While it is great to see Democrats doing the right thing in Wisconsin and holding up the vote on this deplorable new law, my sympathy for the people of Wisconsin - and indeed for any other American state which gave Republicans power back last November - only goes so far.
The reason for this is simple. If you gave Republicans power back, you are getting exactly what you voted for. It's too late now to turn around and say "Feel sorry for us, the Republicans are doing horrible things!" Yes they are - but this is only what they promised to do.
Americans as a whole need to realize and admit to themselves, that Republicans are going to do what Republicans want to do. They don't care about public opinion; in Wisconsin they are still insisting their bill is what the public wants despite the protests and despite the people complaining in the very seat of legislative power. Republicans have their own world view, and there is no place in it for anything they find distasteful.
Obama is not a progressive. That has become clear. But the answer to Obama not being a good enough progressive Democrat is to wait for 2012 and find a better progressive Democrat to become president. The answer is not to "punish" Democrats as a whole by re-electing Republicans, because Republicans will punish those who elected them as readily as they will those who didn't elect them. Electing Republicans is like cutting off your nose to spite your face - since they lost power in the last general election, they have become increasingly hostile to the American people as a whole.
And worst of all are those people who didn't vote at all but still complain. For those people I have no sympathy whatsoever. It's your right in a democracy to vote, and really it should also be your duty. If you vote for the losing side, then at least you can stand up and say "I hate what these people are doing - they are certainly not doing it in my name, because I voted against them". Those who don't vote lose even that.
Americans as a collective need to acknowledge one thing: Voting for Republicans is going to get you this kind of legislation pushed through at a state level. Granted Wisconsin is the first to go this far, but other Republican-held states are salivating at the fact that if this passes, they can follow suit, and you can bet they will at the first opportunity. Republicans blame the unions (and almost everything else but the rich and their own policies) for the fact that America is in a desperate situation, and their solution is to destroy that which they have identified, albeit wrongly, as being to blame. They will do this whenever, wherever and however they can.
Let Wisconsin be a lesson to us all in 2012 - the path to repairing America comes in having a Democrat government under a progressive Democrat president. This is what everyone needs to be working for, not "punishing" Democrats by electing Republicans to positions they can do even more damage.