WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Blue Civil War in the Nation’s Most Unionized State. “New York’s governor Andrew Cuomo has been one of the Democratic Party’s most visible fighters in the struggle against the entrenched interests of the blue social model. As the NY Times reports, he is taking on the public sector unions, and some of his most important allies are private sector unions. . . . Along with Chicago mayor Rahm Emmanuel, some leading democrats are realizing that the real fight in the future of American politics is not Republican vs. Democrat; it doesn’t have to be a partisan battle at all. It’s the old institutions that resist change, many of which are blue party stalwarts, the organizations that consume money rather than generate it, which argue and complain for a greater share of available resources instead of creating new funds — this is the epicenter of the new battleground, and it isn’t just Republicans who are joining the charge.”