Progressives say this proves the primacy of money in politics — and the numbers do seem to back this up — but this seems an inadequate explanation.
Conservatives say Walker’s victory in Tuesday’s recall vote prove they are riding a political wave and that voters have no use for special-interest unions. This seems an inadequate explanation, as well.
So, what happened Tuesday? Polls indicate that the Democrats failed to make a case for recall, that a majority view recall as a last resort option designed to remove a corrupt politician from office, rather than just taking out politicians on the wrong side of an issue.
And one in three union voters backed Walker, rather than Tom Barrett.
The numbers would seem counter-intuitive — a recall effort triggered by union anger over legislation that stripped public employees of their collective bargaining rights losing a third of union voters to the anti-union candidate.
Again, what happened?
Robert Scheer offers the best explanation I’ve seen — that the failure in Wisconsin was a larger, systemic failure on the part of the Democrats. The reality, Scheer writes,
is that the spirit of populism has been perverted by the Republican tea party right and that Democrats are left defending government bureaucracy while remaining incapable of responding to America’s widespread economic pain.
Democrats long ago crawled in bed with finance, abandoning any presence that they were a party of workers. It may be true that Democrats will support incremental fixes, but they will not stand in the way of capital when capital wants something.
I don’t mean to minimize the impact of campaign money — it certainly plays a role — but there is a larger issue that the Democrats need to address, and until they do that they will continue to lose ground.
Hank Kalet 
One in three union workers voted for Walker? Are they stupid idiots? That's a nice way to cut your own throat and to vote against your own best economic interests. The unionization rate is down to 11.8% in the USA and now with the GOP/Koch brothers victory in Wisconsin, the right wing will be emboldened to kill off what's left of the unions. The unions were outspent by the right wing libertarian billionaires by a very wide margin.