Havoc in the Cornfields

[Nicholas_J]

Article is from after Iowa, but indicates that the members of SEIU and AFSCME bucked the decision of their leaders (the union leadership had full decisionmaking in backing a candidate without polling the members), and the largest percentage of the meembership voted fot Kerry and Gephardt:

Havoc in the Cornfields
by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair
www.dissidentvoice.org
January 22, 2004


The prime beneficiary of the Iowa caucuses was the battered Iowa economy, pulling in $100 per voter in the caucuses, spent by the candidates mostly in tv advertising. In terms of political import history instructs that the victory in these caucuses offers a high likelihood of imminent political extinction. It’s true that eons ago, in 1976, Jimmy Carter won there, thus helping to put Iowa on the political map (along with R.W. Apple Jr. of the New York Times, who achieved one of the few contacts with political reality of his entire career by predicting that the peanut broker from Plains would do well).

Gephardt won in the Iowa caucuses in l988 and the elixir of that meaningless victory sent the Missouri congressman back to Dubuque time and again, each time to endure humiliation , whose finale came on Monday night. Gephardt was supposedly labor’s candidate, or at least of the leaders of the industrial unions which sent hundreds of organizers into the state, helping their man to his scrawny 10.8 per cent showing. The service and government workers in the SEIU and AFSCME were drafted by their leaders to support Howard Dean who limped in third, far behind Senators John Kerry and John Edwards.

Exit polling showed that union members bucked their leadership, with Kerry getting 29 percent, Edwards and Gephardt 22 percent and Dean 19 percent.


http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Jan04/Cockburn-StClair0122.htm

[sandnsea]

1. Kerry can get all voters

I can't wait for the GE to begin!!!

[Jerseycoa]

4. I am impressed

with Kerry's appeal to labor. What do you credit it to? I don't mean he's bad on labor in any way, just that I always saw Gephardt as the logical choice. This has puzzled me since Iowa.

[THUNDER HANDS]

5. unions want a winner

they want to beat Bush, and Kerry is the guy who looks like the best candidate.

It's really just that simple.

[Jerseycoa]

7. Rank and file labor union members; not unions

They split their vote among Kerry and Gephardt and Dean, before Kerry looked like a winner. I know Dean had peeled off some of Gephardt's labor vote with the service unions. But it surprised me that Kerry took half of the rest over Gephardt.

[sandnsea]

10. He's a union supporter

He has a 90% lifetime AFL-CIO rating. He's got the firefighters union. He makes sense on jobs. People like Kerry, even regular guys, they really do.

[Jerseycoa]

12. Yes, I know that

I guess my puzzlement is more about Gephardt than Kerry, then. I'll have to wait for the books that will surely be written about this primary race.

[blm]

13. Alot of laborers are veterans.

.

[Straight Shooter]

2. I can't wait for the GE to begin, either!

I've already ordered a special JFK monogrammed barf bag.

[THUNDER HANDS]

3. well if you want

you can have my "We Took Back America and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt" t-shirt. :D

[mitchum]

6. LOL!

[QC]

8. ROFLMAO!

:P

[MuseRider]

9. THAT is really funny Magic Rat!

Thanks, I needed a laugh.

[sandnsea]

11. oh my gosh

rotfl You're bad. :spank: