Oh no!! They're threatening to stay home in November! No, no, whatever you do, don't stop voting for the Democrats!

Really, how sad. Once upon a time, labor unions used to organize workers and if they were "thrown under the bus," they went on strike. These days all that unions do is give money to politicians and organize voter registration drives... maybe it's time to go back to the roots? How about a general strike guys?

The labor unions should not sit on their hands. Unfortunately, just staying at home will only defeat their cause. However, the Dems are NOT supporting labor issues adequately.

As an alternative to just sitting on the sides lines, the labor unions should consider starting a third party movement. One of the arguments against third parties is that they would have no presence on a federal level. Well unions are one of the few organizations that reach into all 50 states and have enough support to consider a starting a third party with federal effectiveness. In areas where the Democrat DOES support labor issues, the labor party could just endorse that candidate.

This is something most progressives would get behind as money is the ultimate progressive issue. Also, this would really place the Democrats in the center right on the political continuum, where they really belong.

Also, just think how the GOPers and Tea Partyers would really wig out when confront with the REAL left and ideas with a true whiff of socialism.

Ultimately, the European union movement did lead to socialism in the guise of both social democrats AND the minority of a minority, the tyrannical Communists. The bogeyman the GOPers use to scare the Democrats and Obama into toeing the line.

Gerard, the leader of the steelworkers union, who praises Speaker Nancy Pelosi...

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Pelosi deserves no praise.

Take a couple steps back Mr. Gerard and you'll see that by not holding the criminals in the Bush administration accountable Pelosi has contributed more than practically anybody else to the now total state of criminality that is our government.

In an alternate universe Speaker Pelosi held impeachment hearings and Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld have not only been found guilty of crimes against humanity but the Republican party has been flushed out of existence.

In this other universe the rule of law has been restored. Government once again draws its power from 'We the People' having been drained from moneyed interests. As a result, unions are flourishing.

Pelosi, of our universe, however, chose instead to help cement an all powerful unitary executive providing cover to war criminals and their wealthy banker buddies. Madame Speaker effectively drove a sledge hammer through the foundation of our republic ensuring it'll never work fairly again.

With corporations firmly in control, and rule of law now a silly notion, laborers never had a chance.

A few steps back, Mr. Gerard.

Who else was absent from that 52 vote set?

How did the Lieberboy vote or did he vote? I'm too lazy to check. Labor and the Clintons supported Independent, Party of One Lieberman against the Democratic candidate, Ned Lamont, by ignoring Lamont. It may not have been the Labor leadership, but it certainly was the rank and file. The boneheaded working class of Connecticut served the interests of the self-serving Lieberman by voting for him, thinking they were serving their own, by putting him back in office. What goes around, comes around.

As the US gets sucked deeper and deeper into the toilet of history's failed empires, the voters keep putting the same failed legislators and old party hacks back into office. Start thinking third party folks.

Barakus Obombus, you need to listen to and heed the message in this article.

AD

Why stay home when you could vote Green -- or maybe socialist, or other third party or independent?

We voted for CHANGE. How can we let the Nelsons, the Leibermans et al. sabotage that change? We won the elections with the hard work of the unions and progressives. But our energy goes into appeasing the NO people and begging them to be BIPARTISAN. Please get on with a progressive agenda.

A U.S. Labor Party!! YES!!!

Let's connect the dots here. The Senate vote was 52 in favor, but those 52 represent more than 58 percent of the American public.

I have a list of senators that assigns a number of congressional districts to each senator. To understand the representation of a given Senate roll call, I total the congressional district representation numbers, and then divide that total by the number of congressional districts (435). The Democrats represent about 62 percent of the American people with their 59 members—269 congressional districts. But the conservative Dems all come from relatively small states, so the 51 senators who have shown some support for a robust public option constitute 58 percent of the American population. The same is true, roughly, with this 52. (I assume there were no Republicans among the 52.)

The nine most conservative Democratic Party senators represent less than two congressional districts each, when averaged out:

Bayh D-IN 4.5
Begich D-AK .5
Conrad D-ND .5
Landrieu D-LA 3.5
Lieberman ID-CT 2.5
Lincoln, D-AR 2
Nelson, Ben D-NE 1.5
Pryor D-AR 2

Total Congressional Districts 17

To connect the dots, we need to recognize that besides having the best members of Congress that big money can buy, the Senate is so disproportional that it fails to be representative of the American people. A senator from California represents 26.5 congressional districts, each of which has about 700,000 human beings in it (18.5 million). A senator from Wyoming represents less than one half of a congressional district. Way less in fact. About 250,000 human beings. It doesn't cost that much to buy a small-state senator, especially when many small states are already quite conservative.

In my state of Washington, senate districts are all roughly the same size. I suspect this is true in all states. We need to fix or replace the Constitution to remedy such idiocy by connecting the dots between minority rule by the rich to a flawed national constitution.

The unions are indeed in trouble, but the union leadership would rather "stay home" than to send a real message of willpower. There is no good reason for the unions to continue to make appeals to the blatantly corrupt dumbocrats.

Vote GREEN, you dumb asses!

Or, are you only as phony as the corrupt system you suppport?

Vote Green Party so we can begin to have a people's party.

The Dems & Repubs sold us out long ago.

This anti Union screed is reprehensible it does not even attain the level of Teabag mentality.

The Unions get zilch but they are being greedy, for wanting to organize and not have their hard won benefits taxed?

In 2011, Mr. Obamageddon will change party affiliation to Republican.

My prediction.

The Democrats are the piss that "sets" the cloth

The Romans built dye shops with vats outside that served as free public toilets. Not only did they act as your basic "rest area" for passersby, but the urine was used to "set" cloth that had been recently dyed - the same way that vinegar is sometimes used today with natural dyes.

So too the Democratic Party. Since FDR, the move of the Democratic Party toward Social Democracy was stillborn; a casualty of McCarthyism which was as much a Democratic Party invention as it was anyone else's. The old coalition, such as it was, essentially fell apart under Kennedy and LBJ. Since Nixon, the "modern" form of the two party system has emerged.

Each Republican president dyes the political fabric a deeper shade of reactionary brown, and each succeeding Democratic president pisses on the new shade to set the color. Thus with Carter, Clinton, and now, Obama.

All of it is maintained through the ambiguity of middle-classdom and the rest, but people can be forgiven for thinking that the shirts are increasingly brown, all talk not withstanding, and that the whole scheme reeks of piss.

Of course the Romans used various scents to mask the process. Our assholes call it the smell of success and don't even bother with perfumes.

__________________________________

There is an economic depression in the United States and there is a shortfall of twenty million jobs. To address that there is a TARP of roughly a trillion bucks, a stimulus of roughly a trillion bucks, a budget deficit of roughly a trillion bucks, and cash outlays from the Fed, FDIC and others that amount to another three trillion bucks... that is all in a year... and at the end of that, there are still gonna be twenty million to twenty five million people without a job.

Yet, any twelve year old can fix the problem. How? Give twenty million people jobs. Do it tomorrow and figure out later what they will do. Pay them $50,000 a year and that is only 1 trillion dollars total. Problem solved.

But wait, those are "fake jobs". What about "real jobs"?

Well, stimulus jobs are "fake jobs" too. But, don't make them fake jobs. Make them real jobs. Let those twenty million make stuff... food and trains and paintings and mocha lattes. So what if they don't make a profit. Subsidize it. The whole thing is subsidized now.

But those twenty million have no capital. Where do we get the means to make stuff?

Confiscate it. Start by taking the idle mills, mines, land that produces nothing today. If ya wanna be "moderate", give the "owners" a few bucks in "rent". It's better than what they get today. And have the banks lend the rest.

But the banks won't lend to such "unprofitable enterprises". How do we get them to finance it?

We take the banks too. The state has already paid for them twice over.

But, but, but... $50,000 a year is too much. That is close to the median income. If you hire twenty million people another 40 million will quit to take the new jobs. What do you do then?

Hire the 40 million. Let them make or do what they were doing before.... or maybe let them do something better. Let people get their own damn Whopper if they gotta have it.

But, that will be inefficient, won't it?

In fact it is a matter of degrees. Too inefficient to survive in the private market? Maybe. More inefficient than wiping out all of American economic growth since the mid 1970s in one big depression? Not a chance.

But, that's all pie in the sky. The major political parties will never go for that and the people with money will never allow it.

Well then, we've identified the actual political problem, haven't we?

The biggest mistake the American labor movement ever made was to align itself with the Democratic Party (the Teamsters endorsing Reagen aside, which turned out to be a suicidal move), while their brethren in other First World democracies founded their own political parties. US labor seems to have realized that only they themselves can be counted upon to protect their interests, as the current Democratic party is much too muddled and compromised by corporate money to do it. Some prior comments suggested that union members vote Green Party. While a good idea, far too many of the American union rank and file are too culturally conservative to vote in their own interest...but that's a whole other conversation

"Gage warned that Democrats will struggle to energize blue-collar voters if they don't score a few victories soon."

The problem isn't the lack of victories. The problem is the virtually complete failure to stand up to Republican thugs in Congress and in the media.

People want to see the politicians they voted for in 2008 stand up and fight tooth and nail against the people who brought the country to the verge of collapse, who took their jobs, their homes, their money, and lavished the proceeds on themselves. People want to see the politicians they voted into power in 2008, the Obama Democrats, fight the Republicans who brought us senseless wars; incompetent political hacks administering important bureaucracies; torture and murder by CIA and military interrogators; and a collapsing financial system. The people voted to reject almost everything the Republicans have brought into play here since Nixon.

And the Obama Democrats instead play the part of weak sisters.

It is on this emotional level that political success is won and lost, and the Democrats don't understand that and have no chance of keeping thugs like Boehner, McConnell, Steele, Palin, and the rest of the Republicans out of the treasury, out of our lives, and away from the levers of power that they all too willingly use to destroy liberty and democracy.

Win on the emotional level, touch the voters on the emotional level, show them the willingness to fight for them, to fight hard, without quarter and under the law, and victory or no, they will support you, especially in anxiety-ridden times like these where people daily fear losing everything to the machinations of the rich and the powerful. The Democrats promised an intelligent leader who would lead the country out of the wilderness and into the modern world. The Republicans offer nothing but a winner-take-all, ugly country governed by the few for the few and against the many. The Democrats have failed on a fundamental level, and the Republicans continue to promise democracy to the suckers, political illusion that looks like strong leadership, but turns out to be nothing but hot air blowing through empty suits and scorching the lives and property and future of all Americans except the wealthy friends of the Republican party.

Staying home is a bad idea. A better one is to vote for liberal Democrats only. The problem is, lots of working people still think conservatives are the good guys.

"Union leaders warn that the Democrats' lackluster performance in power is sapping the morale of activists going into the midterm elections."

Labor could lead the way toward a progressive third party that might bang the Democrats over the head, make the D's sit up and say, uh oh. Labor should do so.

The Unions like the leadership in the Democratic party have been sitting on their honchoes for to long. They have turned into sheep..and have become followers of the party insiders.
The Unions should educate the membership about the sellout
of the working classes by Slick Willie Clinton who had the votes of the democratic Senators to create Nafta.
These are the senators who voted for Nafta from this area.
Senators Dodd, Lieberman, Kerry, Kennedy.
The unions should be telling the membership that Nafta is responsible for the outsourcing of our industrial base to China and Mexico. Where were the unions when this was going on?
Every time a new job comes up, it is outsourced to China.
Time to expose the Clinton Circus for what it is.
Clinton and the community organizer never had a working man's job. The Democratic party has been taken over by the fancy Ivy League lawyers looking out for themselves.

This is a great moment in American history. When before in the history of the USA have by-bribe-only senators and representatives from both parties been compelled to show the nation almost daily, and even on national TV, how incoherently and disgustingly venal as well as callously indifferent they are to the opinion and well-being of the nation’s citizens?

This is the greatest opportunity for progressive change in decades and is expanding almost daily. By-bribe-only senators and representatives in Congress have been showing the nation every day more the extent to which the current duopoly and de facto dictatorship bankrolled by trill- and billionaires and run by bribed demobliRat millionaires feels entitled to behave as brazenly as the nastiest despotic Islamic and banana republics (think Uribe and Calderon), and this with the whole world watching.

This is the precious chance that Obama's election and presidency are offering the nation, i.e., a political and media environment that is favorable like none before for a massive mobilization that could foil the re-election of many, if not most, of the by-bribe-only demobliRat senators and representatives. Would things have been different if Hillary had been elected president?

The urgent task now is to sabotage actively the (re)election to congress and the senate of every crassly by-bribe-only demoRat --taking good care of course of telling each of them loudly and explicitly why this will be happening to them-- and this should be pursued even at the risk of helping indirectly a few fascisto-republicans to win a few seats in congress.

The current demoRatic-sellout majorities in congress have been de facto useless if not directly reactionarily counter-productive and are therefore disposable even as barriers against cavemannish legislation a la W and Cheney that may be proposed by an eventual fascisto-republican congress. Indeed Obama alone would be able to block such initiatives.

Think about it: is it better to have a declared fascisto-republican in the senate than corrupt and treacherous sanctimonious hyenas like Lieberman, Baucus, Conrad, and Nelson (and let's not forget Feinstein!)?

Whether the left's and the unions’ hopes "for the first year" have been shattered by daddy Obama or not, and whether any further warm-and-fuzzy hopes can be still nurtured about Obie boy, etc. is not only uninteresting but also fully irrelevant and distracting and will remain so for the next three years.

Pogo Possum said in the 1950's satire comic strip "We have met the enemy,and it is us." I do not want more Republicans elected, but I will find it hard (after more than fifty years of voting straight Democratic tickets to vote for them). Not voting is, most likely, a vote for Republicans, but, unless there is another option (which is not feasible), I will not vote........ Since Reagan, unions have been severely demonized and with most jobs going overseas, there doesn't seem to be much chance for a comeback. Hell, we can't even have a successful revolution without a strong middle class (if history is correct).