Labor 2008 Strategy Memo: Our Plan

Electoral Landscape

President Bush’s approval rating has reached a record low, and a record number of Americans think the country is on the wrong track. From the debilitating economic situation to the ongoing disaster in Iraq, it is clear that not only are the policies of the Bush administration a failure, they are deeply unpopular.

Even so, John McCain and Republicans in the U.S. Senate have chosen to run on the Bush policies, which has created an extremely favorable landscape for pro-labor candidates at both the presidential and senatorial level.

Our Challenge

With such a favorable electoral landscape, it would seem victory would be easily in our grasp. John McCain, however, is well aware of America’s distaste for President Bush’s policies. McCain knows he can’t run on his own record or on Bush's, so he's hoping to make this election a referendum on Obama.

Put simply, McCain's plan is to scare voters away from Obama by painting him as “Other.” To combat that effort, we have aggressively moved to provide accurate biographical information about Barack Obama to our members and stop these smears on his character.

At the Senate level, our challenge is even greater. During this past congressional session, every legislative priority of working families has been stymied or stopped by the minority in the Senate. To break this stranglehold on our priorities, we need to elect 60 senators who share our pro-worker agenda. As an example, there are currently 51 senators—a majority—who support the Employee Free Choice Act. Thus, to provide workers a free choice to join a union and bargain for a better life, we need to not only win the presidency, but we need to win nine more Senate seats. This is an almost unprecedented number of new Senate seats to win in one year, but we’ve identified 11 races that we believe we can win, and we’re going to do everything we can to make that happen.

Our Plan—Labor 2008

At the core of our Labor 2008 program is an intensive member-to-member communication program focused on our target universe of 3 million swing union voters. Through intensive polling, focus group work and message testing, we are able to identify and microtarget swing union voters in critical states with messages matched to their individual concerns.

We will communicate our core messages with these 3 million swing union voters in a multi-layered fashion, including direct mail, phone calls, worksite leafleting, e-mails and home visits. People like you are what make these communications streams so powerful and effective. Union members and union leaders have significant credibility on the issues, particularly those which affect America’s workers.

To give you a sense of the scale of our member-to-member communications stream, in the coming 55 days, the AFL-CIO will activate a network of over 250,000 volunteers in 24 targeted states to educate our members on the issues. As a part of this effort, we will:

Knock on 10 million doors.
Send 25 million pieces of mail.
Make 70 million phone calls.
Drop 20 million leaflets.
Activate our 4 million-person e-mail network.
None of this could happen without your commitment to our cause. As we have learned so painfully during elections in the past, every vote really does matter. By participating in Labor 2008, you can be certain that you will be speaking directly with critical voters about the issues they care about.

Our Messaging

With the steady erosion of the American middle class, our core message this election cycle involves drawing clear comparisons between the policies and positions of Barack Obama and John McCain on the economy. Obama is committed to building an economy that works for all, protecting workers’ rights and fighting for health care for all.

In 2007, Obama voted with working families 100 percent of the time in the Senate, whereas McCain voted with George Bush 95 percent of the time. The distinction couldn’t be clearer, and we can’t afford another four years of Bush-style governance.

In addition to educating union voters about Obama and McCain’s positions on economic issues, we are aggressively countering the smear campaign against Obama designed to paint him as somehow being “different” from the rest of us. We already have sent mail to hundreds of thousands of union members presenting the facts on Obama’s religious beliefs, his upbringing and more.

We will continue to fight these smears as necessary, but at its core, our messaging will aggressively make the case that Obama will provide a voice for all Americans.

Down-Ballot Races—510 additional races

Winning the presidency is not enough for working families. Barack Obama and Joe Biden are committed to helping America’s workers, but we know that we need more pro-worker politicians in every level of the government. Most critical is ensuring that we have 60 pro-worker votes in the U.S. Senate. Beyond that, we are focused on several hundred state-level races, including governor races and highly targeted legislative races where control of the state legislature hangs in the balance.

In total, we’re investing resources in 510 races this cycle, in addition to the presidential race. Broken down, this means we’re getting directly involved in 11 Senate races, 61 House races, 4 governor races and 434 state legislature races. Each of these races has been carefully selected and vetted to ensure that the candidates are committed to pro-worker policies and where the investment of our scarce time and resources will be most effective.

Protecting the Vote

Just as important as educating union members on the issues, we need to ensure that everyone who makes the effort to vote has their vote counted. We have all heard the stories of voter suppression over the years, and we have a multi-pronged effort under way to protect voters’ rights.

The key to protecting our vote is to start early and build relationships with boards of elections. From there, we work to ensure there are adequate voting machines in every location and that there are accessible early-vote locations in states that allow early voting.

Finally, we are helping boards of elections find and train more poll workers—and, yes, we are building a network of lawyers who will be available by phone to address any issues if they arise prior to, or even during, election day.