New tone.

Via Weekly Standard:

Two days before the election, a crowd of 250 Democratic and union activists gathered to hear from Reverend Jackson and a host of left-wing leaders. The crowd applauded mightily when one union leader compared Scott Walker’s reforms to the attacks on 9/11. They rose to their feet when a local teachers union head screamed that Walker is a serial liar.

Larry Hanley, head of the Amalgamated Transit Union, speaking moments earlier, suggested that Walker’s reforms were like the attacks on America that took place on 9/11. “I want to just take a minute here and remind everybody about an event that happened here in the United States eleven years ago. We were attacked. Consider this in the context of what happened here in Wisconsin — and around the United States over the last two years: the attack on government workers.”

Public employees, Hanley complained, are no longer entitled to health care, pensions or bargaining. Their treatment, he said, has been “brutal.” […]

Hanley’s remarks came immediately after a short speech by Felesia Martin, a national co-chair of Obama for America, the president’s reelection campaign. “In this community, we have to hold our elected officials accountable,” Martin said. “And on June 5, we’re going to hold the biggest one accountable. No longer will we sit on the sidelines while they take away our civil rights, our workers rights and our voting rights. My people have gone too far and lost too much, to go back now.”

After the speech, TWS asked Martin about Hanley’s remarks comparing Walker’s budget reforms to the 9/11 attacks. “This is the great thing about our country,” she said. “We have freedom of speech. We’re able to say what we want to say, whether we agree with it or not. We have the right to say that.”