Also important is legislation to make it less of an obstacle course for workers to win union representation and labor contracts on the job. A major reason that unions have shrunk from over 30 percent of the workforce in the 1950s to just 9 percent of the private workforce (and 13 percent of all workplaces, public and private) today, is that labor law has been whittled away and turned to management’s advantage to such an extent that it is almost impossible now to win a union election. Employers who break labor laws suffer no penalty even when found guilty, and workers who are unfairly fired for union activity can hope, at best, if they are lucky, to win reinstatement and back pay after fighting for years. Most just give up.
If a Democratic Congress passed new labor legislation and a President Obama signed them into law, as he has promised to do, and if new pro-labor officials were appointed to the national, regional and local labor relations boards that adjudicate labor issues, we could see a genuine revival of the labor movement in America with consequences for workers’ lives, and for the political system that would be far reaching and profound—and that could even pave the way for a resurgence of a left/labor political movement.
Finally, with respect to war and militarism, I tend not to take Obama’s warmongering seriously. Given the man’s background, I am confident that he is not a militarist by nature. It may be politically opportunistic for him to try during this campaign to out-tough McCain on Afghanistan while calling for a wind-down of the war in Iraq, but it would be a disaster for him to pursue a wider war in Afghanistan after taking office, ensuring that his presidency, like Bush’s, Lyndon Johnson’s and Richard Nixon’s before him, would be dragged down by an endless bloody conflict.
A President Obama will have his hands full trying to deal with an unprecedented financial fiasco, and will want the wars off his plate as quickly as possible. Maybe I’m being a Pollyanna, but I simply can’t see a smart guy—and Obama is a smart guy—getting dragged into another quagmire.
Besides, I have a darker vision, which is that the crisis of global warming, so long denied by the Bush administration, is going to make itself felt soon in ways that will be impossible to ignore, and which will demand a crisis response. Obama, I believe, will be the right person at the right time, to lead that response.
And that brings me to the final reason I am voting for Obama. As crazy as John McCain clearly is, with his default setting on war as a solution for all problems, this sickly and possibly terminally ill old man has chosen to have a certifiable right-wing, closed-minded, bigoted and stunningly ignorant religious zealot as his back-up. Sarah Palin, as vice president, would in all probability end up becoming president during a McCain first term.
This country and the world simply cannot risk having as the leader of America an end-of-times believer at this critical moment. It’s not just the polar bears and the wolves in Alaska who would suffer under a Palin presidency. It would be all life on earth.
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DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His latest book is "The Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006 and now available in paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net
digg_url = 'http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/36876'; digg_title = "Why I\'m Voting for Barack Obama on November 4"; digg_bodytext = "By Dave Lindorff\r\n\r\n Okay, I was going to vote for Ralph Nader this November 4.\r\n\r\n It was an easy decision. I live in Pennsylvania, which is now, according to all the polls, reliably in the Obama column, with the Democratic candidate holding an insurmountable lead in the polls of 14 percent over Republican John McCain-enough to overcome even the most devious Republican vote suppression techniques and voting machine chicanery.\r\n\r"; digg_skin = 'standard';(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
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