Category: Barack Obama

Or is the American public?

A reader writes:

I am a firm Obama supporter and I agree that in the clip you posted he is admirably departing from important elements of the party line on unionization.

However, at the beginning of the clip he talks about his support for the “Employee Free Choice Act.” This Orwellian-named bill would take away the right of workers to secret ballot elections on whether to unionize.

Currently, if a majority of workers in a workplace sign cards saying that they would like to unionize, then the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) organizes an election. Under the proposed bill, if the union gets a majority of workers to sign the cards, then that’s it; the union becomes their sole representative to management and they’re forced to pay dues. This opens the door to union organizers pressuring workers to sign up, while taking away their right to say “no” in a secret ballot. I was targeted by a union organizing campaign. Most of my colleagues signed the cards, but once we had a chance to look carefully at what the union was offering, we voted against unionization in the NLRB election. Had this act been in effect, we’d have been stuck with the union.

It is true that current labor law allows employers to unethically block union drives. The answer to that are stronger penalties against those employers, not taking away from workers the most basic rights of democratic association.

Obama is very wrong on this point. Unfortunately, he’s in good company with both Clinton and the rest of the Democratic Party. I voted for Obama in the primaries and desperately hope that he beats Clinton and McCain, but this is one of the areas where he falls down.

Look: the racial politics of all this was bound to happen at some point. We should not be surprised by the likes of Mickey Kaus or Sean Hannity or Geraldine Ferraro fanning racial resentment and fear. Since it is part of everyone’s emotional make-up in America, we were never going to get past these issues without going through them. And as we go through them, we shouldn’t engage in utopian notions that we could ever have a campaign in which these things would not at some point dominate. Better now than in October.

What matters now is how Obama gets through them. I fear a spasm of constantly ratcheting squalls of racial insecurity and loathing, which drags everyone down to the level on which the Clintons operate and where they feel most at home. Obama therefore has a brutal job to do. But he has so far shown the grace to pull it off. Patience, restraint, hope: that’s all we have to go on right now. But those three things can still win the presidency, if harnessed carefully enough.

I had forgotten this speech when I posted this. Here’s the relevant section:

A few days after I won the Democratic nomination in my U.S. Senate race, I received an email from a doctor at the University of Chicago Medical School . . .

[T]he reason the doctor was considering not voting for me was not simply my position on abortion. Rather, he had read an entry that my campaign had posted on my website, which suggested that I would fight "right-wing ideologues who want to take away a woman’s right to choose." The doctor went on to write:

"I sense that you have a strong sense of justice…and I also sense that you are a fair minded person with a high regard for reason…Whatever your convictions, if you truly believe that those who oppose abortion are all ideologues driven by perverse desires to inflict suffering on women, then you, in my judgment, are not fair-minded….You know that we enter times that are fraught with possibilities for good and for harm, times when we are struggling to make sense of a common polity in the context of plurality, when we are unsure of what grounds we have for making any claims that involve others…I do not ask at this point that you oppose abortion, only that you speak about this issue in fair-minded words."

Fair-minded words.

So I looked at my website and found the offending words.  In fairness to them, my staff had written them using standard Democratic boilerplate language to summarize my pro-choice position during the Democratic primary, at a time when some of my opponents were questioning my commitment to protect Roe v. Wade.

Re-reading the doctor’s letter, though, I felt a pang of shame.

It is people like him who are looking for a deeper, fuller conversation about religion in this country. They may not change their positions, but they are willing to listen and learn from those who are willing to speak in fair-minded words. Those who know of the central and awesome place that God holds in the lives of so many, and who refuse to treat faith as simply another political issue with which to score points.

So I wrote back to the doctor, and I thanked him for his advice. The next day, I circulated the email to my staff and changed the language on my website to state in clear but simple terms my pro-choice position. And that night, before I went to bed, I said a prayer of my own – a prayer that I might extend the same presumption of good faith to others that the doctor had extended to me.

And that night, before I went to bed I said a prayer of my own. It’s a prayer I think I share with a lot of Americans. A hope that we can live with one another in a way that reconciles the beliefs of each with the good of all. It’s a prayer worth praying, and a conversation worth having in this country in the months and years to come. Thank you.

Ezra:

Obama is not a woman, nor a white man. He’s who he is. To say that if he were different, things would be different is to say nothing at all. As a white woman, maybe he would have led a military coup and established himself dictator. Who knows!? Hell, if he were a slightly less inspiring speaker, or had an off-night at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, he wouldn’t be in this position either. Similarly, if Hillary Clinton were a black man, it’s unlikely that she would have been a national political figure for the past 15 years, as it’s unlikely that she would have married another man from Arkansas, and unlikely that the country would have put an interracial, same sex couple in the White House. But so what? This is an election, not Marvel’s "What If?" series.

An update from the Clinton camp:

Mike Crowley unloads on their rivalry:

Each sees the other as a posturing phony.

I honestly don’t think the mutual animosity is that real. But Mike has more.

Max Fletcher points out something the cable shows should keep front and center:

Currently, according to the popular vote totals at Real Clear Politics, Obama leads Clinton in total votes cast 13,007,968 to 12,415,286 (a margin of 592,682). This total does not include the results from Florida or Michigan. However, it also does not include results from Iowa, Nevada, Washington, and Maine, which have not released popular vote totals.

If you add up the popular vote in all the states that the DNC allowed into the process, here’s the current result:

Obama: 13,335,159
Clinton: 12,629,468
(margin: 705,691 votes)

We all know the Clintons’ delegate count is very hard to see overcoming Obama’s. But the popular vote is in a similar situation. If at the end of it all, one candidate has more delegates and more votes, why is there a question about who won?

Sanity, mercifully.

Obama’s closing ad in Texas: