Labor: Stick with Edwards!

From Tasini on Daily Kos:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/1/14/102622/766/777/436543

A Plea To Labor: Stick With John Edwards
by Tasini
Mon Jan 14, 2008 at 07:31:50 AM PST

I’ve been fielding calls over the past week or so from a variety of labor leaders and activists asking the question: what should labor do now in the Democratic nomination race? My answer is simple: if you care about the threat to workers from corporate power, labor has to stick with, and even increase its efforts for, John Edwards.

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I have watched the labor movement’s strategy over the past many elections. The movement has invested billions of dollars in electoral campaigns, usually with the end game coming down to electing Democrats but without really getting Democrats to commit to helping build the labor movement by taking on corporate power.

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At this moment, I have a sense that, rather than fundamentally shifting the debate, some labor leaders are falling back on bad habits, simply trying to guess based on evaluating the traditional media’s horse-race analysis who might end up winning the Democratic nomination so labor can be on the winning side. As many commentators have pointed out, the conventional wisdom has been wrong so far in this race, the number of delegates apportioned so far is miniscule and, as more voters focus on their primary races in larger states, at a time when the economy is taking an even more darker turn, they are as likely to grab on to a vision that is sharply-focused on harnessing the forces that control our economic future.

The attacks on John Edwards coming from the traditional media—-you know the ones, particularly those that claim that he is too "angry"—are very similar to the ones in tone and invective that organized labor endures every day. If you are a labor organizer or leader, you’ve likely been the target of attacks that tear down unions because they invoke an angry "class language" or that they are somehow represent "special interests" that want to get "more" for their members.

For the life of me, I can’t understand why organized labor isn’t running a mass advertising campaign, or holding huge rallies every day, saying that John Edwards is right and people have a right to be angry. That the reason jobs are leaving communities because of so-called "free trade" is not because people don’t want to exchange goods and services with other nations but because corporate special interests have made deals that protect capital and investment but savage communities everywhere. That the reason people are falling deeper into debt is because of corporate power and greed that, for example, created the mortgage debacle. That the reason 47 million people have no health care is because of corporate power and greed, not because of a lack of bi-partisanship.

Recently, I noted that Edwards was the only candidate who regularly invokes unions in his speeches; he does so unprompted by questions from the media. He’s been doing that actually for sometime.

Today, Paul Krugman notes this:

On the Democratic side, John Edwards, although never the front-runner, has been driving his party’s policy agenda. He’s done it again on economic stimulus: last month, before the economic consensus turned as negative as it now has, he proposed a stimulus package including aid to unemployed workers, aid to cash-strapped state and local governments, public investment in alternative energy, and other measures.

This is not new. Even The Wall Street Journal was forced to concede during the summer that Edwards was driving the debate in the Democratic race.

At this point, I don’t know if Edwards can break through the traditional media’s atrocious treatment of his campaign to win the nomination. I think he will keep battling—-and, for labor’s sake, he should. As others have pointed out, he could arrive at the Democratic convention in August with a chunk of delegates that could, aside from determining who the nominee might be, force a real debate on corporate power and block the usual advice from the Democratic party machine that the convention is a time and place to show a "moderate" face to prepare for the general election. I am convinced that a Democratic convention where John Edwards is either not the nominee or does not have a major block of delegates to control will gloss over the danger we face from corporate power.

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