Will The Wisconsin Fourteen Come Home?

The WSJ is reporting that state Democrats in the Wisconsin Senate are signaling their willingness to come home, but there's a lot of pushback reports that the Dems aren't going anywhere.

Wisconsin state Senate Democrats, who have fled the state in order to block budget quorum on Gov. Scott Walker's anti-public employee union proposals, are walking back reports in the Wall Street Journal that they plan to return to the state.

"We are now looking at returning to the state capitol and requiring the senators to take a vote and have them declare who they're with -- the workers or the governor," Minority Leader Mark Miller told the Journal.

A return to Wisconsin at this juncture would appear to give the green light for Walker's legislation to pass -- that is, a win for Walker's efforts to pass legislation when numerous polls show the state disapproving of Walker, and saying he should compromise. However, at this juncture it is unclear just what is going on.

In response, Miller spokesman Mike Browne released this statement, saying only that they were continuing to negotiate towards an outcome that does not strip the bargaining rights of state workers.

If this is true, and the Wisconsin 14 fold now, they will have pretty much lost everything.  That would mean a total and complete win for Gov. Scott Walker, at least in the short term, but in politics, that's all that matters these days.

It's still possible that Wisconsin Senate Republicans will side with the Dems, seeing the nasty poll numbers signaling a majority of the state's voters are against Walker's brutal plan.  My problem is that if Democrats are worried about Walker's layoff threats, he's going to lay off every single one of those workers anyway as part of his "budget negotiations" anyhow.  The Democrats gain nothing by giving up now.

I hope they understand that.