Last updated on February 8th, 2013 at 01:16 pm
It will be boots on the ground that wins this 2012 election, not just for Obama but for all those Democrats needed to win back control of the Senate and the House in November. Granted, Democrats certainly cannot discount the multiple, albeit unplanned, contributions donated to them on a regular basis by the Circus of the Absurd that has become the Republican Party. But counting on the consistency of their idiocy fringe won’t work long term as a campaign strategy.
AFL-CIO leader Richard Trumka said it best earlier this month when he made the critical observation that the likelihood of Democrats being able to compete against the Republicans dollar-for-dollar is pretty much a lost cause. Viewing the terrain as a cold, hard political realist, it’s understandable why Obama was forced to backtrack on his previous disdain of Super PACs and give his blessing to a Democratic Super PAC charged with the same goal as those working on behalf of the Republicans – to raise as much loot as possible for the purpose of destroying the enemy. At its core, campaign season is largely a big, nasty game of moneyball, plain and simple. The candidate with the fattest stacks of cash normally wins.
To get more stories like this, subscribe to our newsletter The Daily.
But what Trumka realizes as another cold, hard political fact is the fact that the Republicans are miles ahead in the Super PAC funding wars already and the Democrats will likely never catch up. Chasing them down the street is not the way to win this race, which is why it’s time to go strong for Plan B. Plan B options can be risky, but waged against a pathetically weak
Republican frontrunner with virtually no supporter enthusiasm in his sails (whatever enthusiasm Romney has is provided mostly by friends and family because the rest is bought and paid for) I do believe the plan offered by Trumka and the AFL-CIO will go a long way towards balancing the scales when waging battles on multiple fronts against RepubliBucks.
“Worried about the tens of millions of dollars that Republican “super PAC’s” are expected to spend this year, A.F.L.-C.I.O. leaders said they hoped to counter that by putting together their largest political mobilization ever – with as many as 400,000 volunteers making phone calls and knocking on doors. And for the first time, unions, as a result of a 2010 Supreme Court decision, will be able to – and plan to – knock on the doors of millions of voters who do not belong to unions with the aim of persuading them to vote for Mr. Obama as well as labor-friendly candidates in state and local races.”
“He was mired in the debate of deficit reduction, he wasn’t talking about jobs,” Trumka said yesterday after an executive council meeting in Orlando, Florida. “Since then, he has been talking about jobs, jobs, jobs, and that’s what’s been on peoples’ minds.”
Additionally, to sweeten the pot for labor, Obama has tossed in a proposal to spending $447 billion to build highways and bridges, provide subsidies to help local governments, stem teacher layoffs, and slashing payroll taxes by half to benefit workers and small business owners. Obama also appointed three AFL-CIO members to the National Labor Relations Board, over the wails and howls of Republican objections.
Keep in mind that Trumka hasn’t exactly been a die-hard Obama supporter in recent years. His criticisms haven’t quite risen to the level of Princeton professor/activist Dr. Cornel West, but he has certainly made it known on numerous occasions in no uncertain terms that he didn’t think the President was headed down the right road. His decision to now throw the full force of the nation’s largest union behind Obama (although it wasn’t a huge surprise the enthusiasm of the endorsement counts for a lot) will go a long way toward providing the margin of victory that Obama and the other Democratic 2012 contenders will need to get the job done. And specifically for Obama, strong union support may well help shore up support among the blue collar white working class, all of whom can certainly appreciate the efforts of a man who fought and won to save the jobs of everyday working Americans.
Boots on the ground in 2012. The more boots stomping door-to-door for the Democrats, the wider the margin of victory in November.
Keith Owens (AKA Black Liberal Boomer) is a Detroit-based writer who has worked for The Detroit Free Press, Detroit’s alternative newsweekly the Metro Times, the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel, and other newspapers. He was also a nationally syndicated columnist with Universal Press Syndicate for three years beginning in 1993.
