AFL-CIO: Labor will stand by Obama

Source: The Hill

Organized labor won't sit out President Obama's reelection campaign and let a Republican win the presidency, the AFL-CIO's political director said Wednesday.

* * *

"I don't think that the labor movement will be on the sidelines with President Obama," he said in a sit-down interview with The Hill Wednesday.

* * *
"I think our approach would be more toward investing our resources in races where there is a really pro-worker candidate and where there is a good opportunity to win," Podhorzer said, "and to basically stay on the sidelines for the candidates for the Democrats that you would put in the Lincoln category."

To that end, about a half-dozen Democratic incumbent senators or candidates — Podhorzer named Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) as an example — could expect the labor federation's support. Elizabeth Warren would also be a good candidate that could have labor support if she runs against Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.), according to Podhorzer. The AFL-CIO's involvement in House races is difficult to peg, he said, because of ongoing redistricting fights.


Read more: http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/177271-afl-cio-labor-will-stand-by-obama-

there are several unions that are going to sit out the 2012 convention in NC because of the hostility towards unions from Obama.

I was told it's because of the hostility towards unions from NC...a right-to-work state.

haters gotta hate, ya know.

Very few Washington Democrats do at this point.

Rp

And having labor sit out the 2012 election would have exactly that effect.

Never forget that.

They should spend their money on getting REAL Democrats elected in the House and Senate as well as state seats across the country. Get Pro-Union Democrats elected. Not Obama and his bullshit false "Shared Sacrifice" team.

Rp

Another conservative S C Judge? A Republican president? Then how much union support will you get? :shrug:

However you apologists think that everyone should just shut the fuck up and be taken for granted by an Administration that doesn't work for them at all.

Fuck that.

And here's how stupid your logic is. Say they work for and help elect more Democrats to the Senate, etc. THOSE Democrats are the ones that will vote on the SC judges. Obama votes on jack shit. Or don't you understand how that works. A Republican can put forth a crazy judicial candidate all day long but the Senate would have to vote them in.

Rp

...Which shows how the right wing took over in 2010.

And that ultimately still works in Democrats' favor considering many of these people even in House and Senate races would kill for the attention and money the Union support would give them. A Democratic Super Majority would be possible then.

If Obama feels the need to put forth a Republican agenda (which he has) and doesn't choose to support unions (which he hasn't) then he and his corporate buddies can go it alone. Let's devote our resources towards getting real Democrats elected.

Rp

either formally New Democrats or share that philosopy; or (b) New Democrats.

In Lieberman's primary, you had Lieberman and Lamont, who was only slightly to the left of Lieberman. The DNC put its then stars, Obama, Clinton, Schumer, etc. on Lieberman's side, attacking Lamont. Lamont won the primary, but was damaged. In the general, none of the Party stars fought for Lamont. The Republicans left their candidate twisting in the wind as well. Result: Lieberman was re-elected.

Spectre was another example--and he wasn't even our incumbent!

Traditional Democrats or populist Democrats have a very hard row to hoe.

I've posted on political boards and forums that allow both Republicans and Democrats; and I saw RWers posting those things about McCain's election (before he picked Palin) before I heard Lefties saying them.

not to mention a number of congressional republicans.

nobody is arguing for sitting out by the way, just declining to vote for obama and other sellout dems.

my lifetime.

1968 - election of Richard Nixon (Humphrey was primarily a casualty of the Johnson Administration's Vietnam policy, but left to himself, he was as liberal and progressive as they come)
1972 - election of Richard Nixon #2 (also against a genuinely liberal and progressive candidate; it was first time that the current and still active Dirty Tricks group managed to sabotage a campaign)
1980 - election of Ronald Reagan (victory #2 for the DT group)
1988 - election of Bush Senior (another genuinely liberal and progressive candidate; victory #3 for the DT group)
2000 - theft of the election by BushCo (against yet another genuinely liberal and progressive candidate, no matter how he was portrayed)
2004 - theft #2 by BushCo

The USA has gone backwards each time and is closer to medieval feudalistic serfdom (aka corporatism) now than it ever has been. I really don't think that we can survive another Republican President and I am not willing to take the chance.

Believe me, there is NO human being alive that will ever measure up to political perfection. They all have feet of clay. Many of us who were not Obama supporters from the outset tried to tell the True Believers that he needed more seasoning and now the TBs feel they've been sold a pig in a poke. Tough toenails!

Given the mess he inherited from the worst administration in US history, he's doing a lot better than I expected, although definitely not as well as I had hoped.

He will have my full & absolute support in 2012! I remember history and I know too well what is at stake.

in 1972 it was you centrists that sat out.

1980 anderson attracted mostly republicans and was not the margin of error anyway.

2000 Gore chose as his vp candidate and was the chairman of the dlc. His wife was head of a procensership group in the 80s and he repudiated national health insurance. The idea that he was progressive is extreme revisionism.

2004 had nothing to do with third parties at all. kerry just friggen lost.

who sat out the 1972 election.

You lost ALL credibility with me right there.

You know not one whit of the real history of those years. I was there - paying attention at the time - and I do.

thats a new one to me, and I was alive then too.

I proudly voted FOR George McGovern in 1972.

Please read what people actually write - not what you believe they write.

He was lying, but that's what he ran on, he had a plan to end the war. Sound familiar?

"Nixon's position and statements on Vietnam were studiously ambiguous. He promised new leadership that "will end the war and win the peace." He asserted that the "war must be ended. It must be ended honorably." Although he referred to a plan, Nixon, as Page and Brody argue, "refused to explain how he would end the war on the grounds that an explanation might interfere with the efforts of the Johnson administration to achieve a settlement or would weaken his own bargaining position if he became President" (Benjamin Page and Richard Brody, "Policy Voting and the Electoral Process: The Vietnam War Issue," American Political Science Review,1972 (66), p. 987)."

http://faculty.smu.edu/dsimon/change-viet3b.html

It is past time now for the AFL-CIO to say no to political parties including the Dems. If local members want to mobilize for a candidate, fine, but at the national level the AFL-CIO should concentrate on collective bargaining issues and job creation. Not one penny should go to political candidates. Instead, let the unions invest in job creating infrastructure projects and organizing the unorganized.
Labor needs some new strategies. Politics isn't doing it for us now. They only take our money and sell us out. Obama is a prime example. Screw them all.
Create a powerful and effective labor movement in the USA and the politicians will be vying to sign on to labor's agenda.

As annoyed as I am with President Obama...

Withdrawing all support for national candidates is tantamount to suggesting a bullet to the brain as a cure for cancer. Throwing support behind strong pro-labor democrats is a good idea and there are those Democrats that remain loyal to labor and pulling support from them would be stupid.

There are a few things you posted that make me curious and make me wonder who much you know about labor. "Instead, let the unions invest in job creating infrastructure projects..." I am sort of confused by that statement. It sounds like the sort of thing a typical Democratic voter would want from a Democratic political candidate.

This minsunderstanding is very curious to me. How exactly do you think labor invests in 'job creating infrastructure projects'?

Here is the link about the infrastructure idea...I didn't make it up:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/16/us/politics/16infrastructure.html

The fact is that it is the mission of Labor movement to raise the value of labor. Instead, it has become the servant of the political forces and has lost it's way and forgotten it's mission. It is past time now to get back to the basics.


I don't like the tone of your comment, my friend. You sound like what I like to call a professional Democrat who often doesn't see that the Labor Movement is not a political party and is not indebted to any political system. It is a worldwide movement and is the basis of class struggle everywhere.
Political parties cannot be trusted in the long run. We need to stick to our principles and support those who support us to the extent we can without selling out the Movement to the highest bidder with the biggest promises.
The resources of the labor movement would be better spent on projects that create jobs...good union jobs and worker owned and operated businesses and not one more damn dime for any political party.

But you are now conflating the issue and slapping on an ad hominem argument to boot.

The Infrastructure bank recommended is still federally funded and not a creation of the unions. If you believe that the various labor unions out there just happen to have 650 billion dollars laying around that they can apply to this than you don't know as much as you pretend to about organized labor, or you have been suckered into believing that the labor movement has as much money to throw around as big business (we don't!)

I am very, VERY active in labor causes in my area and aside from agitating from the left as much as possible I am also a union steward, so I happen to know all angles of this.

I find your comments to misunderstand the way labor functions. I don't know what your game is. I can't pretend to know, but you are either uninformed and just spouting off at the mouth or you are deliberately tossing off misinformation in a crude attempt to kill the labor vote for democratic candidates.

If you are the former, I would love to continue discussing this with you, if you are the later then please get teh hell off of this board.

Now that you have identified yourself as a fellow union member, I will address you as Brother....and since you feel you must bring your union credentials into this discussion, I will add that I am a retired labor leader and was a job steward at CWA for over 25 years. You may argue the positions I take on issues, but lets not try to one-up each other on who knows what the Labor Movement is all about.
I am well aware of the nature of the infrastructure bank program I cited. It is an innovative idea and could lead to something better.
The fact is that the Labor is the biggest single contributer to the Democratic Party. Millions of dollars are contributed each year on a national basis. That should stop, in my opinion. Walk precincts, man phone banks, yes. But no more dollars from the unions at the national level. Local unions should do as they please.
I don't want to kill the labor vote for Dem candidates, just the union financial contributions. I don't see that our money buys us anything anyway accept that the politicians pander to our leaders at election time and ignore our issues the rest of the year. Let's put a stop to that.
The millions of dollars now spent on party politics would be much better spent as seed money for investment programs that create good union jobs. That would go a long way and is not unprecedented. There have been projects over the years seeded by union dollars and there should be more of them.
Time to think out of the box, Brother, and find ways to make the Labor Movement more relative to peoples lives than just giving to political parties.

Unions and others who want to fight the statue quo have to decide if they are going to try to compete with corporate lobbyists for the hearts and minds of those in control of our laws, or try to go it alone. Really tough choice.

He might not find the NEA to be working with him much.

already endorsed the President: NEA delegates vote to support President Barack Obama in re-election bid

Spend the money on lower level elections State level as well as House/Senate elections supporting only PRO-UNION Democrats. You know, REAL Democrats. Rather than Mr. False Shared Sacrifice.

And AFT too.

for decades already. It was rethugs who wanted vouchers which was the first shot at education. It was also the rethugs who introduced NCLB. They are not stupid they understand clearly that in this election an action against Obama for president is a vote for the rethugs. All unions will come to this conclusion sooner or later. It hasn't been that long ago that union members failed to listen to their leaders and voted for raygun - look what they got.

I want to know who the union wants us to support specifically because they are more aware of the records of these candidates than most of us are.

I know ALOT of teachers. They are EXTEREMLY conflicted right now. They know everything you just laid out. They are also tired as shit of arguing with Duncan. They are STILL pissed about Rhode Island. But the dichotomy of the next presidential election has them absolutely pissed off.

so well on the other side they should all be looking for a new profession. The gop has decided the universal public education is something America can do without and they are well on their way to accomplishing that goal.

President revitalized the NLRB, resulting in major victories, and paved the way for the largest federal union organizing effort in history.

NLRB Rule: A Positive Step forward for all Workers

NLRB Orders Reinstatement Of Santa Barbara News-Press Journalists

Board Orders a Repeat of a California Union Election

Expect the RW/media attacks to intensify.

of them have infiltrated DU.

Thanks for this post and for the links, ProSense!

If the answer is Obama, then why support him?

They know that there is no alternative for us.

Fine. Hope he wins rather than any Repug (easy statement).

Now, to work on other ways to bring about our agenda.

But he's better than the alternative. We should however be looking for 2016. I don't see anyone on the horizon and Biden I don't think could get the nomination. That's where I see plenty of trouble ahead.

if they sit out there could be GOP control at all areas of government, like Wisconsin where people sat buy and the unions got decimated by Walker and the Fitzgerald brothers.

"where people sat by"....? Who sat by? The hundreds of thousands protesting at the capital? No, the White House sat by, not us. I'll happily vote for a pro-labor Democrat for president when I see one.

Edited for spelling.

There needs to be a transformation of our unions from below. Giving our union dues to Democrats instead of putting them into strike funds has been a disastrous policy. Dems are too weak to support us and our unions are too weak to sustain long strikes for their members. Just disastrous.

"There's no question that the Obama administration has done many things that have helped working people and that have been positive for the labor movement," Podhorzer said. "But on the other hand, this is the Democratic Party; it was elected on a platform to do much, much, much, much more."

almost $120,000 office job with the AFL-CIO? He has as much in common with ordinary working people as Jeffrey Immelt.

http://www.unionfacts.com/employee/AFL-CIO/Michael/Podhorzer

I wonder how the rank and file are feeling, that's who votes.

We have to come to terms with the indisputable fact that private sector union membership has declined to under 7% - and there has been plenty of D complicity in the legislative branch that has contributed to that.

It's not about supporting Republicans. It's about realizing that the Ds are not going to "save" us and putting our energies towards mobilizations in other arenas.

I'm sure our leadership is not there yet and you don't have to worry...we'll have the same tired old refrain of "lesser of two evils" from them this election.

I have no hope of anything else.

But it's a death march. Slower than having your head chopped off, but you're still dead in the end. And by the end, you're so weak you can't even put up any sort of fight - that's where we're going, if we're not, as I suspect, already there.

I have no hope.

I'll never pull a lever for a R, but I won't be knocking any doors or making any phone calls of my own volition this go-round.

we all knew this

so he doesn't get union cooties on him.