Are the Democrats handing the recalls to the GOP by making the same mistake they made last fall?

Jack Craver at Isthmus has the same question I have: Why are the Democrats not talking about collective bargaining in the recall elections?

Health care, education, the environment, veterans, small businesses and people who are "salt of the earth." These are all things you can read about on the websites of the nine Democratic recall candidates. Collective bargaining is not.

If you view politics as nothing but an exercise in slick tactics and devious one-upsmanship, this makes sense. Democrats feel they already have the labor vote. But talking about it too much risks alienating Republican and independent voters. Why rock the boat? But it's possible to be too tactical for your own good, and Democrats both nationally and on the state level have been doing too much of it lately. Especially in last fall's gubernatorial race, as Craver notes.

This is the conventional wisdom the Democratic Party has operated on for years. During primaries, candidates roll out the union endorsements and compete for credentials in union halls. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton voice "serious concerns" about trade agreements with their fingers crossed behind their backs.

It was this approach that made Walker's war against public workers possible. Does anybody remember Tom Barrett bringing up labor issues last fall? He didn't, because who would have cared?

Maybe the nearly 40% of union members who voted for Scott Walker.

Sure, speaking up involves risks. But the alternative is worse. You risk being perceived as standing for nothing. That happened last fall. Scott Walker wasn't elected because of any great conservative tidal wave. He was elected because the Democrats ran a weak, mushy campaign that was short on issues that connected with people. The union vote for Walker says it all.

Scott Walker is wrong about a lot of issues. But those issues aren't what people came to the Capitol in unprecedented numbers to protest. And they're not what the recalls are about. All the other issues are well within the normal spectrum of party differences on the issues, the sort of thing you address in the next regularly scheduled election, not with a recall election.

The protests and and the recalls are all about Walker's stealth attack on collective bargaining rights -- an attack that flew in the face of public sentiment, Wisconsin's tradition of progresive labor relations under both parties and the fact that Walker never talked his plan in the campaign. The recalls are about misleading the public and then ramming through the legislature an agenda that was never revealed in Walker's campaign. It was dishonest and cynical, and even some Republicans and many independents were shocked.

That's why it's so important for Democrats to stand on principle. If there's a legitimate reason for the recalls, it's all about political principle, not partisan politics. Democrats are not going to win by listening to the same old campaign consultants and campaigning in the same old way. They need to sustain the passion and the solidarity that fueled the protests and the recall drives in the first place.

If they don't, they'll play right into the Republicans' contention that this is about nothing but an expensive exercise in politics as usual. And they'll lose, just as surely as they lost last fall. We can do better than this.

In Prosser country, we are all Wisconsin women.

Progressive groups and women's rights groups held a Prosser Must Go rally yesterday on the Capitol steps to urge Supreme Court Justice David Prosser to step down until the investigation of his behavior in the workplace is completed.

The steps below the Forward statue were a perfect spot for the rally. Women raised the money to pay for the "Forward" statue by Wisconsin artist Jean Pond Miner, which she created for the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. Wisconsin women also raised the money more recently to pay for recasting this bronze replica at the head of State Street of the deteriorating sculpture, the original of which is now in the Wisconsin Historical Society Museum.

The perfect place to try to move women's rights in Wisconsin forward.

Do you recognize this Madison landmark by a nationally renowned architect of the early 20th Century?

The same architect was responsible for buildings as different as the famous Woolworth Building skyscraper in New York and the U.S. Supreme Court Building in the nation's capital. His name was Cass Gilbert, and although his Beaux Arts style of architecture was eventually eclipsed by modernism, he was well-known in his time and served as the president of the American Institute of Architects in 1908-09. This arch is all that remains of the building he designed here -- Madison Central High School, which stood a couple blocks north of the Capitol on Wisconsin Ave for more than three quarters of a century.