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Jeff CrosbyWhat happened in Massachusetts? Democrats forgot the working class. |
Hey, Democrats, Remember Us? |
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| IUE-CWA Local 201 member Alex Reynoso protests a health benefit tax. |
“Jeff, you guys at the Union Hall aren’t listening to us! You’re talking out of both sides of your mouth. We’re fighting the benefits tax, and now you’re telling us to vote for someone who will tax our benefits! The guys here are voting for Scotty Brown.”
That was just one of the calls and e-mails that I received during the week before the Senate vote in Massachusetts. An AFSCME delegate to our labor council calculated the impact of the Obama tax on union plans and e-mailed us all to “Vote Brown!”
For a year and a half, we campaigned against the tax on our health care benefits. We trudged through neighboring New Hampshire with fliers explaining that Sen. John McCain wanted to fund health care expansion by a benefits tax.
Conservative members of my local Executive Board were adamant in saying the outcome of our health care campaign would be a tax on working people to extend coverage to poor people. Recognizing a classic Republican “wedge issue,” we argued that those without insurance include our own children. We could win a plan to tax the wealthiest and cut into the blood money of the health care profiteers.
Ultimately, we were wrong. In the last week of the Coakley campaign, the papers were full of the story: “Obama Supports “Cadillac Tax.” Sen. John Kerry cited an MIT economist who said the tax would increase wages for grateful working stiffs. I can usually figure out which chalkboard equation the classical economists are fondling: Absent merely life itself, they present a circular logic that proves itself. But the MIT argument escaped me.
We fought back hard. Coakley opposed the tax, but everyone figured she’d vote for it. The exemptions and improvements negotiated by AFL-CIO President Trumka and others were heroic—and they helped. We heard the outcome of the negotiations Thursday night. My local had a flier in the shop Friday afternoon, the last workday before the Tuesday election because of the King Holiday. Hardcore union activists gritted their teeth and hit the phones for 1,500 labor council calls.
Too late. Coakley won Lynn and Boston, but lost the union vote by 3 percent. At the polls, I ran into Tommy, a legendary IUE-CWA Local 201 activist who had been peeled off a scab’s windshield and arrested during a strike at the G.E. plant. Tommy’s retired. He told me:
I voted Republican once in my life, for Reagan the first time. He taxed my unemployment benefits and workers comp. Never again! But I ain’t voting for Coakley. I don’t want them to tax our benefits, and I don’t know about that government running my health care. I’m voting for the Libertarian.
There were other failures. A lousy campaign, a good candidate who lacked charisma. Everyman Scott Brown never mentioned he was a Republican. Arrogance from the Democratic Party, and we were asleep at the wheel, too. I didn’t even get the labor phone lists until Saturday. Six weeks earlier would have made a difference.
A year ago, the Democrats crowed that the Republicans were “irrelevant.” Today, the Republicans think the Democrats are mortally wounded. Both are wrong. In our non-ideological party landscape, in hard times whoever strikes the best pose of wounded underdog wins. The same anger that elected Obama was hijacked to elect Scott Brown: “We want change!”
This was a bread and butter election, not a “What’s the Matter With Kansas” election where social issues tipped working class voters against their economic interests. Only the right-wing fringe voted because Brown was against gay marriage and Coakley for it. Many working-class people who voted for Brown were voting for the blue-collar underdog against the Washington elite.
Obama’s support for the benefits tax exploded among union members just as our campaign against the tax was breaking through. The Boston Globe covered the union agreement on the tax—and on the same page carried a long article explaining that the excise tax would affect millions and was exactly the kind of “middle-class” tax that Obama had promised not to implement. This was the first time the health care campaign touched every union member personally, despite our previous efforts. And with so little time to explain it, it looked like the unions had left others to foot the bill; the improvements for all workers were lost in the final three-day push.
The tax wasn’t the only issue that demobilized Democratic support. A shrinking health care plan, Obama’s support for charter schools, the Afghanistan escalation, the Honduras coup, massive E-Verify firings of undocumented workers, the disappearance of the Employee Free Choice Act, criticisms from the black caucus for ignoring economic issues—all contributed. An angry black minister in Boston’s Mattapan neighborhood told Coakley campaigners: “We don’t know who she is. She never came here.” The weak stimulus was defended by the Goldman Sachs economic advisers who helped design the financialization fraud that brought us to the brink of a depression. How long can you live off the Lily Ledbetter Bill and the appointment of Labor Secretary Solis?
The “Kumbaya” of the Democrats wins them nothing. Months of touchy-feely from Democratic Sen. Max Baucus compromised away most of the health care reform features we wanted. Yet Democrats received further attacks from Republicans for their “partisanship”—and not a single Republican vote. If Obama supported waterboarding, the Republicans would attack him as “weak on terrorism” since he doesn’t support pulling the toenails of a suspect’s first born.
It’s as though Obama advisers crafted a systematic plan to unravel the president’s coalition. They succeeded.
There was no outpouring for a right-wing agenda in Massachusetts. Brown only received 50,000 votes more than McCain. But Coakley received 850,000 fewer votes than Obama. The Republican based remained energized. The Democratic base and independent supporters stayed home.
There are more difficult truths to consider. We need self-reflection, which is not our strength. Many local unions still can’t reach their members with a rapid, credible program. Public-sector workers are being stripped of benefits because we have been utterly unable to convince the citizenry that public-sector workers represent the public good. We are so happy to have a seat at the table that we ignore the meal being served.
Coakley spent time raising money from insurance lobbyists in Washington instead of campaigning in Mattapan because that’s the way the system works. Obama listened to an MIT economist instead of us—about our own benefit plans—because that’s often the way the Democratic Party works. Neo-liberalism reigns, money flows from and to those with power, and extremist free market ideas have permeated every corner of public life. Many national Democrats will conclude this election was lost because Democrats were—you guessed it—“too left.” The AFL-CIO election night polling shows they are wrong.
Would an aggressive labor-populist campaign have won this election? I think so. Of course, it’s hard to say. One thing is certain—you don’t build the kind of country we want by putting lipstick on a pig or by reconciling the irreconcilable. Whether the road ahead is hard or easy, we need to be blunt about the circumstances we face here in these United States, and let the chips fall where they may.
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The pundits will not believe that voters would go for Brown because the Dems don’t understand how to represent workers.
I am changing my voter registration back to unenrolled from the Dem that the NSLC convinced me to embrace over a decade ago.
Maybe it is time to work on the development of theLabor Party again.
While we’re mad at the Democrats, one job we have this fall is to defend the Democrats who have stood by us. My own Congressman, John Tierney, is one of those. He is being challenged by a right-wing birther whack-job. It would help if pro-labor populist Congressmen win big.
John always did know how to listen, after that first loss anyway, I will happily do some work on his campaign.
My US Rep’s office was very helpful the one time I needed help.
Does John Teirney still hold those meetings to keep in touch with what is going on for labor?
I am seriously tired of bending over every time we fight like the devil to get Dems elected.
I am darned tired, as an employee of the Commonwealth, of double digit increases in premiums and co-pays.
A lot of what you say is so true - but why did you ever back Martha Coakley to begin with? If you backed Capuano or probably Khazei, we would have a democrat in the US Senate. Coakley was such a poor choice and she didn’t have the experience or charisma of her opponents. Between your Union and Emily’s List, we lost the election because people didn’t stand back before supporting a candidate. We need qualified candidates, not ‘woman’ or one issue candidates.
Actually neither my own union or the North Shore Labor Council backed anyone in the primary. I do think Capuano was the better candidate. But Coakley did some good things as Attorney General, especially regarding wage law enforcement for building trades workers and also for undocumented workers. So there were reasons some union supported her. Could a better run campaign have won? Maybe. And we unions were asleep at the wheel too, for the most part. But those are more or less tactical problems. The bigger problem is the loss of the progressive coalition, including many union folks, who elected Obama. Obama’s support for the excise tax on health care benefit plans is just one critical example of why this has happened.
I agree, the Democrats for so long tried the DLC approach of imitating the Republicans. We the working people of America deserve better than the politics of “You think I’m bad, you should see the other guy.” And yes, let’s try again a Labor Party!
[This is an edited version, to fix typos,etc., of a previous "comment" made on an earlier article that appeared on this AFL-CIO blog.)
“The Working Class Has Spoken. Will Democrats Listen?”
Obviously not! The Democrats and Obama are now the ruling party to further looting the treasury and the destruction of the public services essential to working people. Everything “accomplished” in this first year of Obama has been to restore and expand the wealth of Wall Street, to rebuild the profits of Big Business, to transfer desperately needed social wealth to the military-industrial complex with more wars for more profits, to further the corrupt enrichment of “Health Care” corporations, etc. All this “recovery” of profit and wealth by the ruling elite from the the economy invariably impoverishes working people.
The more important question that must be asked now is this:
” The Working Class Has Spoken. Will ( AFL-CIO) President Trumka Listen?”
President Trumka has refused to listen to the delegates to the AFL-CIO in Pittsburgh in September that unanimously voted to support “single-payer” health care legislation. President Trumka has also refused to listen to the 500 plus union locals that voted for “single payer” Medicare-for-All. Mr. Trumka continues to support Obama’s “Health Care Reform”, with all it’s obvious faults, often posted on this AFL-CIO blog.
There are powerful steps that Mr. Trumka, the AFL-CIO leadership, and the leadership of organized labor could easily take, if they would just listen to the explicit demands of union members. Organized labor must also listen to the painful outcries and demands of millions of un-organized working people, not just organized “middle-class” workers, as all workers and their families are being impoverished and destroyed by Obama and the Democratic Party.
It is vitally important for “leaders” to “listen” and to think critically about what is being said. But most importantly, it is now time to ACT! Organized labor leadership must now SPEAK OUT NOW and to ORGANIZE NOW to promote the economic interests of all working people. In the process, the organized trade union movement membership will undoubtedly increase and trade unions will become the powerful instrument of working class power.
Here are some ACTIONS that the trade unions need to make, after listening and understanding, based on the needs of the working class today:
1. Announce that the AFL-CIO no longer supports Obama’s “Health Care Reform” in any form, and is supporting the legislation for “Medicare for All” single payer health care.
2. Announce that the AFL-CIO no longer supports neither Republican nor Democratic Parties, as both are consumed with corrupt corporate money and interests. Neither party represents the economic interests of working people, organized or unorganized. Both corporate controlled parties have betrayed the vital economic needs of all working people, organized and unorganized.
3. The AFL-CIO realizes now that the simple strategy of trade unionism, the economic struggle for a contract with an employer, is now an inadequate strategy to meeting the needs of organized workers.
4. The struggle for economic betterment of organized working people must now be greatly expanded into a political struggle. Social Security, Medicare, minimum wage legislation, OSHA mandated safety conditions, "Section 8" housing support programs, government backed retirement pensions, NLRB labor protections etc. are all now secured and protected through government legislation at federal, state and local levels of government.
5. Therefore, the AFL-CIO, along with other union organizations, under these dire economic and political conditions, is calling for a founding convention of a new political party dedicated to promoting the economic and social interests of all working people, organized and unorganized. The new party, refusing all corporate money and agendas, will involve millions of working people in democratic political struggle to secure the vital needs of the people.
6. The the economic and social needs of working people never find any expression in the corporate owned mass media nor even in the corporate controlled public media such as NPR and PBS. Thus we announce a new effort to secure a democratic expansion of mass media that gives a voice to the economic needs and social concerns of all working people. We demand “equal time” on mass media, with daily and weekly programing on weekdays and weekends. Working people desperately need easily accessible information and education to overcome the complete corporate suppression of working class perspectives on current affairs.
7. These steps above will complement and enhance the struggle of unions to organize workers and secure union contracts.
Whatever the working people dished out to Coakley, multiply that by ten in the Gubernatorial Race this November - unless we can draft Grace Ross to run as a Democrat against Patrick in September!
Chin up folks, no longer having to cut every back room deal in the book to maintain the super useless majority of 60 may free some thinking. Yeah, probably not.
Scott Brown won by the numbers, won with the same Populism that carried President Obama to office, the very same demographic of voters vaulted them both from underdog to hot dog. Make no mistake, they won as much due to brains, heart and guts as to using them at the right time. Both men deserve respect for fighting against what would appear to be inevitable odds. Go ahead and groan at that assessment, but few and far between are our own efforts to match.
It is painfully obvious that neither most Republican or most Democratic legislators have any sense, affiliation or kinship with working people beyond a campaign for votes. Brown for all his rhetoric in the campaign will actually fall in the center, he does have to run in MA again. There is no difference between “Conservative Democrat” and the “Moderate Republican.” They are the prototypical politician that organized labor constantly supports and for what? Any one remember the Employee Free Choice Act??? We sacrifice our ideals while the elected fall together in a country club hug fest.
A third party… A fourth and fifth, even…is the only way to have our voices heard. Labor will be best tended to when it cuts it’s tether from the stale harbor of centrist mediocrity and sails its own course.
Vinnie V.
We will never gain a Labor supporting party , as long as union leaders ignore all working people. How in the world are you going to organize unorganized workers or gain friends to our cause when you make deals to tax workers benefits , and make deals to delay taxing union workers benefits. How can that help? Workers benefits should never be taxed , and our union leaders should support this , and stand firm. It was just like the Democrats. One day they were for a public health plan and would vote for nothing else, and the next day they changed their minds , and wouldn’t support a public health plan. Talk about backbone and courage, I have not seen it. I’m sure our union building ancestors are turning over in their graves at seeing how our unions and political parties have deserted us.. It is no wonder our numbers have decreased so dramatically.
I still can’t understand voting for the Republican. What hope did he give to improve the lot of working people?
Some union members always vote Republican, for a variety of reasons. And probably this time some voted Republican who normally vote Democrat. But mostly I think a lot of union people and others who normally vote Democratic just stayed home.
Goodbye Democrats, Nice to Know You, GOODBYE!!
That is the new song being sung in 2010. I expect the Democrats to lose big in November.
I am a Union member, but I have not voted for a Democrat since corruption in Cuyahoga County Ohio was first exposed in 1998.
Most of the elected positions in Cuyahoga County Ohio are held by Democrats.
I expected the Democrats Nationally to be thieving, inept crooks like their Cuyahoga County Ohio counterparts.
This “Cadillac Tax” is proof of how they work. God forbid Nancy Pelosci make her rich friends pay a “Vanity Tax” for boob jobs and face lifts!
Corruption is a problem, yeah. The last 3 Democratic Speakers of the House in Masachusetts have been indicted for one thing or another (two conficted so far). But Bush’s crew looted and stole like there was no tomorrow. And unions have their own corruption. But Speaker Pelosi and the House, btw, did not propose the “Cadillac” tax on people like me who drive a Malibu. It was the 100 members of the House of Lords. Pelosi and the House passed a bill that would have taxed the wealthiest with a surcharge on the income tax. They got that part right.
Jeff really good article!!! from my viewpoint in Texas i can only say one thing, Obama made a serious strategic mistake taking on health care first. Had he worked on EFCA he would have been working on an issue that would have built hid base as opposed to destoying it as was revealed by what happened in Mass. i agree we need to NOT move to the center but we need to pick issues that the public can relate too and that won’t devide our base.