Press Herald Joins MSNBC's Wisconsin Meltdown

The online world has spent the last two days chortling over the silly reaction MSNBC’s election night commenters had to Scott Walker’s crushing victory in Tuesday night’s recall election. Video of crying talk show hosts and threats of indictments, along with a grotesque amount of online chatter from pro-union forces about actually killing Governor Walker, show a pretty substantial sore loser complex from the American Left. Maine’s #1 source for pro-labor left-wing chatter, the Portland Press Herald, has joined in the fray.

PPH reporter Steve Mistler wrote a ‘balanced’ piece today on the aftermath of the Wisconsin results. He quoted one academic who thinks the Walker win will affect other states. Then he quoted another academic who disagreed. Balanced so far, right?

Then Mistler went on to quote three Maine pro-union activists: Chris Quint of the Maine State Employees union, Matt Schlobolm of the Maine AFL/CIO, and Ben Grant of the Maine Democrat Party. How many anti-union activists did he speak with?

Just one- Governor LePage. Apparently ‘balance’ for Mistler means a 3 to 1 left to right ratio.
(UPDATE 12:58pm- Apparently our criticisms were noted. The PPH pulled a quote from GOP Senate candidate Rick Bennett to use in the story as well.)

This is the kind of reporting Mistler’s boss, left-wing financier and Democrat benefactor Donald Sussman, probably gets goose pimples over. But the editorial page takes it even further then Mistler’s plain-old biased reporting.

Today’s editorial is predictable: the Walker victory is a result of the outrageous growth of corporate money in politics. No mention of the extraordinary amount of time and money spent by labor and left-wing groups to get the recall initiated, or the fact that union households actually voted in greater numbers for Governor Walker despite months of thuggery and political intimidation. Just a silly lament over the end of democracy itself due to the waning influence of unions.

The real silliness comes with the conclusion of the PPH editors: that, when their guy loses, it means we need to reform the system. The same thing occurred when Paul LePage won the governor’s race in Maine. A conservative victory spawned talk of run-off elections, and even Eliot Cutler’s foolish attempt to get absentee ballots to be re-cast after they were submitted (which then-Secretary of State Matt Dunlap temporarily agreed to).

The Left in Maine, and across the country, can’t seem to accept the fact that the majority of Americans don’t buy into their state control, big labor union perspective. So when a democratic election makes that clear, they lash out and blame it on the rules, not the ideas. This, in the end, is great for conservatives, because it means the left will continue to make the same mistakes over and over again.

In the case of the Portland Press Herald, their transparent advocacy is costing them readers every day.