Winning Moscow to lose Europe – about Waterloo…

Poor Napoleon – we’ve blogged about how shocking it was for the French army to face the Russians, win the capital and then lose not just Russia but all of Europe ultimately.

UPDATE: I have to side with William Jacobson at Legal Insurrection  –vs Hot Air –  this is not Waterloo – this is more like Napoleon’s campaign to Moscow (and back) or Hitler’s campaign vs Stalingrad. Both were very ill advised….

There are similar threads on healthcare, but that’s not where I’m going in this post. Specifically, I’ve been watching the inverse relationship between union strength when it comes to their political connections and the support for unions with the general public.

Hot air has a link here about “Unions demoralized by losses under Democratic Washington“. Shockingly, the plunder they were expecting to receive in electing a democratic majority has only accelerated membership losses. (Bloomberg).

UPDATE: Hot Air has a video about it today….”The party’s just about over for unions”

UPDATE 2: Pajamas Media has a list of the protests in Europe over the inability of the states to continue meeting the continued demands of labor unions…not pretty.

Here, Forbes talks about how the bluest states are bleeding the reddest ink – largely due to unions having so much power in those states.

Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo by a combined English, German, Belgian, Dutch and Russian army. While Napoleon had won many battles – many of the battles won (according to Tolstoy) were simply because he was cheeky enough to reach for things in ways no one else had the boldness to attempt. Yes, a brilliant general – but he was beyond the pale in what he attempted & got away with. All but Britain at one point signed treaties of peace with Napoleon.

It’s possible to win Moscow, defeat the Belgians and the Austrians, set up puppet kings in Italy, and still lose at Waterloo – ending up, not like Alexander the Great, but exiled to a lonely island.

Napoleon entered Russia with 400,000 troops and managed to get back to France with 40,000. The unions won concessions in everything from the management of GM, to pushing a card check bill, to grid locking California, to being appointed to the deficit commission, to concessions on the Cadillac tax in the healthcare bill. The one thing they can’t win is more members – which could end up in losing the ultimate war. The battle to stay relevant and growing.

It is very similar to Google being big and powerful enough to start attracting FTC attention. Too many public victories with too few beneficiaries…it starts to add up.

UPDATE 2: Wow, this is the gift that keeps on giving from Hot Air. Officer and a Gentleman though? Give me Napoleon analogies any day over something involving Richard Gere

UPDATE:  After some reflection, I actually think that Napoleon’s march on Moscow is a much better analogy for healthcare/ObamaCare than Waterloo. Napoleon effectively lost Waterloo in Russia.  Obama might win the battle, he might take the city – but the damage to not just his place but the relevance of his party/movement could be permanant. How many more Moscows can they take?