The New Republic hosts a feature piece today on Andy Stern who, if you haven’t heard, is supposed to be the new savior of organized labor from his post as head of the SEIU. Ezra Klein was asked to critique, and I thought this observation very telling:
As for Stern's impact on the national health care scene, I can say, in context
of reporting that I've been doing, that it's immense. It was SEIU's pressure
that pushed the Democrats to the left on health care in the campaign (Stern
declared that they wouldn't even consider endorsing any candidate that didn't
have serious, detailed, universal health plan -- though Obama, who had the least
universal plan of the Big Three, eventually got the endorsement).
Read the last line again.
Andy Stern made universal health care the determinative factor in his negotiations with potential Democratic nominees ( we may assume because it has the single biggest impact on the health and well-being of his constituents), and yet ultimately threw his support behind Obama – the ONLY serious candidate whose plan fails to achieve that goal. What possible conclusion is there to be drawn but an exchange of policy objective for influence?
People who are serious about a progressive agenda need to let go of the politics of personality and recognize that we must hold our support as conditional – provided only to the extent that candidates support the same outcomes of policy that we do. This is where we have our greatest impact.
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