Labor Day is no holiday for candidates. It’s a hook for a political message. In this video Barack Obama says he “stands up for working men and women” and promises a $1000 tax cut for “95% of workers and their families.”
Sound Bite: “It’s time you had a president who honors organized labor, who’s walked on picket lines, who doesn’t choke on the word ‘union.’ “
John Edwards has never met a union photo op he doesn’t love. Here, he makes a video supporting Houston’s city workers. Sound bite: “Y’know, a first-class city like Houston shouldn’t have second-class wages for their workers.”
The union video I’m looking forward to is Edwards’ scheduled appearance today at the entertainment writers’ strike rally in New York. Union members and stars, who could resist?
John Edwards picks up another union endorsement — this time from New Hampshire SEIU Local 1984. After some remarks about his support of the labor movement and growing the middle class, Edwards pans Hillary Clinton’s performance in the recent debate.
Sound Bite: “One of the things unfortuntely we saw last night was a lot of bobbing, weaving, triangulating, everything but being direct and open and straight, and I think the American people saw that.”
John Edwards pumps up the volume at a carpenters union rally in Las Vegas on October 20, 2007: Multinational corporations bad. Unions good. Rich people bad. Working middle-class Americans good. Trade Agreements bad. Protectionism good.
Edwards talks (yet again) about that damn mill closing when he was growing up in that small Southern town and also pledges, as President, that if Congress doesn’t pass universal healthcare by July 2009, “I will do everything in my power to take your healthcare away from you.” That bit of bluster revs up the carpenters. (At least he didn’t threaten to break legs.)
Sound Bite: “In the 1990s we didn’t get universal healthcare, which we needed. We got NAFTA, which we didn’t need.”
At a John Edwards rally in Nevada, carpenters union boss Douglas J. McCarron gives their man a rousing intro.
Sound Bite: “there’s an old saying amongst carpenters. That you measure twice and you cut once. Well, we’ve taken the measure of the candidates and we’ve made our cut.”
Gee, it has been at least a few days since we’ve had a YouTube video with a labor endorsement for John Edwards. Here are delegates from various SIEU locals in political convention motif (California casts its…).
Edwards once again calls for “true democracy in the workplace.” Hmm. No place I ever worked (or ran) was a democracy.
As John Edwards sought union endorsements at the Change to Win labor coalition meeting in Chicago, Elizabeth Edwards hung out with UAW workers walking a picket line at a General Motors metal fabrication plant in Wyoming, Michigan
Unions may be shrinking in size and influence in other quarters of society, but not in the Democratic primaries. Every other day, John Edwards is putting up another union lovefest on YouTube and then the other candidates try to prove their love.
Here is Bill Richardson, amazingly, calling for a tax incentive to be given to companies that unionize.
And it’s Friday, so it must be time for another Edwards union endorsement, this one from the Carpenters Union.
Sound bite: “I want to be the president who walks out onto the White House lawn and proudly — proudly — says the word ‘union’.”
He also talks about universal health care and says that “access to health care” and “affordable health care” are “weasel words.”
You’re a populist candidate in Chicago for an upcoming debate sponsored by the AFL-CIO. Let’s see . . . what to do? Nothing beats rolling up your sleeves, shouting through a bullhorn and walking a picket line.
And here’s the Edwards campaign’s tribute to organized labor that was prepared for the AFL-CIO debate.
Norma Rae, uh, I mean John Edwards extols the virtues of organized labor at a sheet metal workers union hall.
Sound Bite: “If we want to grow and strengthen the middle class in this country, an absolutely crucial piece of that is to grow the organized labor movement in America.”
Joe Biden uses his minutes on the Senate floor to suck up to unions. Sound bite: “Let there be no mistake — the unions and the middle class are under attack.”
