It’s disheartening that the recall in Wisconsin failed, but the most depressing thing I read all day is this, hands down: Charlie Pierce was in Wisconsin blogging the recall and interviewing voters at polling stations. Here’s part of a conversation he had with a guy who was a letter carrier for nearly 40 years (and thus a union member):

Eventually, I asked him why he was here, at the Serb Hall, supporting Scott Walker, whose politics were far more in tune with the people who are trying to strangle the postal service than they are with the people who still work there. Phil told me that it was about his sister-in-law. “The problem is that, when you start handing out free health care out to teachers, that annoys me to no end,” he said. “I never got free health care. My brother’s wife is a teacher and I once asked her, when I was getting my teeth worked on, what it cost her and she said, ‘Nothing.’ It should never get to that point where somebody’s getting free health care. Something’s way out of whack there.”

Jeebus. Here’s a retired union member who retired after his hours were cut to three days a week due to the USPS’s financial crisis, and he’s bitter about a benefits package his sister-in-law’s union managed to negotiate.

Now that’s a successful “Divide and Conquer” strategy.