Obama And Unions

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.

Slumming As Literature

James Piereson writes about the recent slate of faux-poor false memoirs:

Ms Seltzer, along with her partners in literary crime, deserves some credit at least for crafting a hoax that she must have known would appeal to the sentimental sensibility about the poor and downtrodden that is pervasive among reviewers at publications like the Times. It is more than a little interesting that contemporary novelists, when they stoop to such fabrications, invariably come up with harrowing stories about addiction, mental illness, sexual abuse, family dysfunction, prostitution, gang wars, and life on the run or among the down and out. On rarely hears of fabrications from the poor (or even by the rich) about life in the suburbs, boardrooms, or country clubs. Our novelists, even when they lie or especially when they lie, reveal what sells among publishers, reviewers, and contemporary readers.

Bill Or Hill?

Their spinning ability is looking increasingly threadbare. Fallows:

Listen to the clip to hear for yourself, if you haven’t already done so — but it came down to a "how stupid does she think we are?’ argument that it was Obama’s own fault that he obeyed the party’s rules (as other candidates did) and took his name off the unauthorized Michigan ballot. "We all had a choice as to whether or not to participate," she told Inskeep. "Most people took their names off the ballot, but I didn’t. And that was a wise decision, because Michigan is key to our electoral victory in the fall."

My point is not really the merits of this argument. It is the Clinton-v-Clinton contrast. Am I right in remembering that in his prime, Bill Clinton didn’t — or didn’t have to — do things quite this bluntly and ham-handedly? Are we seeing a demonstration during the campaign of a talent gap in basic political skill between the two members of the household? One reason not to think so is that Bill Clinton is presumably involved in these very strategies, which seem so much clumsier than he was in 1992. Another is that he himself has struck same of the same off-notes this year.