For me, the most memorable moment from the Wisconsin protests was when Michael Moore stepped in front of the microphones and say America's Not Broke. Michael Moore? When did that become his responsibility?
That responsibility started at the top and then worked its way through the Legislative branch hoping someone would utter those words in any meaningful way. Didn't happen. So it was left up to people like Michael Moore.
That is why describing Wisconsin's protest as Walker waking a sleeping giant is false. The people were awake in 2008 when they put Democrats in charge. The left was supposed to protect them from things like union busting, privatization and fanatical deregulators. How pathetic it is then that the only options left for the Wisconsin lawmakers were to flee the state?
I think we should keep in mind however that "the people" are the bottom rung of all this. There is no one else to turn to. Protests like what we are seeing in Wisconsin are basically a cry for help to the Michael Moores of the world to stand with them against whatever power structure they're currently have trouble with. But what happens if peaceful protests don't work? What comes next? It's not pretty.
When Atrios recently said "I've really lost interest in defending organizations that are uninterested in defending themselves" he was talking about NPR but there are numerous incidents from the past two years that this statement could apply to. Some of these things are indefensable, especially those carried over from the Bush Administration. But a lot good stuff never got defended either, and good policy was dwarfed by bad politics.
However, Atrios' quite also reminded me of Obama's "I'm exhausted defending you" moment in the run up to the midterms. And it is exhausting. The reason it's so exhausting is we're not supposed to be defending them, they're supposed to be defending us. And in places like Wisconsin the Left seems to have failed.