Friday, November 13, 2015

Hillary Clinton Pandering for the Union Vote

Hillary Clinton has a brand new $30 billion "plan" to help retrain displaced coal minors should they lose their jobs to new EPA rules under Obama. How convenient for her, isn't it? Maybe her "plan" is good for another union endorsement — even though the election is a year away. But is she making promises she can't keep?

She's not a member of Congress any longer, so who will she get to propose the legislation for her? And still, it would take a majority in both the Republican House and the Republican Senate of Congress to get $30 billion allocated for her "plan". And we know how much the Republicans just love Hillary! I can see them now, tripping over each other to see to it that she gets whatever it is she wants.

And the damn lame stream media is making a big deal about this supposed "grand plan" — just to promote their favorite candidate, Hillary Clinton (of course). But if the coal miners ever go on strike, if anyone, who would it be marching in the picket line with them? Bernie Sanders.

The United Mine Workers of America has endorsed Democrat Jim Justice in the West Virginia gubernatorial campaign, saying that the famous coal billionaire knows more about the coal industry and miner issues than anyone else in the race. United Mine Workers President Cecil Roberts told MetroNews:

"Some people might think it's kind of unusual that we as a union would endorse somebody who's been in the coal business running coal mines most of his life," "But the thing we respect about Jim Justice is that he has never run away from a worker's right to belong to a union. That's hard to find anymore. I think it's just a political football. It's something that's a hot button that people can go out and flaunt the fact they got a right-to-work law passed. At the end of the day it's honestly to me like taking an aspirin for cancer. We have far, far deeper problems than whether or not we have a right-to-work law. I think it's a bush. I wouldn't be for it."

Also, the word is that the Service Employees International Union is likely to endorse Hillary Clinton next Tuesday, and would be Clinton's most important union endorsement yet. Additionally, with AFT, AFSCME, NEA and the other unions that have endorsed her, this now gives Hillary Clinton the lion-share of union support. So far, Bernie Sanders only as two: the National Nurses United and the American Postal Workers Union.

A SEIU local (501) in Oregon wrote a letter to the SEIU international urging its executive board against a primary endorsement, saying: "The most anti-labor sections of the big money interests in our society are backing candidates willing to go for the quick kill of unions in this country. The difference between the Republican candidates and Hillary is that she does not advocate for the quick kill. We do worry about the message it will send if SEIU backs the establishment candidate over a staunch labor ally in this primary. It will tell our true friends that SEIU won't have their backs when they stand up for us. Those who are less than friends also will get the message that we don't always stand up for our own values."

IMHO: If Richard Trumka (President of the AFL-CIO) and the very popular Senator Elizabeth Warren had come out with an early endorsement for Bernie Sanders, then other labor unions and other Democratic politicians/delegates may have followed suit — thereby increasing Bernie Sanders' so-called electability, and probably giving Bernie more credibility and better early polling results. But we have wimps leading our unions as corrupt politicos in Congress. The longshoremen and carpenters are backing Hillary! (I could see teachers and nurses, but the tuff guys?) And where in the hell are the Teamsters?

But just like members on Congress who always vote against their constituents wishes, it appears that the rank-and-file union members don't agree with their union leadership, and prefer Bernie Sanders. A labor group called Labor for Bernie e-mailed reporters a petition from AFSCME members asking the union to delay an endorsement: “An undemocratic decision at this time will only confirm what so many members already believe: that AFSCME is not an organization run by and for its members.”

So far the group has secured endorsements from two dozen union locals and federations, and it says it drew 17,000 union members to a September conference call with Sanders. “The rank-and-file members that I know are all voting for Bernie,” says Illinois mechanic Al Wagner, a member of the International Association of Machinists & Aerospace Workers (whose leadership endorsed Clinton).

Larry Hanley, president of the Amalgamated Transit Union, who joined a Labor for Bernie call, said neither he nor his union has made any endorsement. Larry Cohen, former president of the Communications Workers of America (CWA), also joined the Sanders campaign as a volunteer liaison to organized labor.

Other unions have held off on endorsements after Bernie Sanders' supporters pressured them. Members of the Massachusetts-based International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 2222, whose picket lines Sanders has supported, got their local union to endorse him and successfully lobbied the national union’s newly elected president not to endorse Clinton right away. He’s said IBEW plans not to endorse anyone until the new year at the earliest, if at all. Chris Shelton, CWA’s president, says he’s holding a binding poll, open to all members and closing in mid-December.

In other related news...

Wall Street Journal (Nov. 12) It seems that Obama previous big donors are not Ready for Hillary. Almost four-fifths of the people who gave the 2012 maximum of $5,000 to Obama's re-election committee hadn’t donated to a presidential candidate by October 1st. In interviews, donors said Hillary Clinton hadn’t motivated them to give the way the gave to Obama (and previous candidates) in the past. Robert Finnell, a lawyer who gave the maximum allowed contribution to Obama’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns — and who also gave significant sums to 2008 hopeful John Edwards , as well as the 2004 Democratic nominee John Kerry, said: "I’m just not ready for Hillary yet. It’s not that I don’t think she’s competent — she is competent — she’s just hard to like.”

Nina Turner changes her mind on Hillary Clinton, and now endorses Bernie Sanders for president.

Stay tuned to the debate tomorrow to see if Hillary agrees with Bernie's plan to expand Social Security by lifting the cap for Social Security taxes.

The Trump camp calls this a packed house for Trump .... but that's nothing compared to Sanders (or Hillary).... but Trump always claims to draw the largest crowds in interviews, but the damn media never corrects him!

8 comments:

  1. The Washington Post headline reads: "Bernie Sanders says Denmark is socialist. Forbes Magazine says it’s the most business-friendly country. Who’s right?"

    Then in the article they write: "When Bernie Sanders said in his debate with Hillary Clinton that Denmark was a socialist country, which the United States ought to consider emulating, it created a big debate..."

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2015/11/11/bernie-sanders-says-denmark-is-socialist-forbes-magazine-says-its-the-most-business-friendly-country-whos-right/

    But Bernie never said Denmark is a socialist country. He mentioned Denmark ONCE in the debate, and this is exactly what he said:

    "We’re gonna explain what democratic socialism is..." (And he talks about healthcare, etc.) "Those are some of the principles that I believe in, and I think we should look to countries like Denmark, like Sweden and Norway, and learn from what they have accomplished for their working people."

    Full text of debate here:
    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/14/us/politics/democratic-debate-transcript.html

    ========================

    Again, the New York Times:

    "Mrs. Clinton undercuts Mr. Sanders on his core political message, with 62 percent of Democratic primary voters saying she could bring about real change in Washington, compared with 51 percent for Mr. Sanders." (Doesn't that = 113%)

    "60 percent of Democrats also want their nominee to continue President Obama’s policies, and these voters support Mrs. Clinton over Mr. Sanders by about a 2-to-1 margin." (That has to be a whole lot of B.S.) "Her party’s primary voters expect Mrs. Clinton to be their eventual nominee by more than a 4-to-1 margin over Mr. Sanders." (That's because the media writes tripe like this.)

    "His chief indictment against Mrs. Clinton, that she is an establishment politician who is captive to big-money special interests and inconsistent on liberal priorities, simply has not persuaded many Democrats to abandon her."

    Any who, to be "fair and balanced", there's more B.S. here:
    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/13/us/politics/poll-shows-hillary-clinton-is-seen-as-more-likely-than-bernie-sanders-to-be-effective.html

    ===================

    The Washington Post:

    "The Real Clear Politics polling average -- shows that not much has changed recently. The Biden decision not to run boosted both Clinton and Sanders, to some extent, but Clinton's still got a large lead." But here's the problem for Bernie: "Clinton leads among whites by 13. She leads among non-white voters by 45." (Meaning, mostly African-Amercians.) "In 2008, black Democrats backed Barack Obama 82-15 over Clinton. Whites backed Clinton 55-39 -- a split that Sanders only wishes he had to deal with."

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/11/12/bernie-sanders-needs-much-more-traction-among-black-voters-than-hes-seeing/

    ==================

    Washington Post

    Obama's crony, David Axelrod, said of Bernie: “He has no chance if he doesn’t win Iowa. Even if he were to win New Hampshire, it could be written off as a home-state victory because he’s from across the border.” In 2008, Obama was trailing Clinton in early polls out of South Carolina. Obama wound up trouncing her there, thanks largely to a shift in sentiment among African Americans after he won in Iowa. (Bernie may not need to win Iowa, although he has a good chance, but he will still mostly likely need the Africa-American vote.)

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/for-bernie-sanders-more-urgency-than-ever-to-win-iowa/2015/11/12/f1ce7d00-8938-11e5-be39-0034bb576eee_story.html

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  2. The article at Reuters below was posted 2 days after mine, and makes some of the same comparisons I did by comparing the 2016 election to the 1948 election. I lot of good history if you like that sort of thing.

    Reuters: The real secret to Bernie Sanders’ success (Nov 12, 2015)
    http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2015/11/12/the-real-secret-to-bernie-sanders-success/

    My blog: Can Bernie Sanders pull off a Harry Truman on the GOP? (Nov 10, 2015)
    http://bud-meyers.blogspot.com/2015/11/can-bernie-sanders-can-pull-off-harry.html

    ================

    MSNBC: Can Bernie Sanders learn to let go?

    "There are probably better things a U.S. senator and presidential candidate could do with his time. But his staff only recently convinced Sanders to stop writing the Facebook posts himself, which he initially resisted. “Did it ever occur to you that I like writing Facebook posts?” was the senator’s brusk response when his communications director first broached the idea of delegating that particular task." (Great article. The man is a very dedicated worker.)

    http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/bernie-sanders-micromanager

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  3. you know Bud i have to call BULLSHIT! I'm so pissed, apparently CBS has decided to change the focus of the debate to foreign policy in the wake of the Paris Attacks,

    as horrible as that was, why in the hell do they get to choose to change the fucking debate? i SMell a godd maned RAT!

    HRC couldn't have planned this any better , un believable !!!

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    1. It's too bad the debates are limited to only 6 --- because the DNC is favoring Hillary --- because they know Bernie doesn't have the same long-term name recognition that Hillary has.

      It's too bad about tonight, because I "heard" that Bernie doesn't have as much experience as Hillary does on foreign policy (Hillary being the Secretary of State). But she did vote YES on the Iraq war. Then after 4,500 Americans died (not counting the wounded) she just said it was a "mistake".

      But I can't see spending 2 whole hours of the debate on that one topic. I guess we'll see.

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    2. An article at the Atlantic took issue with the fact that Bernie didn't have a page on foreign policy on his website until recently.

      http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/10/bernie-sanders-democrats-foreign-policy/410917/#article-comments

      Bernie's campaign website now has a page on foreign policy; but because the page wasn't there before doesn't mean he had no firm stand on these issues before -- the new page only reiterates what he's always believed in before. I suppose that now since the format has changed for the debate tonight to foreign policy, we'll see how he and Hillary differ.

      https://berniesanders.com/issues/war-and-peace/

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    3. Huffington Post: On Foreign Policy, Bernie Sanders Is the Democrat and Hillary Clinton Is a Republican

      http://www.huffingtonpost.com/h-a-goodman/on-foreign-policy-bernie-sanders-is-the-democrat-_b_8430036.html

      Delete
  4. I will no longer support government employees. SEUI endorsed Hillary.

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  5. The Politico Newsletter writes: SEIU took the occasion of its Tuesday executive board meeting to endorse Hillary Clinton. A few big national unions remain uncommitted to a presidential candidate - the Teamsters, UNITE Here, and UFCW most notably. But the unions that have endorsed Clinton represent about 9.5 million union members, or nearly two-thirds of the U.S.'s 14.6 million union workers. It's not too early to conclude that Sanders, endorsed only by National Nurses United and the American Postal Workers Union, has lost his institutional base--organized labor--to the Democratic establishment. He's also lost another institution: All but a handful of his Democratic colleagues in the Senate have endorsed Clinton.

    But what about the members? Are Washington-based union leaders, in choosing Clinton, ignoring the preferences of their rank and file? Groups like Labor for Bernie would say so, and after Tuesday's endorsement SEIU's Facebook page showed more dissent than support. But the union said its internal polling clearly favored Clinton. There's no way to verify that, because SEIU won't likely make the data public. But if Hillary was the clear favorite, SEIU's racial composition might explain why. Nearly half the union's members are people of color, and Clinton has consistently outpolled Sanders among African-Americans and Latinos.

    http://www.laborforbernie.org/

    https://www.facebook.com/SEIU

    Bernie Sanders' campaign responded to SEIU's endorsement with an email thanking his supporters among the membership, and he took a little shot at Hillary on Twitter. Responding to an SEIU tweet touting the activism of union member and nursing assistant Lakesia Collins, Sanders (or his campaign) replied on Twitter: "I want Lakesia to know I will never waver from the #FightFor15. Twelve dollars an hour is not a livable wage." In Saturday's Democratic debate Clinton reiterated her opposition to a $15 national wage, and repeated that she favored $12 instead.

    https://twitter.com/BernieSanders/status/666714023854022657

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