Whether you are progressive or conservative reality should inform everything you say or do, but that is so often not the case in today’s hardened partisan politics. This morning we have conservative blogs running knee-jerk articles on election fraud in Wisconsin, from the Wall Street Journal to Ed Morrisey at Hot Air. This is to stir anger with their hard core reality denying base.

Walker’s overreach in Wisconsin is plain to anyone with a lick of sense, but the reasons behind it might be harder for some Progressives and some Conservatives to see, so let’s outline them*.

Walker misread public sentiment: while it’s clear that the average American doesn’t particularly love Unions, they hate the idea of no bargaining rights. With the cancellation of those Walker clearly overstepped and took out one of the checks and balances in our political system. That’s meddling with primal forces, and Walker just didn’t get it because he walked into the situation blinkered and blindered by the political mindset of the Republican 80’s: he wanted to be Reagan II, to oppose the public employee unions and ride that wave to become a national contender. Boy did he get it wrong.

Meanwhile the left is probably beginning to read too much into this initial victory: there are recalls to succeed in first, and if they take it as more of a sign than it is then they will garner the fail as well.

Moderates rule in the US, while one end of the political spectrum or the other might jerk us about for a short while, (see Prohibition, Welfare to Workfare, Roe v Wade, etc etc.) over time our course will be corrected. We will never have pure socialism, we will never have pure capitalism because moderates know that Mixed economies that enable both entrepreneur capitalism and social contracts are best for our future.

* Yes, I am completely being ‘master of the obvious’, but when you are trying to explain things to hardened political hacks, you always end up having to do just that.