Wonky Clinton Woos Labor

The New Republic: Clinton's Policy Challenges Edwards' Natural Appeal To Union Bosses

(The New Republic)  This column was written by Bradford Plumer.

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In a spacious Hilton ballroom Wednesday, surrounded by middle-aged construction workers with their arms folded and collars unbuttoned, Joe Biden is barking into his microphone. "With or without your endorsement," he declares, "I'm going to be the best friend labor has ever had in the White House!" It's an audacious claim — FDR? Harry Truman? What? — but hardly out of place. After all, the AFL-CIO's Building and Construction Trades Department (BCTD) has invited the various Democratic presidential candidates to their annual convention in Washington, D.C., so that 2,500 labor bosses from across the country can size them up. In the 2004 primaries, many of the building trades unions had backed Dick Gephardt early on, only to watch his campaign fizzle in Iowa. They don't plan on making the same mistake twice. "This is only intended to be a first impression," BCTD President Edward Sullivan insists as the day draws to a close. This time around, they plan on making the candidates jockey for their support. They want to be king-makers.

It would be fair to say that organized labor is enjoying a resurgent status within the Democratic Party: The 2006 midterms ushered in a fresh class of populists — Sherrod Brown, Jim Webb, Heath Shuler — who toe the labor line on issues ranging from trade to health care to CEO pay. Nancy Pelosi made a point of shepherding card-check legislation — which would make it easier for unions to organize — through the House. Even the Democratic Leadership Council, once the bane of liberal interest groups everywhere, has started talking up the importance of unions as a way to reduce income inequality. But what does this emerging dynamic mean for the presidential race? John Edwards, after all, has long cornered the market on economic populism — what with his "Two Americas" speech and work on poverty over the last few years. And, if the BCTD event is any indication, the rest of the candidates are still figuring out how to play catch-up on this front.

Edwards speaks first at the convention, and is obviously the favorite son. The crowd offers up a thunderous standing ovation, the labor leaders onstage all pump his hand enthusiastically as he approaches the podium, and he can barely say five words without being drowned out in applause. It quickly becomes apparent that Edwards, more than any other candidate, has a talent for rendering working-class concerns in vivid strokes. He sketches a story about an uninsured working man who comes home after a second shift to feel his son's fevered forehead. If worse comes to worst, Edwards notes in hushed tones, "This man may have to go to a hospital and beg for health care." His voice rises like an indignant preacher, and his fist jabs the air: "Beg for health care — in the United States! It doesn't. Have to. Be. This. Way." A roar seizes the audience. After promising that, as president, he would sign card-check legislation and prevent businesses from hiring permanent workers to replace strikers, he notes that he's the only candidate with a "detailed health care plan." The crowd swoons.

It's a tough act to follow. Going into the event, one might have predicted that, if anyone could match Edwards' soaring rhetoric about poverty and middle-class anxieties, it would be Barack Obama. He goes up last and instantly turns on the charm: "We're at that point where everything that needs to be said has been said ... but not everyone has said it." The crowd laughs warmly, but they want more than charm, and Obama can't really deliver. Unlike Edwards, who can speak engagingly about the card-carrying union members in his family, Obama must resort to tales of laid-off factory workers and distressed mothers he's met on the campaign trail. "I try to imagine what that's like," he says quietly. The audience members seem sympathetic, but aren't teetering on the edge of their seats in quite the same way.

Like all of the candidates, Obama endorses the standard laundry list of proposals that construction unions want passed into law — a crackdown on illegal immigrants, support for the Davis-Bacon Act, an increase in the minimum wage. But he ticks the items off much too hurriedly for anything but polite applause. Unlike Edwards, he sounds like he's merely reciting — trying to say the minimum necessary to receive the AFL-CIO's endorsement without appearing too beholden to a liberal interest group. Indeed, he seems more at ease discussing world-historical themes — he notes, to enthusiastic applause, that the civil rights movement was "not a celebration of African-American history, but a celebration of American history" — than organized labor specifically. It's a good-but-not-great sell for a crowd that wants William Jennings Bryan, not Abraham Lincoln.

Most of the other candidates do no better. Despite his pledge to be labor's best friend, Biden spends the bulk of his 15-minute speech detailing his plan for partitioning Iraq. To be sure, the war ranks high on the BCTD's list of concerns — most of the candidates promise to end the war, and when Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner addresses the audience in the morning, he is shouted down angrily for trying to connect Iraq to September 11 — but Biden overdoes it. Chris Dodd, for his part, looks like a grizzled union boss and argues that labor should back the guy who appears most sympathetic to their concerns, but he doesn't generate much excitement. (He does, however, mention his 32 years in Congress at least 32 times.) The same goes for Bill Richardson, who makes a point of sending a shout-out to each and every BCTD leader — as if he's taking an exam — and touts his (admittedly impressive) record as a labor-friendly governor of New Mexico. Dennis Kucinich, meanwhile, vows to repeal NAFTA and pull the United States out of the WTO, ranting fast and furiously. The crowd rises to its feet, but the hoots and hollers come alongside pitying laughter.

In the end, perhaps only Hillary Clinton figures out how to outmaneuver Edwards, and she proves the sleeper hit of the convention. Despite standing before a star-struck crowd of construction workers snapping cell-phone pictures, her speech starts out stiffly — hardly a match for Edwards's table-pounding. But Clinton does have a secret weapon: She knows labor policy better than any of her competitors — even Edwards — and knows exactly what issues matter to the BCTD, down to the last detail. She promises to apply prevailing-wage laws to all federal infrastructure projects, pledges to fix the "inaccurate" wage determinations in the Davis-Bacon Act, and rails against businesses that mislabel workers as independent contractors. It might sound like dull wonkery, but to the construction workers present, it's a big deal. Clinton gets far and away the loudest applause line of the entire conference when she declares that she will soon introduce legislation to give "meaningful access to contractor payroll records."

Various profiles have noted that, during her two Senate campaigns, Clinton won over upstate New York by immersing herself in policy minutiae and impressing farmers with her detailed knowledge of, say, milk prices. Clearly she intends to woo labor leaders in much the same way. "She knows all our passwords," whispers one flabbergasted ironworker seated behind me. Clinton may not send shivers down the spines of her listeners when she talks about the uninsured in America or recycles lines from her husband's 1992 campaign. ("If you work hard and play by the rules, there will be a place for you.") But she still seems to know how to navigate old-fashioned interest-group politics better than most.

[jolsonbear]

I think that blogs like this should require contributors to include a mugshot of themselves and a valid email address to which others may reply. I also think that contributors should be required to first call their mother or grandmother and read aloud to them the comments they are about to post. There probably woudn't be anything left to read but the report associated with the blog.


Oh by the way If you want to let me know what you think of [e-mail]

[fizzal-2009]

If you only recieved 5 or 6 percent on your retirement this past year you were cheated out of the biggest move up in the history of the stock market. Give the people their money and let them do with it as they see fit and stop politicing with yor memberships money.

[djconklin]

"The "middle-aged construction workers" are "union bosses", and _everything about them is treated with an air of contempt_."

As we say at work: "What are you on and why didn't you share any?"

[chris12karen]

Wonk is just fun to say. Wonk. Wonk. Honk. Wonk.

Go ahead, say it with me. You won't be sorry that you did.

[random_radar]

Hillary Clinton would never be mistaken for a charismatic leader. But I doubt that America would elect a charismatic woman president, so she is better off positioning herself as a wonk.

Margaret Thatcher was not on anybodies list of firendly people, but she was successful for being the iron lady. We need to be honest about what we as a group are interested in--and I think it will have to be a strong woman rather than a get-along gal.

George Bush can get away with being whatever it is that he is, but the first woman president isn't going to be anything like Bush or Martha Stewart (well, corrupt maybe).

[kalatur2]

Is being a wonk bad? Is being an un-wonk better? Our president would never be mistaken for a wonk.

[Razzl]

Notice the bias in how people are talked about? The "middle-aged construction workers" are "union bosses", and everything about them is treated with an air of contempt. If this were a roomful of white-collar types they would be politely described as "executives" or just anonymously as "donors". Part of the Republican program for a century has been to prevent working people from having a say in their pay and working conditions, and this denigrating language comes straight out of the David Stockman/Karl Rove school of politics.

It's time we recognize that there's nothing abnormal about working people having their representatives in politics and the economy, and that journalists should accord them the same respect and deference they accord religious and financial interests.

[dallison7]

I just dropped in to say hello to all the right wingnuts. I knew they would be here, put up a picture of Hillary and they all come crawling out of the muck to screach.

This is an op-ed page, guys.

There are a lot of 'REAL NEWS' stories in the other pages. Lots of corruption being uncovered!! LOL!!

Don't you want to go wver there and defend your 'Dear Leader'?

[rafterman1]

"Democrats and organized labor, Republicans and big business. I'm sure some of you lefties will tell me EXACTLY what the differnece is. This question comes from an old Irish American union girl."

No diff in terms of politics, but you have to pick a side. You either side with labor or with big business. Yet I am amazed at the number of poor and middle class who will side with big business and agaisnt their own self-interest. Are unions perfect? Nope. Do they sometimes care more about themselves than the workers? Sometimes. But if anyone thinks that siding with big business against unions is going to get them a better deal, they are crazy. If unions don't have much regard for the rank and file, then big business has even less.

[harp1963]

A truely pro-labor presidential candidate would
win. Why does America think it's morally o.k. for a small handful of people to keep all of the profits for themselves and not share with the "least of our brother" employees? Anytime Unions strive for more pay, benefits, and time off everybody comes down on them. We have the least amount of time off from work than any industrialized nation in the world. This countries political and business leadership is pathetic. They help each other scour the world in search of free peasant labor so they can keep all the profits for themselves. They don't realize it now, but the irony is the joke is on them. God is real, does exist, and He knows what these people are doing for the love of money.

[huskerarmy]

This question comes from an old Irish American union girl.
Posted by janem4 at 09:17 PM : Mar 29, 2007

If you can't see the difference between those who organize to push for higher wages, a safer and fairer workplace and those who systematically squeeze every penny out of the system, export jobs and then move to Dubai so they won't have to pay taxes, then you are in no way a "union" girl.

[mcvet]

Democrats and organized labor, Republicans and big business. I'm sure some of you lefties will tell me EXACTLY what the differnece is. This question comes from an old Irish American union girl.
Posted by janem4 at 09:17 PM : Mar 29, 2007

Unions? What UNIONS? The FASCIST have pretty much killed all UNIONS and what hasn't been distroyed are unable to function with the LAWYERS and BIG BUSINESS of UNION BUSTING on their backs. MAYBE you should be more aware of your NEIGHBORS Rights or lack thereof. It has been, since the Great Depression, the right of any American Worker to belong to a Union, not now. Just ask any non union worker why they do not belong to a Union. The VAST majority of them will answer that it's because they FEAR the loss of their job, of being FIRED!! That's not exactly a RIGHT now is it? Sieg Heil.

[sharncedar]

She's so wonky.