Democrats’ Slavish Devotion to Big Labor a Vote Loser?

Warner Todd Huston* | April 14, 2008

-By Warner Todd Huston

Jennifer Rubin over at Commentary Magazine has a rather interesting little piece on CM’s “Contentions Blog” that, if true, shows that the Democrat Party’s devotion to Big Labor isn’t really the winning strategy that they think it is.

After noting that the AFL-CIO announced that they were devoting 53 million dollars to attack John McCain during this election cycle, and after noting that the Barack “no special interest money” Obama doesn’t seem to mind this absurd outlay of cash, Rubin reports on a study that shows some bad news for unions and their lap dogs in the Democrat Party.

Now comes some evidence that Democrats do the bidding of Big Labor at their political peril. McLaughlin & Associates, a well-regarded GOP polling group, has conducted a survey for a business group, Coalition for a Democratic Workplace, in the battleground states of Minnesota, Colorado, and Maine. The results (according to the press release) show that large majorities of voters in Colorado (68%), Maine (72%), and Minnesota (65%) oppose the EFCA. Moreover, voters in Minnesota and Colorado would be less likely to support Democratic senate candidates who support the EFCA. (Specifically, a plurality of voters would be less likely to vote for Democratic Senate candidates Mark Udall (44%) and Al Franken (41%) if they support this legislation.) To boot, at least 80% of voters in all three states believe that secret ballot elections are the cornerstone of democracy and should be retained for union elections.

This is one more instance in which Democrats have confused the interests of union power brokers with the interests of working-class voters. Unions may want to do away with workplace democracy, but real workers do not. Similarly, teachers’ unions hate school choice measures, but working-class voters whose kids are trapped in underperforming public schools like them.

Of course, the fact that the excesses of union manipulation, corruption, and stupidity won’t slow down Big Labor’s iron grip over the Democrat Party any time soon, but, as Rubin notes these facts do lend Republicans with some clear strategy choices in the meantime.

Contributor's website: http://thenma.org/blogs/index.php/huston

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