With the winds of change starting to threaten Jim Douglas’s job (where he doesn’t have to actually do anything), he’s upping the slime ante to a level not seen in Vermont politics up to this point. To get a sense of what he’s scared of, take a look:

Rothenberg Report: Race was re-rated from “Currently Safe” for Douglas down to to “Clear Advantage Incumbent Party.”

Stateline.org: Re-evaluated from “Safe Republican” to “Worth Watching.”

And Congressional Quarterly:

Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas’ politically moderate profile and modest personal manner have enabled him to win three two-year terms as a Republican, overcoming the strong partisan trend that has given the Democrats the upper hand in his home state’s politics. And his Democratic opponent, state lawmaker Gaye Symington has to worry about losing a chunk of the liberal vote to independent candidate Anthony Pollina, who has long been associated with Vermont’s left-leaning Progressive Party and who has received the backing of several unions in the state.

But at least some uncertainty about the outcome has been produced by Symington’s prominence as the state House Speaker, along with a Democratic voter turnout boost likely to be spurred by Barack Obama’s effort to run the party’s presidential winning streak in Vermont to five elections dating to 1992. CQ Politics, which had rated the race as Safe Republican, has changed its rating to Leans Republican.

And of course, only a day after I said the nasty ads should be coming any moment, they’re here (see diary below). But rather than mocking with namecalling, which is Douglas’s usual M.O., he’s moved up to outright lies. From the ad:

“She tried to pass off four years of bogus tax returns before the press caught her.”

The charge that Symington was passing bogus documents has clearly been demonstrated to be false, and not simply by this site, but by the very press Douglas is invoking. From Remsen:

The Burlington Free Press did not report that she filed separately, but did state — mistakenly — that the forms Symington provided were the actual tax returns she filed… The campaign also included a note on an accompanying e-mail to the media indicating that the documents were “pro-forma tax forms prepared by her accountant.”

Douglas and Casey know this, but put out this trash anyway. A naked lie – one that they couldn’t sell the press on at the time, but we’re in the era where McCain-style casual, routine lying is a bona fide communications strategy. After years where he’s derided his opponents as “flip floppers”, “Mr. Property Tax,” calling them Commies by tying them to Sandinistas and accusing them of “squealing like a stuck pig,” Douglas is showing he’s willing to join his presidential candidate in taking sleaze to this next level.

As a Vermonter, I am both ashamed and disgusted. Let’s get some letters to the editor calling Douglas out for exactly what he’s chosen to become.

Rasmussen will probably be in the field with a Vermont Governor’s poll this week. The high profile polling outfit has been steadily polling on big ticket races around the country, and actually wrapped a Vermont Gov poll early last week. Problem was, it didn’t include Independent candidate Anthony Pollina, and when they heard the news that he’d received 7% in the Research 2000 poll commissioned by WCAX, they decided to reboot.

So I begged the guy for the gist of what their numbers were – promised that I wouldn’t reveal it was Rasmussen numbers – but no dice (of course that means I’m free to tell you it was Rasmussen now). All he would tell me was one thing that he repeated three times:

It was “close.” Clearly, he didn’t realize how impactful just that simple assessment would be, given the political history.

So we should hear more soon – all clearly post endorsements. What I’m also expecting to see soon is Douglas do what Douglas does – get really really nasty with the ads. By this time in the last few cycles we had seen, or were just starting to see, stammering Clavelle, the “Sandinista” red baiting schtick, “Mr. Property Tax” – and I think even the Racine “flip flop” ads. Sure, there’s the radio ad where Douglas brazenly distorts Symington’s record, but that’s hardly in the same league.

In fact, if we don’t see them soon, it’ll be time to ask why not. Are the numbers closing? Is Douglas afraid to push up his already high negatives?

I assume we’ll see them shortly. He goes negative when he doesn’t need to – and spends a lot of campaign money to do it. He obviously digs it.

Yesterday’s press release from Senator Sanders’ office yesterday called for a “four point plan” to salvage the economy that included a tax on wealthy Americans to pay for the massive corporate bailouts underway, greater regulation, a new economic stimulus package, and this doozy tossed in there like it was an ol’ casual policy notion (emphasis added):

Third, he said giant businesses like Bank of America should be broken up so no company in the future could bring the American economy down with it. Said Sanders, “This country can no longer afford companies that are ‘too big to fail.’ If a company is so large that its failure would cause systemic harm to our economy, if it is too big to fail, then it is too big to exist.”

Bernie doesn’t know how right he is. And from the tone of his press release, I don’t think he realizes just how radical his suggestion is, either. “Too big to fail” is obviously a ticket for disaster, but its not the size per se that’s the issue – its the overall character of the economic system.

All systems need diversity. It is both the means and the end for functional, healthy systems. If you have any doubt, look to nature as the guide. In terms of process, diverse, complex ecosystems weather diseases, disasters and gradual changes, whereas monocultures don’t. And as far as ends go, the very directionality of the natural world is towards complexity and diversity. Socially, its no coincidence that the “melting pot” US jumped to the top of the international heap by so many metrics, and its no coincidence that now that our cultural and economical diversity has been moving towards the simpler and less diverse, that status is plateauing.

Although I used to feel otherwise, I’ve gotten rather blandly analytical in my old age. The fact is that large scale market capitalism is neither inherently “good” nor inherently “evil” as the more parochial on the different ends of the political spectrum would say. Such dogmatic terms only muddy the water. Terms such as “beneficial” or “destructive” are safer, but even those are too reductive. Capitalism is unique in its organic quality that exists largely independently from the more straightforward organic natures of other large institutions, who owe that quality to a reflection of their human components. Large scale capitalism develops its own organics, and those organics are strangely circular. At smaller scales, capitalism encourages diversity and complexity making for a rollicking robust nature.

But as it moves from the micro to the macro (especially when it truly goes global), it wants to consolidate its new, grander-scale functionalities into sets of intermediary institutions that act as organs, and the system takes on a life of its own – a singular life and, as such, one that works against diversity and complexity.

The diversity point is probably self-evident, but so is the complexity when you think about it. The global economy and all its interdependent institutions creating a cross-border capital circulatory system are not really that complicated when you get into it. I think this is even part of the appeal to laissez faire purists. It’s not that hard to “get” at a fundamental level, and I think some people become so entranced (or even proud of themselves) when they do “get it” that they smile, get an endorphine rush, pat themselves on the back and turn off their brains then and there (Jack Kemp waxing aroused over the Laffer-curve comes to mind…). And the more these transnational systems have grown, the less complex they’ve gotten. Now the some of the absurdities have grown (the much discussed practice of short selling is pretty absurd, in a sense), but absurdities are not complexities.

And because the system has coalesced into something new and big, and also simple (simplistic?) and uniform, its easy for boneheads to throw wrenches into the mix, either through their boneheadedness, or through straight up greed (or both). Insuring bonds like you would a car, for example.

Although I don’t think its looked at this way, regulation has traditionally had the effect of building in barriers to some of these forces towards simplicity and uniformity. When misguided doofuses look at the resulting picture, though, all they see is blockages in the wealth circulatory system, so they want to cut them right out, despite the fact that by doing so, they’re allowing a new institutional entity to evolve that has less and less natural resistance to disaster, disease or gradual changes in the environment. It may get very big very fast, but it wont be long before it has a stroke.

But that’s where we are. The body economic is having a stroke. The Treasury Department and Congress are, at least at this point, trying to come up with a life support system.

Bernie’s suggestion, however – whether he realizes it or not – is to forcibly move back across the line we left behind years ago. By eliminating “too big to fail” corporations, he wants to fundamentally change the character of the global economy – in the process creating far more diversity and complexity in the system, and in that process, making it a far more disease and disaster resistant entity.

That’s not to say that Bernie’s proposal will take us back to purely localized economies – far from it. That’s still another institutional manifestation of capitalism entirely. And whether or not we’d want to turn things back that far or not is a great debate, but one that would take a lot more space.

Still, as far as the current Washington policymakers are concerned, I suspect that Bernie might as well have just recommended we move the US Capital to Mars…

Some points meriting a mention that have been lost in the news shuffle:

• The Great Email Scramble: I tried to tell folks that the big story from the VSEA email dump following their FOIA request to the Douglas administration, was the fact of the dump itself rather than its content. And sure enough, once that magic line was crossed, the floodgates seem to be opening; Shay Totten of 7 Days has gone for more, Terri Hallenbeck and… Curtis Hier of Vermont Tiger. Hier is targeting legislative emails, natch, making it officially a big free-for-all which must be really scary for everyone in state Government.

  …or not. According to Totten, Hier is getting pushback from the legislature in the form of: 1. a claim of immunity from the FOIA requirement, and 2. the ol’ “sorry, we delete all emails more than 90 days old anyway.” Hier is livid, and is basically responding with: 1. bullshit, and 2. thats government document shredding.

  And you know what? Hier is absolutely right (and yes, I know some places flush their email caches routinely, but 90 days is ridiculous). Sauce for the goose, folks. The email apocalypse has arrived for the executive and legislative branches. Suck it up and play fair.

• Has the rewrite of history already begun on Campaign 2008? Lots of rumors around the idea that there were negotiations between the Dems and Progs to have Pollina run for Lt. Governor after all, and as a ticket with Symington. The rumors run the gamut – VDP Chair Ian Carlton nixed it, Carlton was all for it but Democratic Blue Dogs nixed it, it was Pollina who would have no part of it, it was never going to happen, it was all but a done deal…

  The latest seems to be that it was all but a done deal, but that it was Nate Freeman who queered the deal by deciding to announce he would run as a Dem when the ink was almost dry on an agreement – even though he knew he would wreck the nearly-completed peace & harmony negotiations in the process.

  Hunh. Yeah, right. What I think is that the urban legend machine is kicking in early, fueled by a desire to inoculate Pollina from criticism or blame if Douglas again wins, and it looks as though it was due to the 3 way split. This way – once again – it can still all go down on the true believers’ books as all the big bad Dems fault. Folks – I was talking to Nate at the time of his announcement, and have talked to him since. This rumor is pure fiction.

• Get well soon! Former Republican State Senator and one-term Mayor of Burlington Peter Brownell is having some serious medical challenges. He goes into 7 hours of surgery today to remove a tumor in his spinal cord. The good news is that it appears to be benign, but its still going to be a tough process, with the likelihood of more surgeries to come.

  Peter is a great guy. Wishing him and his family the best. (UPDATE: Peter came through the surgery fine and is in the recovery phase.)

Got some of the basic data, and its worth a second look. It was indeed Research 2000 (which has recently hit the big time by being tapped to provide the Daily Kos daily tracking poll…. congrats guys!). Again, a 400 person sample, meaning an unfortunately high 5% margin of error (and no, Pollina fans, that doesn't mean the poll is no good, it just means it has a big whopping 5% margin of error).

The poll was taken between September 11th and September 14th, meaning Pollina's AFL and NEA endorsements will not have factored into it, but the VSEA  endorsement did to some extent. Again, in the last decade, I haven't seen a noticable, verifiable labor endorsement bump, but anything's possible. Of course, its also possible that any poll bump might be offset by a dropcaused by such a poor showing in this poll. It'spossible that liberal supporters will start defecting if they no longer see him as viable, given the 7% showing.

So the poll is still better for Symington than Pollina (duh), and she has some other good news as well – despite the pronouncement of the living embodiment of Vermont conventional wisdom – the oft quoted Eric Davis of Middlebury College – that a 15% spread between the candidates would not be enough to trigger national Democratic support, the Democratic Governor's Association has reacted favorably and is forming a PAC to assist in Symington's effort. Whether that just means a contribution under the generally-agreed to limits ($1000 for the general election) or a full blown independent expenditure is not clear.

But back to the numbers:
 

Not a lot of trends that jump out at you in the Governor's race. Symington has stronger support among women than men, and vice versa for Douglas – although Douglas still leads overall among women – and across every demo, in fact. There's a breadth to Douglas's support across gender and location that probably offsets some of the lack of depth we're seeing. As we work down to that core mass of Republican/Douglas support, its easy to see that is a spread-out base.

Pollina runs twice as strong in the south as the north, which is largely a function of Windham County, no doubt. Symington's popularity among the left is clearly lowest there, but apparently not nearly as low as many were expecting, as she too performs better in the south (although not by a statistically significant margin). More undecided women is probably good news for Symington, as they look to be more likely to break her way, while more undecideds in the north may favor Douglas – although, again, in both instances, the distintion is within the margin of error.

And nearly 1 in 10 likely voters has “no opinion” of Jim Douglas. A high-profile, multi-term incumbent. Fascinating. Add that to the 43% unfavorable, and I think this baby may be headed for the legislature….

Finally. A poll!!! Man, I feel so much better now. And waddayaknow… all those people telling me I was mistaken for referring to Anthony Pollina as “Mr. 8%” were right after all. Just not in the way they meant.

Let’s look at the basics as reported by WCAX. (We’ll work on getting the crosstabs and mining a little deeper ASAP)

With the election less than two months away, a Channel 3 News Poll shows Republican Jim Douglas has 48 percent of the vote, Democrat Gaye Symington at 33 percent and Independent Anthony Pollina with 7 percent. 12 percent are undecided.

No surprises, unfortunately. For a while on this blog and off, we’ve been saying the first poll would likely be around 50-35-10-5. I just wish I’d been wrong about that.

All three candidates are a bit lower than I would’ve expected, and the undecideds are higher, which is the big story here. the WCAX report doesn’t give details, but their usual go-to polling firm is Maryland’s Research 2000. Last time, they used a sample size of 400, which was an extremely low sample size. Usually, 600 is considered minimum – with only 400, you’re looking at a whopping 5% margin of error. Short of having the data to look at (when I get it I’ll post something new), let’s just work through the WCAX report…

(UVM Political Scientist Garrison) Nelson says Pollina’s single digit number could be moving up; the poll was done before several endorsements, including one by the teachers’ union this week.

It’d be nice to think so, but we’re looking at four consecutive cycles of gubernatorial races where the recipient of union endorsements – in both two and three person races – seemed to receive no bump from such endorsements. If they had, we’d probably be looking at a different Governor by now. As such, I’d say looking for a bump is wishful thinking.

The incumbent has a 48 percent favorable rating, 43 percent unfavorable.

This is significant, and by all rights should be scary for Douglas. It continues a trend we saw vividly laid out in last year’s poll, and suggests that trend is accelerating. AT that earlier poll, Douglas’s re-elect numbers were in the low 40’s, but his positives were still in the 60’s. That right there represented a significant drop off from previous years, but now we see that the positives are giving way to inevitability and moving to match his re-elect numbers, rather than the other way around. Bad, bad news for Jim Douglas’s political future, at least in the long term.

Unfortunately, that erosion isn’t translating to approval for his opponents. Instead, its translating to the undecided column. SO where will those undecideds break? For that, we look to the favorable/unfavorables of his opponents:

Gaye Symington has a 37 percent favorable rating, 15 percent unfavorable, and 48 percent have no opinion.

Anthony Pollina has 41 percent favorability, with 33 percent unfavorable, and 26 percent had no opinion.

Symington and Pollina both have comparable approval numbers. Pollina’s are higher, but (presumably) within the margin of error. But his unfavorables are double Symington’s, and his “no opinion” is 22% lower. This tells us a couple things: one, that Symington’s name recognition is still lagging Pollina’s, and two that voters are more inclined to dislike him than Symington by a significant amount. Remember – if that discrepancy were only due to Pollina’s advantage in name recognition, you’d expect the favorables to show a similar spread, but their favorables are equal even given the recognition gap.

And this is the best news for Symington. It means that people likely aren’t feeling as negatively toward the legislature (and by extension Symington) as both the Douglas and Pollina camps keep insisting. It also means that if she can boost her name recognition, more of those undecideds will break her way than Pollina’s.

And Douglas needs to worry about something else – namely, breaking that 50% limit and keeping this out of the legislature, where long-frustrated Dems might well hand the election to their Speaker. All things being equal, one would expect many – probably most – of those undecideds to break Douglas’s way. But looking at this poll combined with the previous one suggests downward momentum for Douglas, which makes those undecideds a very shaky bet for him.

More as I get data…

I’m not exactly sure how or why, but I was invited to become a member of a daily polling group at the new political aggregate news site politicshome.com founded by a small group of British news professionals from places like the BBC and the Observer. The group is dubbed the “Online 100” and politicshome labels it:

…the 100 leading online voices in the United States…. The panel includes Arianna Huffington, Karl Rove, Joe Klein, Joe Trippi, Mike Allen, Mark Halperin, Mark Blumenthal, Dana Milbank, Jonah Goldberg, John Fund, Jake Tapper, Chuck Todd, Marc Ambinder and Andrew Sullivan.

Weird, huh? I figure the reason even Karl Rove is admitting that McCain’s ads have gone too far is because my good influence is rubbing off on him…

But I digress. The first Online100 question was something to the effect of “What do you think Obama’s biggest mistake to date has been?” (I’m hoping for a McCain question along the same lines any time now…). We had a very few multiple choice options, and my pick was with the majority – that he hadn’t been aggressive enough in response to Palin.

But my real answer wasn’t there. Obama’s biggest mistake – and it was a doozy – was his decision to choke off all support of 527 groups (the independent expenditure organizations that run issue ads during elections and are usually more bare knuckle in their attacks). Democratic activists and funders dutifully accommodated the Obama campaigns desire to consolidate any and all anti-McCain messaging under their direct control. It sounds like a good move from a management perspective, but if there’s one thing I’ve seen kill a campaign, it’s a dearth of diverse messaging and a lack of full engagement by constituent support groups. When such decisions become the sole purview of a tiny handful of people, the result is never good.

And that result? Well, we’ve all seen it, haven’t we? An Obama campaign slow on the uptake, that has allowed its lead in the polls to fall away quickly due to their non response to McCain and Palin. McCain has been doing nothing that shouldn’t have been expected – call it the Audacity of Audacity. It’s Roveism with McCain’s own flavor. Karl Rove has never been the genius he’s been made out to be. What he really is, is a sort of savant; he never really got the conventions and scruples of electoral politics, so he figured screw ’em. There was nothing too outrageous or revolting he would do, and with each dose of outrageous campaign slime, the Washington establishment would simply throw up their hands and be “shocked, shocked!” that he would do such a thing. They’d then figure that everyone would be so appalled by it all, that shame and remorse as well as a public backlash would keep him from descending into such slime again.

But Rove – the bull in the china shop – smashed all the china, which was of course what he was trying to do. Rather than step back from his success, he repeated it – over and over again. The Dems in DC continued to be shocked and incapable of responding through their shock, and so it went.

McCain is following the same playbook, but this time the slime he’s slinging isn’t even tethered to an intentionally skewed version of reality in order to grant it a fig leaf of moral justification. He’s just pulling it out of thin air. Funny that this simple (and logical) next iteration of Rovism is enough to cause even Karl himself to recoil a bit.

The point is, that there was a degree of ugliness that was inevitable that the campaign proper would not be equipped to respond to. But the Obama general election campaign was partially predicated on a sort of Gandhian approach; if we just step up honorably before the cameras and allow ourselves to be unjustly clubbed bloody before the eyes of the world, public sentiment will turn our way.

Maybe some day, but Obama had the timescale wrong. Eventually I believe voters will turn against that crap, but only after the level of egregiousness builds to a critical mass – which is going to take several election cycles, not simply a couple of news cycles.

So Obama cut some of his best tools off at the knees, unilaterally disarming before a candidate who will clearly stoop to anything.

And if you’re one of those devotees who believes that Obama is so unassailable, so perfect that any and all campaign criticism amounts to concern trolling (an ugly accusation when thrown against allies, designed to demand and enforce an ugly sort of groupthink), here’s the brainlock for you; the Obama campaign itself has realized its mistake.

(Obama makes no mistakes… but Obama is saying he made a mistake… and Obama makes no mistakes, so its not a mistake that Obama made a mistake… but Obama makes no mistakes… Norman, coordinate! Norman, coordinate!)

A few weeks ago, the Obama campaign reversed course and decided maybe the 527’s aren’t such a bad idea after all, all things considered. But building a 527 media machine from scratch takes time and money – neither of which magically appear at the drop of a hat.

So the greater Democratic power broker community has become as edgy as much of the activist community (aw – aint it nice when we all come together…?), and news is out today that they’re working to make something happen – and fast, given that we’re into the home stretch, and ground lost may or may not be easily made up. From TPM:

Several senior Democratic strategists unaffiliated with Obama’s campaign convened a private conference call late last week with at least four dozen of the party’s most prolific donors to progressive causes and outside groups — a call designed to instill a sense among donors that things are “pretty damn urgent” right now, one of the organizers of the call tells me.

The call is yet another sign that donors and outside operatives — who had earlier gotten the message from Obama that he doesn’t want such activity — now recognize that Team Obama is privately hoping for such efforts to gear up in earnest.

Now I’ve gotten a bit cynical in my old age (ya think?), and people, I know, are hard to un-set from their ways. If Obama wins this thing – and I still think he will – all the true believers will post their pontifications mocking and scoffing at all of us “concern trolls” who had the audacity to speak up and say “trouble” when we saw it. The Obama course correction will be retconned, not as a change of strategy during the heat of election season, but will be evangelically revealed by the unofficial prophets of the campaign to all have been part of the master plan all along, so everyone should return to their previously scheduled fealty (Note to NJ: not referring to you or your comment of the other day… this is different).

Ironically, in doing so, they’ll be shortchanging the Obama campaign on what – during the primary – was its strongest asset; its adaptability. Following a seamless, unwavering master plan is the polar opposite of adapting, and by denying any mistakes or bad choices from a campaign that had been quick on its feet to recover from them, they miss the real picture of what’s been going on.

Now lets be clear – Obama’s still on the right end of most of the metrics in this race – even if barely. And I stand by my video of last week where I told folks to calm down about Palin. By guess is that Palinmania is peaking, and the media pushback has begun. I suspect the entire McCain campaign has peaked. And I hope I’m right.

But the fact is, that campaign adaptability has not been on display in recent weeks, and the reason for the hints of an Obama resurgence have been McCain’s screw-ups, rather than Obama’s maneuvering. Obama has only started firing back himself, and if the campaign does go down, I believe it will be primarily because Obama made this doozy of a 527 mistake and took way too long to realize it was a mistake.

But let’s just all keep working to make sure it doesn’t come to that…

At long last, the Obama campaign has gotten serious about staunching the bleeding. Here’s an ad I can believe in…

For your consideration, a couple of case studies:

1. Democrat Howard Dean, who didn’t even seek an endorsement from the Vermont NEA in his prior elections, changed gears and went for the nod when his Progressive Party opponent in the 2000 Governor’s race, Anthony Pollina, decided to go for it himself. At the vote of the VTNEA’s political action interview committee, Pollina reportedly got a “favorable” designation, while Dean only managed a “neutral” vote, largely due to Dean’s high-profile battle with the NEA over the issue of a Statewide Teacher’s Contract, which he supported and the Union did not. when the recommendations came before the Vermont-NEA Board of Directors, Dean ended up with the endorsement. The Board of Directors voted an overwhelming 10-2 for Dean despite the recommendation, and many in the rank and file were furious – some taking to the press to demand the decision be reversed.

2. Despite a 100% pro-Union voting record at that point, Senate President Pro-Tem Peter Shumlin was passed over by the Vermont AFL-CIO for their endorsement, which was instead offered to his Progressive opponent in the Lieutenant Governor’s race: Anthony Pollina. The reasons cited for choosing Pollina, who had never had his rhetoric tested in office before, over long-time Senator Shumlin was that they preferred the candidate who had walked with them in picket lines and unabashedly promoted their ideals over the legislator who, despite up to that point ending up on their side virtually all the time in the legislative process, was considered to be someone who consistently had to be be cajoled and pressured into doing so. Both Progressive and AFL-CIO activists were then heard openly mocking the legislative leader for leaving the meeting he was obviously unwelcome at in a huff.

This is organized Labor’s dilemma in Vermont.

Each of the options in these examples presented a Hobson’s choice for an institution steadily losing clout in the state (and painfully aware of it). As Labor sees their influence chiseled away, it becomes even more important to demonstrate some electoral muscle in some of these big ticket races – and yet, when there is a lack of any choice that is clean and consequence-free, making those kind of endorsements – whether that means endorsing the Prog or the Dem – inevitably has a self-destructive flavor to it. In the final analysis, both choices can be losers, as both choices to some extent feed (and even accelerate) the downward spiral into marginalization.

Consider the environment. On the one side, there’s a Governor who is working steadily to undermine and marginalize Unions, and while he is occasionally stopped on some big ticket power grab, the truth is he has been steadily succeeding in his goal.

On the other side, here are two institutions – the Democratic and Progressive Parties – who both feel absolutely entitled to the unconditional support of organized Labor. And when they don’t get it, the contempt grows. And when that contempt spreads among those who should be allies, the very foundations of Labor’s political power starts to erode.

The calculus is no fun. Who to piss off? Each side (Ps & Ds) would offer you some basic, irrefutable math – and both would be right. Progressives would point to the fact that their caucus is 100% pro-Labor (which is true until and unless Dowland returns, who had a little bit of deviation, there…). 100% is a powerful number.

Democrats, of course, represent a wider political spread, and the Democratic caucus may be only, say 65-70% pro-Labor. But 100% of 6 legislators is…well, just 6. 65-70% of 100 legislators is – 65 or 70 legislators. That’s a lot more powerful number than 6. Especially when that 65 or 70 have a lot more say on the state pocketbook and legal code, due to their legislative status – and are therefore uniquely positioned as a potential bulwark against a hostile executive.

But the pressure is for Labor to throw in with one “side” or another, and increasingly they have – but generally, only inasmuch as individual Unions have given over to being pawns in the Prog-Dem battle. Dems tend to see Unions as natural allies, while Progs would rather see Unions as an arm of their movement. Dems, for example, are always trying to find ways to make room in their state Executive Committee, or on the Coordinated Campaign, or whatever, for Union “slots” or set-aside positions inviting Labor representation within the institutional infrastructure. Progs just assume they’re already there. Of course, the truth is that the number of legislators of either party who are or have been Union members is teensy-weensy.

High profile attempts by Progressive partisans to seize Union control have met with mixed success electorally, as well as in implementing that control after a successful coup. The Vermont NEA from 2000-2002 became the setting for an ugly behind the scenes partisan proxy war between the two, with the Dems gaining temporary advantage. On the other hand, Progressive stalwart Ed Stanak was able to take the reins of the Vermont State Employees Association, and as such there was never any question that the VSEA would support Pollina – even though there is no Union with more to lose from pissing off the majority party by easily and casually brushing off their Speaker of the House, who also happens to be the party leader most beloved by their caucus in decades. House Democrats will take the smackdown personally. A smackdown made all the more pointless by the fact that Anthony Pollina will likely not even break into double digits this election. As such, the endorsement is as much an exercise in electoral futility as any you’ll see anywhere in the nation (and that doesn’t do much for organizational clout either).

And here’s the irony: as whatever bonds of camaraderie that exist between the Democrats and a Union – any Union – are whittled away to nothing, the Union will come to depend not on a cooperative relationship to ensure Dems vote correctly on their issues, but on the innate pro-Labor ethic of each individual Democratic legislator. And its the supposed lack of any such innate pro-Labor ethic among Democrats that is the nominal reason given by Progressive partisans for Labor to abandon the Democrats. So that means – what? That by the same reasoning used to push Labor to abandon the Dems (the lack of a labor ethic), in doing so they’ll be left hanging their hopes on something that doesn’t exist (that selfsame ethic on an individual basis)? This contradiction alone should point out the built-in silliness of the dump-all-Dems argument.

But on the other hand, there is the obvious dilemma. On big ticket votes, the Dem caucus – always eager to avoid a fight – caves. A lot. And, what, Labor is just supposed to take it?

The perfect example is the god-awful two vote legislation for school budgets. An insulting idea clearly meant to institutionally hardwire a difficult hurdle to any hope of a clean and honorable process of local school budgetary approval. And yet, Senator Shumlin with a boost from folks like Senator Collins of Franklin County decided it needed to happen as a compromise – and Symington gave into the pressure to follow along. Under those circumstances, it’s hard to imagine her receiving the NEA endorsement in any way that will be easily or cleanly justifiable to the rank and file teachers. I know I’d be furious if I were one of those teachers getting that news.

So what to do? In these high profile P vs. D moments, such as Symington v Pollina, either option gains individual Unions pretty much nothing, as far as furthering their interests and power. And worse than that, both options clearly stand to further erode what standing they have left – and yet, doing nothing also courts a further marginalization. The fatalistic dynamics create all kinds of unproductive, even self-destructive flailings – such as the bizarre endorsement of Republican, anti-Union Douglas hack Michael Bertrand over Democrat Deb Markowitz (she whose office of the Secretary of State has pound-for-pound possibly the most abysmal Labor record in state government).

The solution?

Engage further. Go all in. Not on the safe terms offered by Democratic Party regulars, but on their own.

The fact is that Labor will always have to deal with Dems in some degree of partnership, so they should tell the most angry of Progressive Partisans that if they really support Unions as Unions and not just as would-be Progressive Party franchises, they should be able to see that, accept it, and get with the program. The Unions should be the drivers in the political process, not merely the vehicles for others with different institutional priorities. The truth is that ever since the Shumlin/Pollina episode laid out at the beginning of this diary, the Vermont AFL/CIO as an electoral/political force has been increasingly non-existent. Once an organization like that loses the appearence of independence and looks to be the subsidiary of another group, they become marginalized and – like it or not – that is precisely what has happened with the state AFL. The ratio of respect-to-eye rolling is way off with them, and to win back long lost ground, they need to start turning that impression around as soon as possible. The state needs the AFL-CIO to be a vital force again.

In the meantime, they should serve as a cautionary example for other Unions.

But that’s not to say that Labor should go back to being the institutional lady in waiting for all things Democrat.

Labor can play a huge role in the breaking open of the political cliques within the Democratic Party, and by doing so enhance their own standing, power, and start seeing legislative results. How? For one thing, some strategic non-endorsements might be nice. In the Bertrand-Markowitz example, just staying out of it entirely might’ve been more productive if done in an active, pointed way.

But the big thing Labor should do is get involved in Democratic primaries – by which I mean, create primaries.

The left-blogosphere’s mantra is “more and better Dems.” Or if you prefer Caoimhinn’s variant (as I do): “more and better – mostly better”. As much as a growing new media in Vermont could make this sort of transformation happen, Labor could have a much bigger effect. Again, it requires Union leadership to become less parochial in their approaches to either the Dems or the Progs, and instead become pragmatic. But the truth is, that such a change would only have to jump start in one major Union, and eventually – democracy being what it is – it would likely sweep over the others.

If Vermont’s Union leadership is not willing to look at elections and the election dynamics pragmatically, and instead would rather spend time dividing into Progs versus Dems… well, I suppose the time will come when rank and file will start asking of their elected leaders “which side are you on…”

UPDATE 3:38 PM: Right on cue, I’m forwarded the following.

Catamount Tavern News Service, Colchester, VT- On September 14th 2008 the Vermont AFL-CIO voted to endorse Progressive turned Independent Anthony Pollina in the 2008 race for governor. The vote was held at the annual Vermont AFL-CIO convention in Colchester.

Pollina on the previous day, delivered a rousing speech to the assembled union delegates which called on the expansion of workers rights and decried the policies of the Douglas administration. Democratic candidate Gay [sic] Symington and Republican Governor Jim Douglas also addressed the union members, but only Anthony (a farm organizer and generally considered a social-democrat), received a standing ovation and an endorsement.

Hurricane Ike from the International Space Station: