AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka implored state and local labor leaders and political organizers this morning to fight harder than ever in the fall elections, pleading with them to think about progress that’s been made under President Obama and to “keep going.”
Trumka, who has not shied away from criticizing Obama, got specific with his pitch. He said the nation can’t afford to have Senators like Republican candidates Sharron Angle (NV) and Rand Paul (KY), or to have a Speaker John Boehner if Democrats lose control of Congress. He also criticized the Democrats who haven’t been supportive of the labor movement.
Like other Democrats, he framed the election as a choice between moving ahead and Republicans wanting to return to the George W. Bush era, a choice between “the clean-up crew and the wrecking crew.” Trumka rattled off gains made under the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress — from health care to Wall Street reform, and a Labor Department and National Labor Relations Board he said stand up for workers. He acknowledged those new laws don’t have everything his movement fought for. Trumka was in fact in tense last minute negotiations with the White House over health care reform this spring, and vocal about his frustration that it did not go as far as labor leaders wanted.
But, he said, “That’s progress. And we’ve got to keep it going.”
“We need to keep the pressure on, and we will,” he said. “But we have to remember who brought us the worst economy since the Great Depression, who got us into this.”
He told the organizers he knows they are “angry” and “frustrated.”
“We know we haven’t achieved everything we worked for. But we’ve made progress–and we have to keep it going,” Trumka said. “Remind them we have to save our anger for the corporate lapdogs who made this mess and the Republicans in the Senate who are determined to keep us in it.”
Trumka’s did not mention the Employee Free Choice Act, a critical element of labor’s agenda that stalled long ago on Capitol Hill due to lack of support from even Democrats. After the speech, AFL-CIO’s deputy political director Michael Podhorzer told reporters that it’s not a time to push an agenda but to rally the base. “We’re looking forward to a really big fight,” Podhorzer said.
He also said AFL-CIO is prepared to spend more this year than the $53 million the union group spent in 2008. “We plan on spending what it takes,” Podhorzer said.
He lauded the few hundred people in the room at the Washington Convention Center as having done the “heavy lifting behind gains in Congress that helped put the brakes on the Bush agenda” in 2006, and of course electing Obama in 2008.
In his speech, Trumka detailed his own dissatisfaction with elements of the Obama agenda but asked the group to take the message back home because their union members “trust what you say.”
“You’re the only voice that shares their motives, their concerns, and can speak to them directly and honestly to their fears and their insecurities,” he said.
The key parts of his speech:
I want to speak frankly. There’s been a lot of talk this summer about the “enthusiasm gap.” You’ve heard it. I’ve heard it, too. What’s happened? Have the people who were so charged up two years ago changed their minds about change?
Let’s be clear-eyed about what’s going on. The Party of No doesn’t want the union vote, the working family vote. They want us all to stay at home out of frustration.
They figure that if they can mobilize the rightwing radicals, the corporate conservatives, the Tea Party fanatics and the talk show fans, and if they can thoroughly disgust the rest of us, then they can win this election in a walk.
Believe me, I know how frustrating it’s been to watch a solid bloc of congressional Republicans throw up roadblocks on every single thing working families care about. Everything.
And it’s been just as frustrating to watch some of the Democrats we thought were our friends join them–saying, Oh slow down, we’ve got to play it safe, we’ve got to split the difference, we’ve got to look like Republican-lite.
But now it’s 91 days before the election, and that means we have 91 days to change the frustration out there and turn the anger and hurt working people are experiencing in this economy into action.
Trumka’s speech echoed comments at Netroots Nation by Van Jones, who also implored progressives to stop beating up on Obama and work to reelect even Democrats they don’t love in order to maintain their majorities. Obama will address the group on Wednesday.
This post has been updated following the conclusion of Trumka’s speech.
