Senate Democrats Pause From Obamacare to Push Labor Bills

[xchrom]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-05/senate-democrats-pause-from-obamacare-to-push-labor-bills.html

U.S. Senate Democrats are packing the calendar this month with bills appealing to the party’s base as they seek a distraction from Obamacare’s troubled start.

The strategy kicked off yesterday with a vote to advance legislation extending protections from employment discrimination to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender workers. Proposals to raise the federal minimum wage and to boost domestic manufacturing probably will follow.

The measures stand little chance in the Republican-led House. Devoting floor time to the bills is intended to give Democrats an opportunity to burnish their standing with organized labor, the American Civil Liberties Union, the NAACP, women’s groups and others that support the party’s candidates.

All of the measures have strong support from the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest labor federation, which has been a reliable top contributor to Democratic Senate campaigns.

[Mass]

1. Good. Then they may want to think about the Voting Right Act.

[Laelth]

2. Distraction? Far from it.

What the party is doing is hammering the GOP. These bills won't make it through the House, and the Democratic Party knows it. What the party is doing is laying the groundwork for 2014--forcing the mean-spirited Republicans (who, thanks to the Tea Party, have no choice but to vote against measures designed to help the people) to display their mean-spiritedness over and over until the American people "get it" and give us a government that works for the 99% and not the 1%.

I applaud the strategy behind these symbolic gestures.

-Laelth