[Marxism] YADL (Yet another disillusioned liberal)

[Eli Stephens <elishastephens@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Poor David Lindorff. He so had his hopes set on Barack Obama.

http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff03312009.html

The Mendacity of Hope
The Obama Betrayal

By DAVE LINDORFF

We are witnessing one of the fastest betrayals of the Democratic Party base in 
modern memory, as President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party leadership in 
the Senate slither away from a crucial constituency, the labor movement, and 
from support of labor's key legislative agenda item: passage of a bill, "The 
Employee Free Choice Act," which would restore a measure of fairness to labor 
relations.

Obama, who once supported the measure, and who campaigned saying he would sign 
the bill, has stood shamelessly silent as a massive corporate campaign mounted 
by such lobbying powerhouses as the US Chamber of Commerce, the National 
Association of Manufacturers and the National Retail Federation, hiding behind 
a fake "citizen action" organization called the Coalition for a Democratic 
Workplace (sic), has descended on Congress, and especially the Senate, has 
worked to peel away support for the bill among both Democrats and swing 
Republicans who had formally backed the measure.

The business lobbying campaign is having considerable success. Sen. Arlen 
Specter (R-PA), who is facing a Republican primary threat next year from a 
conservative challenger, has already announced that he will not support 
allowing the Employee Free Choice Act to go to the floor for debate and a vote 
in the Senate.  As well, Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA), a former co-sponsor of 
the bill when it was last introduced in the Senate in 2007, now says she will 
not support it.

Since 60 votes are needed to move a bill past a Senate filibuster vowed by 
Republicans, Specter's defection is particularly damaging. It is also a 
betrayal of the many unions that have consistently backed this sometimes 
unpredictable Republican. But Feinstein's volte face is a particularly odious 
betraytal of her union backers in heavily unionized California.  With senators 
like Feinstein caving in to corporate anti-union pressure, it makes it less 
likely that Senate Democrats would or could move to push the bill through past 
a filibuster by more confrontational means, such as attaching it to a budget 
bill that would not be subject to a filibuster—something Republicans did a 
number of times when they had control of the Senate between 2002 and 2006.

Clearly, the key turncoat in this sorry tale is Obama, whose presidential 
campaign would have sunk into oblivion early had it not been for powerful 
support from key elements of organized labor. It was also undeniably organized 
labor's army of grass roots backers that handed him victory, a majority of the 
popular vote, and a mandate for "change" in November over Republican John 
McCain.

If Obama were to strongly advocate for Employee Free Choice, he could clearly 
line up the backing needed to win its approval in both houses. Moderate 
Republicans like Specter need Obama's support for their own pet bills, and 
would have no hope of accomplishing anything, much less bringing home the bacon 
that they need in order to win re-election, without the president's willingness 
to support them. This gives Obama enormous clout if he wants to use it.  
Wavering members of his own party, like Feinstein, would also certainly respond 
favorably to his calls for backing on a key issue for his base.  But he has 
chosen instead to duck this issue.

Anyone who thought, as I once did out of an excess of optimism, that this 
president was positioned to act in this economic crisis as did the once equally 
reticent Franklin Roosevelt before him, should see clearly now that this 
president is not that same kind of bold risk-taker as FDR.  Obama, rather, is 
following in the well-worn path of gutless political hacks before him like 
President Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, kowtowing to the wishes of the 
corporate elite and taking the Democratic grassroots for granted.

Employee Free Choice, which would have reversed 50 years of steady erosion of 
workers' organizing rights by ending employers' ability to stall off union 
elections for years, fire union organizers with impunity, and intimidate 
pro-union employees,  by mandating that unions be recognized once they had 
obtained signature cards of support from over 50% of a work unit, is only one 
sign of this betrayal, of course, but it is a significant one.

Meanwhile, even as the Employee Free Choice bill is swirling around the drain, 
a new study is giving the lie to the main argument the corporate lobbyists have 
been using to win over one-time backers like Specter and Feinstein: the 
fear-mongering claim that facilitating unionization in a recessionary time 
could lead to business failures.

Not so, says labor economist John DiNardo of the University of Michigan, who 
just released a study titled "Still Open for Business: Unionization Has No 
Causal Effect on Firm Closures," published by the Economic Policy Institute

DiNardo's study cites two surveys of similar enterprises at which workers 
either narrowly won union votes by 51% or narrowly lost by 49%. These surveys, 
covering the period 1961-2004, found  "zero correlation" between a company's 
being unionized and the likelihood of its failing.

"I don't think business leaders or people like Sen. Specter are crazy," DiNardo 
says. "Many of them probably honestly do believe that having a union increases 
the likelihood of business failure, but the evidence is just not there. In 
fact, wages don't always even go up when a company is unionized."

DiNardo speculates that what really may cause many corporate managers and 
business owners to bitterly oppose unionization is not the fear of business 
failure or even perhaps of higher labor costs, but rather the fear of losing 
control over workers.

"Business managers in non-union firms are more like monarchs," he says. "With a 
union, a company becomes slightly more democratic, and the manager becomes more 
like a president."

That puts the name of the anti-Employee Free Choice Act business lobbying 
coalition in an interesting light. Obviously no corporate lobbying organization 
is actually in favor of democracy in the workplace, as their name deceptively 
implies.

This betrayal of workers is not the first betrayal of the Democratic base by 
Obama and Congressional Democrats.  Scarcely two-thirds of the way through his 
first 100 days, Obama has also already betrayed a vow to end the Iraq War, 
having announced his intention to leave upwards of 50,000 trooops in that 
benighted and blood-stained nation for years to come.

Instead of closing Guantanamo, he has made a vague promise to close that horror 
show a year from now, but then left open the possibility of continuing to hold 
people indefinitely without charge, and even left himself a loophole to torture 
them.

Instead of restoring the Constitution, Obama has already begun adopting the 
Bush practice of using signing statements to assert an unconstitutional 
presidential authority to ignore laws passed by the Congress.

Instead of assuring that the laws of the land be faithfully enforced, as he 
swore in his oath of office, and promised in his campaign, Obama has refused to 
order a Justice Department investigation into whether members of the prior 
administration should be charged with crimes such as torture or lying to 
Congress.

This litany of betrayals shows that rather than audacity, this president has 
chosen mendacity. Instead of change, he is giving us at best small change, and 
when it comes to abuse of the Democratic base, no change. (And I haven't even 
mentioned his wholesale betrayal of ordinary citizens in his pro-Wall Street 
bail-out of the big banks and financial institutions.)

At least President Clinton waited two years before he began a wholesale 
sell-out of Democratic voters.

Obama isn't even waiting for the honeymoon to end to start his betrayal.

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