I’m a bit stunned by Ben Bernanke’s morning in America speech, so let me try to recover by looking at Wisconsin. Yesterday was the first day that elevated contributions to pensions and health care came out of the paychecks of public employees, as part of the anti-union bill. So protesters returned to the Capitol in Madison by the hundreds, chanting and demonstrating against the policy. After closing time, the Capitol Police struck back.

So this means that the Democrats picked up a total of two seats in the recalls, and Republicans will have a 17-16 majority in the State Senate when they return to session. Dale Schultz, the moderate Republican who voted against the anti-union bill that stripped collective bargaining rights, will have a lot of say over what else of Scott Walker’s right-wing agenda gets passed. And the state waits for January 2012, when Walker and the rest of the legislature becomes eligible for recall.

I think a really underrated factor in why Democrats in Wisconsin came up just short of winning back the state Senate is because of that extra month on the schedule forced by the “spoiler candidates” put forward by state Republicans. The extra month did not only give Senate incumbents like Alberta Darling and Luther Olsen extra time to campaign and fundraise. It put the elections one more month removed from the outrage across Wisconsin over the theft of collective bargaining rights. Feelings have a way of fading gradually over time. And so an election in July may have had a different feel than an election in August.
There is one man in Wisconsin who can upset this dynamic, however, and bring vitality and energy to a recall. His name is Russ Feingold.

Wisconsin Democrats came up just short last night, flipping two seats in recall elections but not the three needed to take back the state Senate. Currently the Senate will have a 17-16 majority for Republicans; there are two recall elections against incumbent Democrats Robert Wirch and Jim Holperin next Tuesday, August 16. It’s possible that the disappointment of not reaching the goal number in the Republican recalls will depress Democratic turnout, but the expectation is that Wirch and Holperin will hold the seats.

In Chris Cillizza’s smug dismissal of liberal frustration, with the curt statement “liberals and progressives have nowhere else to go,” he overlooks the fact that liberals have plenty of places to go. More than ever, in fact. From a movement-building perspective, there are more opportunities than normal in an off year to really make a difference on progressive policy.

We’re in a four-week sprint to recall elections in Wisconsin, and it’s not entirely clear how it’ll all turnout, though Democrats seem to have at least a plausible chance of getting back the state Senate. The success or failure of the recalls will determine whether the Democratic-labor-progressive alliance decides to go after the big target – Scott Walker, with a recall in 2012. New poll numbers out today show that Walker would be vulnerable to the challenge.

Unions filed a new lawsuit to stop the anti-union law, but given the cravenness of David Prosser Who Will Choke You and the state Supreme Court, I don’t see much chance for overturning it. The ballot box is the alternative, for now, and it will take years to actually win back the necessary votes to repeal. It starts with the recalls.

Republicans just can’t resist a game where they make up the rules as they go along. Two fine examples of this are Wisconsin where they are going to redistrict before the recall elections, even though they have not drawn up the ward maps yet. And then there is Ohio, where SB 5 is going to before a vote of the people, but Republicans want to split it into 5 separate bills to confuse the voter.

David Prosser, just re-elected to another 10-year term on the Wisconsin Supreme Court in a tight election, allegedly “grabbed fellow Justice Ann Bradley Walsh by the neck” prior to the release of the hasty ruling on the anti-union bill, which the court eventually upheld.

The New Jersey state Assembly, with a large Democratic majority, gave final approval yesterday to a bill that eliminates collective bargaining rights for public employee health care benefits and imposes the equivalent of a pay cut by increasing health and pension contributions. Unions in New Jersey actually have no collective bargaining guarantee other than health benefits, so this eliminates pretty much their main bargaining chip.