Showing posts with label AFL-CIO. Show all posts
Showing posts with label AFL-CIO. Show all posts

Sunday, February 7, 2021

V is for victory, V is for violence: Molly Ball never tells you the meaning of her election 2020 story, but you can figure it out

The meaning is that the left threatened violence if Trump got re-elected, and made good on that threat with the summer down payment in the George Floyd riots. The threat created the default attitude at every level of the process to capitulate and avoid a repeat: Either accept the results of an election where nearly half the votes cast were of a kind most susceptible to fraud, or else.

That's what made the US Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Evangelicals cave to the left's long active operation one week before Nov 3.

It's all in there, but you have to think about it because Molly isn't going to just hand that narrative to you.

The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election :

The summer uprising had shown that people power could have a massive impact. Activists began preparing to reprise the demonstrations if Trump tried to steal the election. “Americans plan widespread protests if Trump interferes with election,” Reuters reported in October, one of many such stories. More than 150 liberal groups, from the Women’s March to the Sierra Club to Color of Change, from Democrats.com to the Democratic Socialists of America, joined the “Protect the Results” coalition. The group’s now defunct website had a map listing 400 planned postelection demonstrations, to be activated via text message as soon as Nov. 4. To stop the coup they feared, the left was ready to flood the streets.

About a week before Election Day, Podhorzer received an unexpected message: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce wanted to talk.

The AFL-CIO and the Chamber have a long history of antagonism. Though neither organization is explicitly partisan, the influential business lobby has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Republican campaigns, just as the nation’s unions funnel hundreds of millions to Democrats. On one side is labor, on the other management, locked in an eternal struggle for power and resources.

But behind the scenes, the business community was engaged in its own anxious discussions about how the election and its aftermath might unfold. The summer’s racial-justice protests had sent a signal to business owners too: the potential for economy-disrupting civil disorder. “With tensions running high, there was a lot of concern about unrest around the election, or a breakdown in our normal way we handle contentious elections,” says Neil Bradley, the Chamber’s executive vice president and chief policy officer. These worries had led the Chamber to release a pre-election statement with the Business Roundtable, a Washington-based CEOs’ group, as well as associations of manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers, calling for patience and confidence as votes were counted.

But Bradley wanted to send a broader, more bipartisan message. He reached out to Podhorzer, through an intermediary both men declined to name. Agreeing that their unlikely alliance would be powerful, they began to discuss a joint statement pledging their organizations’ shared commitment to a fair and peaceful election. They chose their words carefully and scheduled the statement’s release for maximum impact. As it was being finalized, Christian leaders signaled their interest in joining, further broadening its reach.

The statement was released on Election Day, under the names of Chamber CEO Thomas Donohue, AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka, and the heads of the National Association of Evangelicals and the National African American Clergy Network. “It is imperative that election officials be given the space and time to count every vote in accordance with applicable laws,” it stated. “We call on the media, the candidates and the American people to exercise patience with the process and trust in our system, even if it requires more time than usual.” The groups added, “Although we may not always agree on desired outcomes up and down the ballot, we are united in our call for the American democratic process to proceed without violence, intimidation or any other tactic that makes us weaker as a nation.”

Sunday, October 21, 2018

Democrats in this cycle are clearly lacking the wave leadership like Rahm Emanuel once provided in 2006

Case in point, TX-23, discussed here at length by The Other McCain:

The Republican incumbent there scarcely fits the stereotype of a right-winger. Will Hurd is the only black member of the Texas GOP congressional delegation, a former CIA officer who has held the seat since 2014. The largely rural district, which stretches all the way from the suburbs of San Antonio in the east to El Paso in the west, is majority Hispanic and the congressional seat has changed hands five times between Republicans and Democrats since the 1990s. Hurd won re-election two years ago by a margin of barely 3,000 votes and was obviously a vulnerable target in this year’s midterms, but Democrats appear to have fumbled away their chance of winning in TX23 by nominating a pro-abortion Filipina lesbian as their candidate.

Gina Ortiz Jones was recruited into this campaign by Democrats at a time when feminist rage over Trump’s 2016 election was a fresh wound in the Left’s collective psyche, and it appears they didn’t bother asking whether she was a good match for the district. Jones has made a point of using her mother’s maiden name with the slogan “One of Us, Fighting For Us” in her campaign. However, she’s not Hispanic. Her mother immigrated from the Philippines and her white father (who never married her mother) was a drug addict. While she used “Ortiz” to play the identity-politics game with Texas voters, she used a similar message to solicit support nationally from Trump-haters, promising to become the “first Filipina-American and first out-lesbian to represent Texas in Congress, and she’ll be the first woman to represent her district.” She was endorsed by all the usual suspects of left-wing extremism, including pro-abortion groups like Planned Parenthood and Emily’s List, pro-homosexual groups like Equality PAC, Human Rights Campaign and the LGBT Victory Fund, and the anti-Israel JStreetPAC, as well as the Feminist Majority, People for the American Way and the AFL-CIO. She is campaigning on an agenda that includes socialized medicine, taxpayer funding for abortion, gun control, and amnesty for illegal aliens.

Well, good luck selling that to voters in rural Texas, ma’am. Anyone with a lick of common sense could see the problem with trying to run such a campaign in TX23, but Democrat voters in the five-way March primary paid no heed to common sense and, after she defeated Rick Trevino in a May runoff, Ms. Jones became a darling of her party’s liberal donor base. By the end of September, she had raised more than $4 million, but it now seems all that money has gone to waste. 

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Unions Fail to Get Falk as Dem. Nominee v. Walker in WI

Politico has the story here:

Despite his late entry into the race, Barrett held a wide lead in the polls, aided in part by higher name recognition. Falk acknowledged that fact while campaigning in Milwaukee on Monday, saying she has always been the underdog.

“I have been all along because Tom [Barrett] just ran for governor a year ago,” she said.

Barrett’s victory came despite organized labor’s best efforts against him. Most of the state’s unions – including the AFL-CIO, the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the SEIU and the United Food and Commercial Workers – endorsed Falk.


The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel shows here the beating the unions' candidate received at the hands of Barrett, who will face  energized Republicans who turned out massively for Walker yesterday in the pro forma Republican primary:


Friday, April 22, 2011

Trotsky Lives! At EmpireStrikesBlack.com

Oh the things you run across out here.

This is by one Barry Grey, a true believer of the Fourth International variety who rather dislikes that Stalinist, Barack Hussein Obama:

In the United Auto Workers union and the AFL-CIO and Change to Win union federations the Obama administration and the corporate elite have accomplices whose only concern is to secure for the union bureaucracy a cut in the spoils of the class war being waged against working people.

The Socialist Equality Party urges workers to carry out a rebellion against these corrupt, right-wing organizations and establish independent and democratic rank-and-file action committees to fight against layoffs, plant closures and wage cuts. These committees should spearhead the struggle to unite all sections of workers and young people and mobilize the power of the working class.

This is a political fight against the Obama administration, both big business parties and the capitalist system which they defend.

Very nice website, though. And clever name!

The International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) is the name of two Trotskyist internationals; one with sections named Socialist Equality Party which publishes the World Socialist Web Site and another linked to the Workers Revolutionary Party in Britain.

So Wikipedia, here.

Barry Grey sits on the international editorial board of the World Socialist Web Site.