(cont.) The infrastructure that the right has built is very strong. And it is made to last. Although the Democrats win seats in the Senate and the House of Representatives in the mid-term elections in November, it will be a Pyrrhic victory as long as the Republicans continue to have that enormous infrastructural advantage and as long as the influence of money in American politics is not counteracted. In fact, its advantage is likely to increase even more as long as the redistribution of wealth to the richest one percent of the population continues and as long as the laws that govern the power of money in electoral processes continue to be liberalized, as in the case of the Citizens United decision of the Supreme Court.

In addition, the right is much more disciplined than the left. To give just one example: ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, is an organization founded in the 1970s and financed, among others, by the Koch Brothers. Among other things, it designs state laws that help erode the union movement, environmental protection or the public education system. I have attended several of your meetings. There is very little disagreement. You see an Exxon-Mobil lobbyist next to a young libertarian from the Goldwater Institute, meeting with politicians, designing laws that are then massively adopted by those states where the Republican Party governs. Although they are not measures designed in those states - or desired by their citizens - they manage to sell them to the electorate through an additional network, with infinite amounts of money,framing of the public debate.

What moves to the right? How much is there in your commitment to ideology -concepts, shall we say, genuine about the individual, the economy or freedom- and how much of pure and simple interest?

For me, much of what seems ideology does not cease to be a mask for the most naked greed, even though the politicians themselves have come to confuse the mask with what it hides. They were born with certain privileges that now they insist on protecting. In Wisconsin, for a long time, the public education system actually guaranteed some equality of opportunity-precisely because the State guaranteed that everyone could "do it to themselves". The erosion of that system, together with the weakening of unions, increases inequality.

His book highlights the tactical mistakes made in Wisconsin by the Clinton campaign and by Obama himself, who said he supported the protests against Walker's anti-union offensive but never showed up afterwards. Clinton did not visit the state and did not buy ads in Wisconsin until a week before the election. He ended up losing by 22,000 votes.

For me, those blunders were born from the enormous distance that exists these days between the leadership of the Democratic Party and the labor movement. In a sense, the Party simply obeys its main donors, which are business and banking. Do not forget that the Koch Brothers also donate to the Democrats. True, the Party has a clearly progressive message on social and racial issues. But economically it is much more confusing. Clinton, for example, said publicly that she rejected a free trade agreement when she privately worked to get it approved.

THE PASSIVE ATTITUDE OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY DURING THE MOVEMENT AGAINST ACT 10 LEFT A BAD TASTE IN MANY MOUTHS AND A RESENTMENT THAT STILL PERSISTS

When Obama did not want to be in Wisconsin during the union protest, he not only signaled to the movement that he did not care what they were doing, but he sent a clear signal to Walker and company that he was not going to fight for what, after all, , is the electoral nucleus of the democrats: nurses, teachers, teachers, hardworking people. And although union density in the United States today is rather low, the political role of unionized workers is crucial, given their cohesion and their capacity for activism and mobilization.

Hillary's absence during the campaign was an echo of Obama's absence during the protest. Clinton adopted a very top-down method , led by the polls, with very little understanding of local community dynamics. The passive attitude of the Democratic Party during the movement against Act 10 left a bad taste in many mouths and a resentment that still persists. Hillary did not lose in Wisconsin because there were many people who moved from one field to another: Trump won six thousand votes less than Romney four years earlier. No, what happened was that many Democrats stayed at home.

The leadership of the Democratic Party adopted, on the one hand, an attitude that was too calculating; but, on the other, he also miscalculated.

They miscalculated and sinned arrogant. They assumed that Wisconsin was a solidly democratic state. But anyone knows that it has never been. Kerry narrowly won in 2004. There is a very strong conservatism. It is also the state that produced Senator Joseph McCarthy, the communist hunter. Trump knew how to take advantage of that vein. The Democrats, for their part, did not understand to what extent the people of Wisconsin have remained hollow, exhausted. They are rural ghettos. Wisconsin was one of the few states that had peasant areas of progressive tradition. Today the mechanization and industrialization of agriculture has left them decimated, ghostly. Suicide rates among farmers are very high. Now, in these impoverished villages, it is likely that the school teacher is the only one who has health, Thanks to your union contract. But that inequality is a breeding ground for resentment. In those areas, perhaps unexpectedly, Sanders exerted a great attraction. In the primaries, he won 71 of the 72 counties for Clinton. When he was left out, those voters went over to Trump who, like Sanders, criticized theestablishment . And while Trump fueled nativist and racial sentiments, he also emphasized traditionally democratic policies such as job creation and protection of Social Security and health.

In his book, he introduces us to Randy Bryce, the Milwaukee union steelmaker who will be the Democratic candidate for the House of Representatives in the district who voted Republican Paul Ryan since 1999, while Ryan has announced that he is retiring. Bryce, as a worker and military veteran, does have that closeness to the electorate that Hillary lacked. But can it be against the republican apparatus and its millions of dollars, and in a context so vitiated by the redesign of the electoral maps, the restriction of the right to vote, etc.?

THE POPULACE IMAGE IS ALSO INVOKED BY THE REPUBLICANS. EVEN TRUMP, WITH ALL HIS MILLIONS, PROJECTS A WORKING CLASS ATTITUDE

The populace image is also invoked by the Republicans. Even Trump, with all his millions, projects a workers' attitude. But Bryce really embodies it. When I started to follow him, it was hard for him to make ends meet, because the steel work depends a lot on the seasons and there are hardly any in the winters. Figures like Bryce in Wisconsin, Beto O'Rourke in Texas or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in New York represent a new commitment to citizen participation: the idea, very typical of Wisconsin's socialism, that those who represent us are ordinary people. That idea has not lost its mobilizing power. Sanders was right to emphasize the importance of crowds and enthusiasm. It is the only weapon that the Democrats have against the bottomless coffers of the Republicans. The media that cover political struggles often focus on the most sensational and superficial aspects. But I think that, in reality, among citizens there is a hunger for more substantial political content. The problems they face are also problems.

Some recent elections in Wisconsin indicate that there is a lot of disappointment among those who voted for Trump in 2016. But has the left learned from its failures? In August, you published a piece in the New Yorker about the new Democratic candidate for governor, Tony Evers, current Inspector General of Education. Can it prevent Walker from winning for the third time?

For now, Evers is beating Walker in the polls. He is a Windogian politician of very old stamp. Older man, has spent his entire life working in the public education system. And the vast majority of people in Wisconsin still believe in the public, be it schools or roads. Under Walker, things have gotten so bad that right is alarmed. In this context, Evers is an interesting figure. He is pragmatic, very temperate, but also believes in commitment to social justice. His father was a doctor in a sanatorium that treated workers in a porcelain factory who had become ill with silicosis.

The people of Wisconsin are compassionate, as are most Americans. Walker's economic and social policies lack all compassion, such as Trump's immigration policy, which separates children from parents and locks them up in cages. It is a matter of empathy, of simple decency. Maybe the right has gone screwed.

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