Wisconsin Vote Marks Crucial Shift in Public Mood

What happened in Wisconsin is a big deal, writes Peggy Noonan, even if the White House thinks otherwise. It's not about the logistics of politics—who spent what or which party did a better job of getting out the vote. It's about a "shift in political mood and assumption," she writes in the Wall Street Journal. Voters are finally righting a "public injustice" regarding public-employee unions and their too-powerful sway on workers and local governments, argues Noonan. This might be the beginning of the end of the "blue-state budgetary model."

Meaning that "down the road there will be fewer contracts in which you work for, say, 23 years for a city, then retire with full salary and free health care for the rest of your life—paid for by taxpayers who cannot afford such plans for themselves, and who sometimes have no pension at all," she writes. (The last half of the column is a withering attack on President Obama and what she sees as his failure to lead. He's starting to look doomed, she thinks. Sample: "He doesn't go to Wisconsin, where the fight is. He goes to Sarah Jessica Parker's place, where the money is.") Read the full column here. (More Wisconsin stories.)