I don’t believe in telling anyone how to vote. I abstained when CWA’s Executive Board voted to endorse the Obama-Biden ticket, consistent with past Guild presidents (with a notable exception, see next page).
Personally, I feel it’s right to tell you that I am voting for President Obama.
Why? My late father-in-law would say it’s because “you’re a demon-crat.” My lefty friends? Because you’re a chump who thinks voting for the lesser of two evils solves something. Other labor leaders? They’d say we get stuck voting for people we’re not even sure support us, because the alternative is so dismal. Mitt Romney? Because you’re a victim, you want others to be victims and you think you’re entitled.
Toss out my father-in-law’s taunt and Mitt Romney’s conceit and the other two explanations pretty much sum up my reasons. In other words, I’m not a cheerleader for the president, but I am a realist. Electing far-right extremists who profess their hate for government is out of sync with American values. It is no way to run a country or fix an economy.
Want no rules, regulations or taxes? Good luck finding a civilized society without them. There’s no way I can support a party that seeks to impose religious beliefs on others, that tells women what they can do with their bodies (and yes it’s almost all men doing this), and pretends that the economic policies of trickle-down didn’t tank our economy.
What does that make me politically? I’m really not a Democrat or a Republican. If you’re going to label me anything, I’m a unionist. I believe democratic workplaces are better, and give workers a chance to participate in economies that make the owners rich. Sure, we’ve got an economy now that makes owners rich, but America’s middle class is being eroded and more working families every day fall below the poverty level.
A party that is dedicated to killing off unions is a party that has lost all touch with reality. Check out the 1956 Young Republicans poster, pictured here. It’s been making the rounds on Facebook. Once, Republicans embraced labor. Where has that party of Lincoln gone?
But Democrats are no heroes, either, when it comes to labor. Outside of Labor Day, Obama rarely utters the words “union” or “labor.” When his administration set its agenda, we weren’t even part of the conversation.
Still, I believe President Obama values fairness and wants to create opportunity for all Americans — and not by simply giving tax cuts to the rich. Do I think he misunderstands the threat of the corporate class? Absolutely.
But here’s the rub. The arguable failures of the past four years haven’t been because of Obama. They’re not even due to the GOP’s never-ending obstructionism.
The failure has been ours. We have not done enough to demand the kind of society we need — the kind that Obama still believes in. Occupy was a great start, but it came three years late. And I don’t accept the anarchic principles of Occupy. We do need leaders.
Why not vote for a leader from a third party? This is my lefty friends’ favorite argument. But it’s unrealistic. Voting third-party would be a vote for Mitt Romney. You know it’s true.
In the end it’s not whether you believe in any particular leader. It’s whether you believe in yourself. If you do, you act on that. Our voices are being drowned out by commercial speech, which is what corporate speech really is. Even if Obama outruns the corporate money from the right, remember that he is using his own fair amount of it.
You really want to fix America? Fix the matter of collective bargaining. History proves it’s the key to widespread economic prosperity in the United States, and someday I hope I will be able to cast my ballot for a genuine pro-labor candidate for president.
But that’s the future. Today I’m a pragmatist. And that’s why I’ll be casting my ballot Nov. 6 for President Barack Obama.
