No matter what happens in Wisconsin's next round of recall elections on Tuesday, Republicans will maintain control of that state's Legislature.
Because GOP lawmakers retained four of the six seats up for grabs last week, this week's recall votes in two Democratic districts are essentially moot. If Democrats keep the seats, the Republicans retain a one-vote majority in the Senate. If Republicans flip those districts, the GOP will have the same three-vote advantage it held before the recalls.
Democrats claim they're gaining. But unlike hand grenades and horseshoes, "close" doesn't count in politics. Wisconsin Dems really can't crow too much after laying out $28 million and outspending Republicans roughly 2-to-1.
The Democrats' two pickups were explicable, if not expected. As the Wall Street Journal pointed out, one victory came in a Democratic-leaning district; the other involved a Republican incumbent who recently left his wife to take up with a "barely-legal" party aide.
Last week's recall campaigns were a reaction to Republicans' curtailment of public workers' collective bargaining privileges. Yet the media-fueled "backlash" against the GOP sputtered in a state that Barack Obama carried easily in 2008.
Indeed, progressives' marginal results in the Badger State -- the cradle of collective bargaining -- should be a cautionary tale for Florida Democrats, and may further embolden conservatives.
Watch for Florida Republicans to take another run at "paycheck protection" to derail automatic dues-collections by unions.
Last week, at a national education-reform competition, Patricia Levesque, head of Jeb Bush's Foundation for Florida's Future, may have tipped the state GOP's hand when she declared, "We'll tackle collective bargaining next year."
Business groups, including the Florida Chamber of Commerce, have accused the Florida Education Association and other public-employee unions of using "Wisconsin-style" tactics of busing in demonstrators from out of state to pressure lawmakers.
Unions deny the charges, but left-wing adjuncts such asProgress Florida continue to organize protests and stir the social media pot with Twitter tags like #ItGetsWorseFL -- an obvious play on the LGBT anti-bullying "ItGetsBetter" campaign.
Whether the Left's ad-hominem demonizing of Gov. Rick Scott will be any more effective than the quixotic efforts to take down Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker remains to be seen. For the next 15 months, Obama and the Democrats appear to have bigger and more immediate electoral challenges of their own.
Badly outvoted at the Florida Legislature, reactionary liberals will look to unelected judges to impose a "progressive" agenda over the duly enacted reforms of the people's popularly elected representatives.
With no shortage of Democratic trial lawyers and activist jurists, courts may be the Left's most favorable venue to challenge everything from redistricting to public-pension reform to the Patients' Right to Know Act (Amendment 7).
But as "Fighting" Bob LaFollette spins in his Wisconsin grave, the Journal notes:
"The battle to control public spending is the fight of this decade at all levels of government. If reformers can succeed in a 'progressive' hothouse like Wisconsin, there may be hope."
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Reach Kenric Ward at kward@sunshinestatenews.com or at (772) 801-5341.
