Acting as the appointed Brietbart concern troll, CNN's Dana Loesch descended upon the Wisconsin Recall post-mortem panel to innocently inquire as to why it is that union dues and membership dropped ahead of the recall. In Loesch's world, those evil unions were punished by working people for spending their money on "Democrat candidates."

With feigned concern, Loesch asked why it is that 36 percent of union households voted for Walker in the recall election, and whether the steep decline in union membership after Walker's union-busting law went into effect could possibly be responsible for that, along with everything wrong in the world, and also "dispirited" someones, though I'm not entirely clear on who she thinks is dispirited.

Because you know, she's so concerned. And so genuine.

This question came toward the end of the panel, where participants had concluded that two major factors played into the recall. Harry Weisbren sums it up this way:

Two main points emerged during the discussion: that the power of Wall Street and the 1% to subvert our democracy by buying elections is getting exponentially worse, and that the Democratic party failed to understand the broader occupation-inspired movement growing in response to this dynamic.

And it was Harry himself who took Loesch out to the woodshed to set her straight. At just over 2 minutes in, he gives her the answer she's looking for to her question about whether ordinary people feel dispirited:

WEISBREN: I think the ability of the 1 percent billionaires to spread political propaganda - to have expensive television commercials - is an unparalleled power that we've never seen before. It is able to manipulate people to vote against their own interests and it's a specific plan to subvert democracy by making democratic discourse something you can literally buy.

This attitude that money is speech, that corporations can take over the voices of working families and drown them out is something that is shameful and I think the attitude that union dues are the same as checks from Wall Street is pathetic, frankly.

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