friends and Neighbors, created by the AFL-CIO and Workers' Voice, which will put you in touch with Wisconsin voters you have already connected with online.

Wisconsin Recall: A Battle We Can't Afford To Lose

By Isaiah J. Poole, cross-posted from Campaign for America's Future

For the progressive movement, it's put up or shut up time in Wisconsin.

We said that we despise the agenda of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. We cheered the thousands of people who occupied the state capitol in 2011 to protest Walker's ramming legislation crippling public employee unions through the legislature. We celebrated when a legislature recall election led to the ousting of two of the state senators who backed the legislation. And we were bolstered when a record number of signatures put a Walker recall election on the ballot.


But now that it's crunch time, we are dangerously close to losing it all. And the consequences of a recall defeat are almost impossible to overstate. Imagine the gloating on Fox News and the right-wing blogs if Walker wins on Tuesday, and the claims that our insurgent movement for rebuilding the middle class is bloodied and can be left for dead.

If we are really serious about standing up against the unholy alliance of conservative extremism and corporate money that has imposed an austerity agenda on the working class while further enriching the wealthy, then we need to help the people in Wisconsin who are trying against the odds to win this Wisconsin recall.

We're asking people this weekend to sign up with Worker's Voice and contribute time to help get out the vote against Walker.

Workers' Voice is a new political action committee affiliated with the AFL-CIO that offers get-out-the-vote tools that leverage the power of your social networks with information in the voter file.
You can help identify voters, make phone calls, or send your own personalized direct mail to people you know. And you can do it all from home, no matter where you live. And in an election race that polls suggest could go either way, every phone call, every email, every knock on a door will matter.

What has me particularly fired up is an article progressive commentator Sally Kohn has posted on The Daily Beast, with a headline that claims "Democrats Lose Momentum in Wisconsin: The left has seemed more comfortable being angry than channeling that emotion into influence."

I respect Sally Kohn and think she's a smart political analyst. But I would really like to see her proved wrong.

Her sense is that grassroots progressives did a good job pulling together a movement based on opposition to Walker's policies—not just on labor rights but also on a budget that, like national conservative policies, cuts services vital to the middle class and poor while cutting taxes to the wealthy and corporations. But the momentum fell apart when it came time to take that energy and translate it into actual change at the ballot box.

"Progressives have had a far harder time yoking grassroots activism to electoral politics than conservatives, who quickly managed to translate Tea Party rabble rousing into political power," Kohn writes.

It is true that progressives need a more solid strategy for electoral and political gains in the face of how, with the aid of the Citizens United ruling, the right and its corporate backers have dominated the political landscape. That is a key focus of the Take Back the American Dream conference, where many of the plenary meetings and strategy sessions will be focused both on how progressives can score gains in the November elections and on how progressives can affect the course of economic policy during December's "taxmageddon," when Congress must decide how to handle the expiration of the Bush tax cuts, payroll tax relief and a deal on federal spending.

But, as The Nation's John Nichols told me in my interview with him today, people power has already accomplished more in Wisconsin than skeptics in either the left or the right expected. As he reminds us, the Capitol protests were supposed to quickly fizzle, but they didn't. The public was supposed to massively turn against supporters of public employees, but they didn't. The Walker recall was expected to flail in the midst of the harsh Wisconsin winter. It didn't.

So now we come to this moment, where it will become clear to the nation whether the 99 percent can in fact use people power to push back against the 1 percent and insist on government policies that restore a measure of prosperity to the majority of Americans, not just those at the very top.

Workers Voice is one way you can help, but it is of course not the only way. However you choose to get involved, this is the time to move from the sideline to the front line.

Then, at our Take Back the American Dream conference, we can do the work of building on a Wisconsin victory. That conference will feature Paul Krugman, Van Jones, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Ai-jen Poo, Sandra Fluke, Gov. Howard Dean, Melissa Harris-Perry, Chris Hayes and Katrina vanden Heuvel. (Click here to register.)


When you consider all that is at stake throughout the country, as conservatives continue their assault on worker's rights and economic security at both the state and national level, we literally cannot afford to lose on Tuesday.

Wild And Woolly In Wisconsin

Barrett To Face Walker In Historic Recall Election

By Mary Bottari, cross-posted from PRWatch

DonkeyHotey

Wisconsin voters chose Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett to run against incumbent Governor Scott Walker in the first gubernatorial recall election in the state's history. It has been 450 days since the first protests against Walker's bill to strip state workers of collective bargaining rights sparked massive protests and an 18 day occupation of the Capitol building. Now, there are only 28 days left before a general election that will decide the next governor of the state.

Barrett told MSNBC: "It will be a wild and woolly 28 days."

Barrett got 58% of the vote. He was trailed by Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk at 34%, State Senator Kathleen Vinehout at 4%, and Secretary of State Doug Lafollette at 3%. Wisconsin State Firefighters President Mahlon Mitchell easily bested two unknown candidates for the right to run in the recall against Republican Lieutenant Governor Rebecca Kleefisch. "Real" Democrats easily defeated the "fake" Democrats run by Republicans in four key State Senate recall elections, which will determine whether Democrats retake that body. Democrats recalled two State Senators in the summer of 2011 and only need to knock off one more to take control of the chamber and put a stop to the GOP agenda. In 2010, Walker beat Barrett by 5% during a national tsunami that swept Democrat Russ Feingold and many other long-serving Democrats out of office and gave the GOP trifecta control of 26 statehouses.

Walker faced a symbolic challenge from self-described (and attired) "Lincoln" Republican Arthur Kohl-Riggs, who received 3% of the vote in the Republican primary. Active campaigning by Walker and full mobilization by right-wing talk radio pumped up voter turnout in the Republican primary to unexpected levels.

State is a Hotbed of Politics

A June 5 general election will determine whether Walker becomes the third governor in U.S. history to be recalled.

One Million Signatures To Recall Scott Walker

By Mary Bottari, cross-posted from PR Watch, January 17, 2012

DonkeyHotey

The petition drive to recall and remove Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has surpassed all expectations, collecting over one million signatures in just 60 days.

Petitioners were only required to collect 540,000 by law. They far exceeded this number, making a successful legal challenge of the recall highly unlikely. This is the largest recall in U.S. history. Volunteers also gathered over 845,000 signatures to recall Lieutenant Governor Rebecca Kleefisch, as well enough signatures for four of the state senators who voted for Walker's collective bargaining bill in March 2011, adding hundreds of thousands more petitions to a pile estimated to weigh over one ton.

The Governor was not immediately available for comment. At the moment the recall petitions were being filed, he was the guest of Citibank on Wall Street at a high-dollar recall fundraiser.

Wisconsin Recall Will Make History

The numbers coming out of Wisconsin are stunning. Of the 19 states that permit the recall of governors, Wisconsin has one of the highest thresholds. For governors (and legislators), recall organizers must gather signatures equaling 25 percent of the turnout in the previous election for the office. That means organizers faced the daunting task of collecting about 540,000 signatures. To avoid losing the election through signature challenges, signature collectors wanted a "cushion" of additional signatures, so they set a goal of 720,000 signatures. They surpassed even that goal.

When California governor Gray Davis was recalled in 2003, residents collected 1.6 million signatures out of 21.1 million eligible voters, or approximately 7.6 percent. In Wisconsin, 25,000 trained volunteers had 60 days to collect approximately 1 million signatures from 4.37 million eligible voters or approximately 23 percent. Plus, 1 million is almost half of the votes cast in the 2010 Wisconsin gubernatorial election. Wisconsin volunteers did it with less money, over the holiday season and in the depths of winter.

As a heavy snow fell on Wisconsin, volunteers explained that the 3,000 pounds of petitions would be delivered to the non-partisan elections board in trucks escorted by armed security guards. Volunteers from United Wisconsin, the grassroots organization that took charge of collecting the signatures, have designated two volunteers from each of Wisconsin's 72 counties to hand carry a box containing a portion of the petitions to highlight the fact that the work took place in every corner of the state.

What's Next For Wisconsin?

The Badger State's Bloody Stalemate

By Andy Kroll, cross-posted from Tom Dispatch.

Stephanie Haw needed a good cry.

On the night of August 9th, the rowdy crowd inside Hawk's bar in downtown Madison grew ever quieter as the election results trickled in. Earlier that day, with the nation watching, voters statewide cast their ballots in Wisconsin's eagerly awaited recall elections that threatened the seats of six Republican state senators. Democrats needed to win three of them to regain control of the state senate and block Republican Governor Scott Walker's hard-line agenda. But it wasn't to be.  Deep into the night, an MSNBC anchor announced that a fourth GOP senator, Alberta Darling of north Milwaukee and the nearby suburbs, had clinched a narrow victory.

Haw slipped outside. It wasn't supposed to turn out like this, she thought. Progressives had mobilized damn near every possible supporter they could, phone banking and door knocking and Facebooking and Tweeting, and in the end, it still wasn't enough. She thought of all the energy poured into the recall effort, and of her two-year-old daughter running around the house shouting "Recall Walker! Recall Walker!" Standing on the sidewalk, she burst into tears.

I met Haw and her mother later that night at Hawk's. We sat around chewing over the election results till the bar emptied. Haw, who was wearing a red t-shirt with SOLIDARITY emblazoned on the front, said simply, "I feel terrible that we lost." I reminded her what the Democrats had been up against: with one exception, the six districts in play leaned to the right, and all six of those Republicans had won in 2008 despite the Obama frenzy that gripped the state. (He won it by nearly 14 percentage points.) She nodded along with me and then summed her feelings up this way: "I guess it's the best of times and the worst of times."

That ambivalence seemed to carry through Wisconsin's historic summer of recalls, which ended on August 16th when a pair of Democratic state senators easily defended their seats from a Republican recall effort. Which is to say, when the dust settled in the Badger State, there was no clear winner.

Wisconsin -- Ground Zero For An "American Spring"

By Richard (RJ) Eskow, cross-posted from Huffington Post

People watching the news over the past week might have thought that Congress was the only place where battles for our future were being won and lost. That's wrong. There are other battles, better battles, battles far from the glare of the Beltway spotlights. And more are on their way.

So forget Washington for a minute. (If you feel like I do right now, that'll be a pleasure.) If you want to see where the next wave of corporate-sponsored political attacks is being launched, look to New Orleans. And if you want a shot of optimism, a ray of light, a sign that battles can be won against overwhelming odds, turn your eyes toward Wisconsin.

That's where the action is.

On Wisconsin

Al Gore said this week that we need an "American Spring." It would be a stroke of Carl Sandburg-ish poetry if we were to someday look back and see that the first signs of our spring appeared in Midwestern farm country. And if that image is too corny for your taste, remember: The corn harvest starts around now. I'm just getting an early start.

The Wisconsin uprising began when Gov. Scott Walker and the Republicans in the legislature began their ruthless attempt to strip unions of their rights in that state. They had every right to believe it would be easy. The Democrats had just been routed in their state and across the country, as voters discouraged by the lack of jobs and growth took their revenue on the ruling party. Walker and his colleagues thought they had found their "Shock Doctrine" moment in that state's budget crisis, and used it to strip unions of their collective bargaining rights because they claimed the state "couldn't afford" to pay their wages and benefits.

The unions offered Walker virtually all the concessions he wanted, which took the financial argument off the table, but he moved forward anyway. And then a miracle happened ... Voters who had accepted one injustice after another finally decided they'd had enough. Demonstrators flooded into the state capitol, support flowed in from around the state, and six GOP legislators who voted for these provisions found themselves forced into recall elections. (It was too early to force a recall of the newly-elected governor.)

The "empire" always "strikes back," and Wisconsin was no exception. Dollars flowed in from the usual rich right-wingers, and they were used to force three Democrats into recall elections, too. The six Republicans will fight for their seats next week, on August 9, and two Democrats will be challenged on August 16. (One of the Democrats has already beaten back his challenge.)

People of all parties should back the challenge of these Republicans and support the Democrats - not out of party loyalty, but because each victory strikes a blow for fair play, the middle class, and a just economy. If three Democrats win, Republicans will lose control of the state legislature. That would be a huge triumph for everyone except the wealthy and cynical hacks who are trying to usurp democracy and destroy the middle class.

These recall elections have already been a victory. They've put the oligarchs and their political lackeys on notice, letting them know that it won't be as easy to trample on the public as they through. But the most inspiring thing about Wisconsin is the spirit that's been tapped. Similar movements are springing up in other states. And in one of the most cheerful stories of the uprising, a local pizza joint reported that it was getting orders from around the world from callers who wanted to send food to the strikers in the Capitol -- including calls from Egypt, even as that country's uprising was reaching its peak in Tahrir Square.

For What It's Worth

While the media obsesses on Anthony Weiner's tweets and why Sarah Palin is being mean to them, there's something happening in Wisconsin.  Next month nine state senators -- six Republicans and three Democrats -- face a recall election.  What is at stake in Wisconsin is the balance of power.  As Dante Chinni of PBS NewsHour explains, "should Democrats manage to pick up a net of three seats in all those recall votes, they would control the Senate and be able to put the brakes on [Governor] Walker's agenda."  But, as Howie Klein argues, the recall will reach far beyond Wisconsin.  This is a battle that is "crucial for the whole progressive movement and for the future of our country."

Klein reminds us what Governor Walker has wrought:

As you no doubt recall, earlier this year the newly elected extreme Republican governor of the state, Scott Walker, pushed through a radical attack on basic labor rights. His plan to strip workers of the right to bargain collectively for protections against unfair treatment and unsafe worker conditions was one of the greatest assaults on working families in the last half century. And now he's pushing a radical, destructive agenda that guts priorities like education, health care and help for seniors while giving hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks to huge corporations. He couldn't have done it with an equally extremist state legislature, which has rubber stamped every single point on his destructive agenda.

It isn't just about Wisconsin.  "The Walker agenda," Klein contends, "is being duplicated in state after state by the extreme Republicans who swept into power in last November’s elections. This fight for rights and the basic values we all hold dear will reverberate across the nation, impacting elections in every region of the country." 

For this reason, former Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold is actively supporting the Democrats on the ballot in order to "stop Governor Walker's radical agenda."  And Blue America (see ActBlue badge on the right side of the blog) has started a new Wisconsin Recall page to fund raise for the progressive Democrats who are running to replace the Republicans. 

As Klein insists, "winning these recalls will not just help protect Wisconsin -- it will send a signal to the entire country that we will stand up to extreme, divisive agendas that hurt our values and threaten the priorities we know are so important."

Nothing To See Here

When a politician gets caught in an embarrassing situation that is neither criminal nor relevant to public policy it may be fodder for good, even great comedy (Please see John Stewart, The Big Wang Theory).  But it shouldn't rise to the level of major news as the Weiner story has become.  Nor should whatever nonsense Sarah Palin utters, for that matter.  But the mainstream media remains focused on such inanities while failing to dig into some really important stories, such as the global energy crisis, the recall elections in Wisconsin, the GOP assault on voting rights, the thwarting of key Obama Administration nominees, and the the fact that the Republicans are truly seeking to abolish Medicare, to name just a few.  Come on, media, get serious.  I'm just a part-time blogger, I can't do everything.

Badger Zeitgeist

The right wing Governor of Wisconsin comes into office with a budget surplus and creates a modest shortfall by giving tax breaks to big business.  He then exaggerates the nature of the fiscal crisis, blames it on the public unions and uses it try to crush the rights of state workers.  What is remarkable about the situation in Wisconsin is the unified push back from the Democratic Party and the  huge and energetic popular protests in the streets and in the state Capitol.

It is important to understand what is behind this effort. It has little to do with the budget -- indeed the unions can't be blamed for the budget -- and everything to do with politics.  As Kevin Drum points out:  "It's an effort to destroy one of the few institutions left that fights relentlessly for the economic interests of the middle class."  But more than that, it is an attempt to permanently weaken a group that provides the most significant organized opposition to Republican candidates. 

The latest news is that the Republicans may be backing down.  Chris Bowers reports that before adjourning until March 1st, the Republican-controlled state Assembly rescinded their vote to move to final passage on the bill to strip state employees of the right to collectively bargain, making it possible to amend the bill and suggesting Republicans may be open to compromise.  Meanwhile, the protests are going to continue all weekend and all of the Democratic State Senators remain across state lines where they fled to deny the Republicans in the Senate a quorum on the bill.

It is amazing what can happen when you fight back.  Show your support for this effort by clicking on the Act Blue badge on the right hand column of the blog under Worthy Causes, and donate $14 to the Wisconsin State Senate Democratic Committee, one for each of the 14 heroic Senators.

Regenerated Progressive

Russ Feingold

The most bitter loss of the mid-term elections was the defeat of Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin to plastics executive and Tea Party-backed candidate Ron Johnson.  (See Plastics.)  Feingold is a true progressive and unyielding civil libertarian.  He was the only Senator to vote against the Patriot Act in 2001, a remarkably courageous act at that time, and he later introduced a resolution to censure President Bush for authorizing illegal wiretapping.  He is a staunch opponent of the death penalty.  He was outspoken in his opposition to the Iraq War, and accused Bush of "mounting an assault on the Constitution."  And, of course, he co-authored the McCain-Feingold Act on campaign finance reform.

On his last day in the Senate, Feingold was interviewed by The Nation's John Nichols.  The whole interview is really worth reading, but the highlight was Feingold explaining how our society is "being dominated by corporate power in a way that may exceed what happened in the late nineteenth century, early twentieth century;" our country "has become so corporatized that the progressive movement is as relevant as it was one hundred years ago, maybe more so."  To Feingold, this is a struggle over the same issues:  "It's just that [corporate] power, because of money, international arrangements and communications, is so overwhelming that the average person is nearly helpless unless we develop a movement that can counter that power."  Feingold contends that we are at a critical moment:

We need to regenerate progressivism and make it relevant to what's happening right now.  But there's no lack of historical comparison to a hundred years ago.  It's so similar; the only real difference is that corporate power is even more extended.  It's the Gilded Age on steroids.

Feingold will back President Obama in 2012.  He advises progressives to support and respect Obama, but to be vocal about "a desire that he move more strongly in certain areas, such as civil liberties."  He urges that this be done "in a way that makes it clear we are not trying to harm the presidency but that we're trying to make sure that the base of the party and the progressive movement is motivated for this re-election."

According to Nichols, Russ Feingold will not fade away or follow the path of so many of his colleagues by becoming a corporate lobbyist.  On the contrary, he "intends to embrace the role of citizen reformer, continue challenging corporate power and play a part in renewing and extending the progressive movement."

[Related posts: Plastics]

Plastics

Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold lost his Senate seat to Tea Party-backed Republican Ron Johnson.  Johnson, who has run a plastics company for the last three decades, has said his main priority is to repeal health care and he gained notoriety earlier this year opposing a law that would extend the statute of limitations in cases of child abuse.  Feingold is a true progressive and unyielding civil libertarian.  He was the only Senator to vote against the Patriot Act in 2001, a remarkably courageous act at that time, and he later introduced a resolution to censure President Bush for authorizing illegal wiretapping.  He is a staunch opponent of the death penalty. He was outspoken in his opposition to the Iraq War, and accused Bush of "mounting an assault on the Constitution."  And, of course, he co-authored the McCain-Feingold Act on campaign finance reform. As the Washington Post reports, a large reason for his defeat was money. Johnson invested more than $8 million of his own money in the race, and another $3 million was poured into the campaign from outside groups in the wake of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision.  You can watch Feingold's concession speech here, where, after quoting Bob Dylan, he says "it is on to the next fight, on to the next adventure, on to 2012, and it is on to our next adventure forward."