Can The Unions Save Obama’s Political Hide?

It Appears He’s Banking On It


By Dell Hill

There’s another kind of “fast and furious” event going on in Washington, D.C., and it doesn’t involve guns and grenades - at least I hope it doesn’t!  It’s the Barack Obama re-election campaign and the President is directly involved in a fast and furious effort to lock down a massive union vote next November.

Pushing - shoving, even - his most recent “jobs” legislation to the floor of the United States Senate and demanding “pass this bill now”, Obama appears to be putting all of his chips on millions of union members to get him across the finish line.

He calls the legislation a jobs bill, but the only jobs it “creates or saves” are union members positions - teachers, firefighters, police officers, etc., and it’s clearly a strong play for union votes just about a year from now.  Obama is trying to buy those votes to bolster his political base and who could blame him?  About 90% of union members contribute to - and vote for - Democrats.

Obama will pander to Hispanics, African-Americans, and various other smaller voting blocks, but he knows that his emphasis has to be on the millions of union members and that’s why he’s going to such lengths as to keep sending his jobs legislation back to Congress, despite it being voted down previously.

What the legislation really boils down to is tax increases to maintain union members jobs that serves two primary purposes.  It keeps union members working and prevents those same union members from turning against him come election day 2012.  While most state, county and municipal governments are busy paring down the size of their budgets, Obama is asking them to add the cost of employees salaries and benefits back into their plans.  That’s not going to be received well at the local level, but nobody dares to take on the unions at any level, so it’s a safe gamble for Obama to take.

There are some areas, like most all of extremely Liberal California, where this union ass-kissing legislation will resonate.  The states that continue to spend and approve unfunded mandates will approve Obama’s “jobs” bill and scream for its passage, despite the fact that it raises taxes and does very little to assist those state and local governments in offsetting the cost of those hires after the first year of their existence.

The idea certainly isn’t new.  It has been done successfully before, but the economy was in much better condition at the time, and local governments had a full year to adjust their proposed budgets to include the additional employees after the first “free year”, subsidized by the federal coffers.  Under today’s dire economic conditions, such is not the case.  It will be several years, minimum, before state and local governments are comfortable in adding to the tax payer’s burden by growing their government - except in states like California.  Anything and everything Barack Obama sends down the pipeline gets instant approval from California Governor Jerry Brown, who’s never seen a tax-and-spend proposal he didn’t like.

Will it be enough?  Can the unions stimulate a massive turnout for Obama in 2012?

I think the answers are “no” and “yes”. I believe the unions have reached the point where they are ready to take to the streets for their “right of employment” in a socialist style scenario and the majority of Americans have had it up to here with the Marxist socialism being crammed down their throats.  The unions will turn out the vote for Obama’s re-election, but the rest of the country is ready to throw him out on his (r)ear.

His popularity with Independents has fallen right off the charts and that fact could a back-breaker for this sitting president.  He can only hope they come around to his way of thinking, but I don’t believe they will.  I believe that the huge Independent vote he got in 2008 is now seen as a mistake by those voters...one they won’t make again.

He also has the TEA Party to contend with this time around - something that was non-existent in ‘08.  Voter turnout is always critical and the TEA Party will inspire millions to go to the polls and send Obama back to Illinois.

Had Barack Obama given any indication of exactly what he had in mind for “change” in the run-up to the 2008 election, I seriously doubt he’d be living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., right now.

Even Conservatives were hoping for a change of direction in 2008, but certainly not a total transformation of the United States to a European style, socialist country.

One of the very first posts I ever published was entitled “It’s Socialism - Pure and Simple”.  I wrote that prior to Obama’s 2008 victory over Republican John McCain.  I’d link that post right here, were it not for a massive hard drive failure where it was stored.

The comments section of that blog post was instantly riddled with ad hominem attacks on me for simply pointing out what I felt was obvious - Barack Obama went to Washington with a socialist agenda, strongly backed by European socialist George Soros and his bottomless pit of money, power and influence...but, mostly his money.  Now that Democrats from coast-to-coast have publicly endorsed his agenda, they’re all openly describing it as socialist and those same blog commenters are nowhere to be found.  They’ve either joined the crowd or have slithered off to an “Occupy” protest.

One true indicator of the actual support the President has is the turnout of local Democrats as Obama campaigns for this bill’s passage and his re-election.  When Democrat governors and other representatives suddenly discover “conflicts in scheduling”, which prevent them from being seen with a very unpopular President, you know that re-election campaign is in serious trouble.

Democrats might be better served to quietly concentrate on the Senate elections in 2012.  If they lose control of the Senate, they’re in huge trouble with an instant lame duck president, whether he wins or loses the big one.