Machinists Union Members Outraged Over Hillary Clinton Endorsement, Say They Want Bernie Sanders

[Jennifer Kay]

http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/18321/bernie_sanders_machinists1

[DemocratSinceBirth]

1. Like clockwork

[sufrommich]

3. Yep. nt

[ismnotwasm]

69. I'm shocked I tell you

Shocked.

[Cali_Democrat]

2. They already conducted a poll of union members and they preferred Hillary over Bernie:

That's one of the main reasons why they endorsed Hillary Clinton:

WASHINGTON -- The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers union endorsed Hillary Clinton for president on Friday, giving the front-runner for the Democratic nomination another boost from a major labor union.

IAM, which represents more than 700,000 workers in North America, said Friday that Clinton had garnered unanimous support among union leadership and was the "overwhelming favorite" in an internal poll of rank-and-file members.

<...>

But according to IAM, Clinton beat Sanders by a margin of more than 6 to 1 in its poll of 2,000 union members.

"The question should not be why are we endorsing Hillary Clinton now, but rather, what took us so long," Buffenbarger said.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/machinists-union-endorses-hillary-clinton_55ce33d5e4b07addcb42e9a9

[DemocratSinceBirth]

7. I have a question

When Senator Sanders received an endorsement Hillary's supporters congratulated him. Whenever Hillary receives an endorsement Senator Sanders's supporters lambaste her.

Why is that?

[Cali_Democrat]

11. Unfortunately, it appears many Bernie supporters just can't accept reality

DU is an echo chamber of sorts and a number of members come here to have their views reinforced.

They are constantly told that Hillary is a corporate tool of the 1%. When a prominent union like IAM backs Hillary, they just can't comprehend it...so they lash out.

It really is unfortunate.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

13. I keep them in my prayers, that they might find wisdom.

eom

[Tommy2Tone]

15. So true n/t

[SonderWoman]

20. So far, the weirdest part of DU for me is...

Those who are in a bubble within a bubble. For example, bubble 1 being echo chamber DU, bubble 2 being those posters here who claim there are more Hillary supporters here.

[seabeyond]

25. +1. vote doesnt matter, bernie should win just cause. or something.

no one is allowed to not be in awe of sanders and prefer someone else. doesnt make sense to the sander supporter and refuses to allow otherwise. after a day of replies from the post i threw out, i was thinking the same. just to get it in sanders supporters head that not all are impressed with sanders. and that is liking and respecting the guy and yet still.... not think he measures up to others.

[moobu2]

17. I was about to go looking for that.

It was obvious there were going to be a few that supported Bernie.

[Jennifer Kay]

27. Your missing something,

AFL-CIO rates Hillary with an 85% score while Bernie has a 100%
& as you know, AFL-CIO is an umbrella of IAM

http://www.ontheissues.org/Notebook/Note_03n-AFLCIO.htm

If you think that 1 out of every 250 people is representational of over 500,000 members then I am at a loss for words because that is absolutely ridiculous. When an endorsement comes from powerful union which is supposed is based on representing the members in a democratic setting--it simply seems insane.

[NCTraveler]

49. Post #2 and the op goes down.

This scorched earth mentality looks so bad on Sanders supporters. Using far right wing elected officials to attack Gutierrez, Hillary Clinton beats up an old man, FTA completely under the bus, and now trying to use a handful of people to make a blanket statement about a union that overwhelmingly supports Hillary and rightfully endorsed her because they listened to their membership.

[awoke_in_2003]

72. I read 71% of the member were for Clinton

The union has to endorse her. I am a Sanders supporter, and wish he got the endorsement, but you can't argue numbers.

[SidDithers]

4. Welcome to DU...

Sid

[HFRN]

6. ...

[SidDithers]

9. bart!...nt

Sid

[DemocratSinceBirth]

32. I am not pointing fingers...

I am not pointing fingers... but getting banned and returning again and again is the sine qua non of a cretin!

[Agschmid]

12. This.

[revmclaren]

53. Again, and again, and again...

[Thinkingabout]

5. Are you saying the other 29% of the member surveyed should have their choice or do we still deal

with democracy and the 71% gets their choice?

[oasis]

8. It's 6 to 1 for Hillary. Oops ,they didn't poll table 4 at Joe's Bar and Grill.

[Dawson Leery]

68. A few disgruntled dead enders not equal a revolt.

Many around here do not see that.

[AngryParakeet]

10. You mean 70ish people....

You mean 70ish people who may or may not be a member of the Union who happen to like the page? Sanders supporters did the same thing with the teachers union endorsement, a bunch of people joined the group who probably had nothing to do with the union and voiced their displeasure making it look like there was a huge backlash when there really wasn't.

[Maedhros]

21. Do you have any evidence to back up your claims?

Otherwise, I have to assume you're being disingenuous.

[Dr Hobbitstein]

14. Cool story! nt

[PowerToThePeople]

16. I see you have outraged the right people here

Good job and welcome to DU.

[revmclaren]

55. You mean back don't you?

And soon to be name removed I predict.

[DanTex]

18. LOL. "wrote one person claiming to be a member on the union's Facebook page"

[Jennifer Kay]

23. Research the facts before LOLing

Only 2,000 members out of 500,000 were polled.
You tell me if that is democratic or even a fair representation of the workers?

[mythology]

26. Assuming a sufficiently random sampling, yes.

Do you have evidence that it wasn't? Otherwise 2000 is more than enough to have valid statistically significant results.

[1StrongBlackMan]

30. LOL ...

1,000 respondents are generally representative of the entire electorate is sufficient for national and state-wide polls; but, it is not enough sample for a poll of a union of about .6 the size of the nation?

(Not directed at you ... but lawd, my kingdom for a stats text book!)

[Jennifer Kay]

36. They are polls

which have HISTORICALLY been faulty due to in large part, sample sizes. They're not VOTES--which would be the democratic way to go about deciding a truly representational candidate for a unionized endorsement.

[mythology]

66. Please just stop

You obviously know very little about statistics. Polls are in fact generally fairly accurate. If you have some sort of evidence to suggest this particular poll is not correctly sampled or is in some other way, please be specific.

[dsc]

28. Yes, if the sample was random, it is actually a quite large same

Once n gets to be around 300 or so the sample, if honestly random, will have a very small MOE. The size of the population, provided it is sufficiently large, is irrelevant to MOE. MOE is figured out by taking 1.96 (if you want a 95 percent certainty) and multiplying by the sample standard deviation divided by the square root of n (sample size). If n is 40 you are dividing by about 6. If n is 300 you are dividing by about 17. If n is 1064, you are dividing by about 33. In other words, you have cut the size of the MOE by almost 3 when you get to 40, and by a bit over 2 when you go from 40 to 1064. A standard poll for the entire US, that isn't trying to give subcategories, will have around 500.

It is rather simple stats. So you might, just might, wish to research a few facts yourself before you post innumerate nonsense.

[Jennifer Kay]

39. Lol

i guess you don't understand that a sample size is never truly representational. (Go read your stats book, as well as an ethics book).

Having a vote for ALL members is a democratic forum is the way to best to determine where people stand. From an ethical standpoint, you are representing all workers that choose to participate in the vote and not relying on a sample size.

[dsc]

43. that is just plain, flat out, gold carat false

in point of fact, a sample can wind up being more accurate a representative of a population than an attempted census. That is the entire reason that Democrats in Congress and in two administrations (Clinton and Obama) argued for sampling to supplement the census. It is simple math. How much, in your mind, should a union be forced to spend before it endorses? Conducting an actual entire election would be a considerable cost. That is why unions don't do so for endorsements. None of them do if a candidate gets a sufficiently large majority in polls and of the executive council. Did you have a similar issue with the endorsement of Sanders by the National Nurses United? Their procedure, which I linked in another thread, was exactly and precisely the same. They did a sample just like the machinists. Bottom line, random sampling has been used for ages for this kind of thing and the reason it has been used for this kind of thing, is because it works. If you wish to have these unions conduct elections then maybe you need to open up your check book and pay for these elections you want them to have.

[Starry Messenger]

64. Aaaand *crickets*

[DanTex]

33. Do you understand how polling works? You know random sampling, margin of error, all that...

[NCTraveler]

51. Depending how it was done...

That is a very large sample size and more than ample to draw a conclusion. Very large.

[SonderWoman]

19. Democracy is how unions work.

71% polled chose Hillary.

[Jennifer Kay]

24. Is this democratic?

Only 2,000 members out of 500,000 were polled.

Disgusting.

[PatrickforO]

31. Well, it could be a statistically valid sample, depending upon how the sample was chosen, BUT

WHY in the HECK would they do that instead of just sending out a survey to their ENTIRE membership. You only do a sample when it would be prohibitively expensive to reach the entire population you want to survey, but these idiots had the WHOLE DATABASE of members right there.

There was no good reason to pull a sample when it would be just as easy to reach ALL members.

[dsc]

45. are you going to pay for the 1 million plus ballots?

say they are 10 cents apiece, that is over 100k? If you want them to do this, then open up your check book. BTW the nurses that just endorsed Bernie did the same, exact, precise thing according to their own press release as I reported in another thread.

[PatrickforO]

47. Two words: email survey.

You DON'T need ballots.

[dsc]

50. then all of you complaining now

would complain that it was fraud. Oh, and again, the nurses who endorsed Bernie did the same, exact, precise thing. Do you have a problem with that?

[PatrickforO]

52. No, but the problem here is we don't know exactly what methodology was used to choose the sample

While the leaders claim it was 'quite scientific,' we don't really know that.

[dsc]

54. we have no idea the methodology of any of them

Here is the sum total of what the nurses wrote in their press release about their poll

The NNU Executive Council voted to endorse Sanders. Factors for NNU backing, said DeMoro, included:

Sanders’ long history of support for NNU, nurses and patients,
A 100 percent scorecard on a questionnaire NNU sent to all the Democratic and Republican Presidential candidates,
Overwhelming support for Sanders among NNU members in an internal poll, and
Sanders’ response to issues before the AFL-CIO Executive Council

http://www.nationalnursesunited.org/press/entry/nurses-endorse-sen.-bernie-sanders-for-president/

Oh, and if you go to the National Nurses United facebook page, you can find comments attacking that endorsement just like you can find ones attacking the machinists. At least the machinists told you who conducted the poll, stated it was random, and provided at least the outlines of questions. The nurses did none of these things, not a damned one.

[Jennifer Kay]

65. Agree to disagree,

Totally agree, NNU cites an internal poll.
IAM claims that they incorporated different demographics, but it is not in the breakdown of the results they provide.
There is lack of transparency of both unions to provide valid evidence to back up their endorsement choices.

[dsc]

70. you are consistent

which is all one can ask. I think there is some validity to the point that at least the membership should be able to see the methodolgy of the polls and hope that they can. That said, I don't have a problem using a well drawn sample to model the unions population in order to determine who to endorse.

[anacodainfl]

59. Indeed. Considering that this union happens to be a top Bernie donor organization

I take the endorsement with a very small grain of salt, and like AFT, it was done without proper surveying.

[dsc]

61. then what about the nurses

who did the same thing. They surveyed a sample of their union according to their own press release.

[SonderWoman]

40. Now it's disgusting? How its always been.

[lunamagica]

58. How aabout the nurses union? How did they endorse Sanders?

[dsc]

62. they did the same, exact, precise thing

and fancy this, I can't get any comments either in this thread or the separate thread I started explaining what they did from their very own press release.

[lunamagica]

63. So, the exact same methodology used, when it favor Sanders, it is accurate, but when it favors

Hillary, it is flawed...

I thought so.

How can these people act like this, and expect to be taken seriously?

[PatrickforO]

34. Sorry Sonder, no reason to pull a sample when you have easy access to the whole membership database.

Seems like either money or promises may have changed hands to make this happen.

What we're gonna see moving forward is the leadership of various unions endorsing Clinton, but the rank and file supporting Bernie.

Honestly, with Clinton's role in the TPP these 'leaders' must have kind of a rectal-cranial thing going in order to endorse her, because TPP is NOT GOOD for ANY union members anywhere in the entire USA.

[SonderWoman]

41. Sorry Pat, that's how its always been.

You don't get to change the rules because it wasn't your preferred candidate.

[PatrickforO]

44. That's not how it has always been because I do these kinds of studies. If you have the WHOLE

database, and are actually interested in ACCURACY, you survey all of it. Then you don't need to calculate margin of error, etc. Because it is what it is, not an estimate.

But that's OK. The rank and file will vote how they vote, and you and I will see what happens.

[Ron Green]

22. It's a test. Bernie vs Hillary/Jeb/Walker/whathaveyou.

It's the biggest political test of American voters in the past half-century, and we're not passing it quite yet.

But we have months to go.

[PatrickforO]

29. OK. This union has over 500,000 members, but a few months ago, the leaders

did a 'quite scientific' survey of 1,700 members, 71% of whom supported Hillary.

This is kind of dumb. To do a 'quite scientific' survey of a small sample of the workers when they could easily have done a Survey Monkey for ALL their members is pretty bogus.

This means to me that the union leadership is actually part of the establishment. These are the same union leaders who have acquiesced to union busting in many states, and presided over the decline of the American middle class.

They should hang their heads in shame.

Go Bernie!

[dsc]

46. the nurses union which endorsed Bernie did the same, exact, precise thing

and funny you had no problem whatsoever with them having done so, fancy that.

[Indepatriot]

35. But why in the world would Union members object to endorsing a candidate who

favors the TPP/NAFTA/CAFTA? Don't they know that in spite of her history, and her Wall Street money, and her support for the Keystone XL pipeline and her voting for sending their kids to war that underneath all those bad judgements and all that ca$h that she's a FIGHTER FOR THE MIDDLE CLASS! No, really, just ask her.......

[BainsBane]

38. She voted against CAFTA

opposed NAFTA and has not come out in support of TPP.

http://www.ontheissues.org/International/Hillary_Clinton_Free_Trade.htm#Voting_Record
http://www.ontheissues.org/Senate/Hillary_Clinton.htm#Free_Trade

Though Bill supported it, Hillary opposed NAFTA. (Oct 2007)
Voted against CAFTA despite Bill Clinton’s pushing NAFTA. (Oct 2005)
Voted YES on free trade agreement with Oman. (Jun 2006)
Voted NO on implementing CAFTA for Central America free-trade. (Jul 2005)
Voted YES on establishing free trade between US & Singapore. (Jul 2003)
Voted YES on establishing free trade between the US and Chile. (Jul 2003)
Voted NO on extending free trade to Andean nations. (May 2002)
Voted YES on granting normal trade relations status to Vietnam. (Oct 2001)
Voted YES on removing common goods from national security export rules. (Sep 2001)
Build a rule-based global trading system. (Aug 2000)
Rated 17% by CATO, indicating a pro-fair trade voting record. (Dec 2002)
Extend trade restrictions on Burma to promote democracy. (Jun 2007)

[BainsBane]

37. Here are the results of the election survey of union members

http://www.goiam.org/images/articles/imail/latest-imail/2014/May_Aug/IAMAW_Election_Survey.pdf

7 to 1, Clinton over Sanders.

[Jennifer Kay]

42. Omg,

they don't even cite the methodology.

This write-up or summary of their statistical results is completely unprofessional and ethically bias--seems like those are trying to persuade people of the results. I need to find the originals

[dsc]

48. they do state that the poll was a random one

I would like more detail to be honest but they do state the poll was random and she had a massive lead in that poll. While nothing in stats can be certain, even a census of a large group, it is quite close to certain that Hillary had considerably more support within that union than Sanders did.

[BainsBane]

60. You seem to be confused

over the difference between federally-funded research and pubic polling vs. the internal work product of a union, of which you are not a member. By all means, go demand they turn over their union documents to you, a random person on the internet who is not even a member. I'd buy a ticket to watch that.

More and more unions will endorse Clinton, and those decisions are their own, not yours or mine. We all get one vote and one vote only, and no amount of self-entitlement changes that basic fact.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

56. I couldn't be more proud of my fellow Hillary Clinton supporters.

I couldn't be more proud of my fellow Hillary Clinton supporters. We were gracious when the National Nurses Union endorsed Senator Sanders.

[delrem]

57. Did you catch a clue that Hillary Rodham Clinton supporters don't like your post?

hehehe

they're so funny. I've never seen such a funny swarm of "centrists". heheheh...

Well, no worry about *them*. As they make so excruciatingly clear, Hillary Rodham Clinton doesn't want or, they think, need the votes of "progressives" and "liberals", who they despise.

We'll see about that, won't we?

[MaggieD]

67. Sorry they polled members and she won

That's the way it goes with unions.

[awoke_in_2003]

71. 71% of the members

endorsed Clinton- what do they expect the union leadership to do?