As we pick through the wreckage of our presidential
election, it’s time to start drawing a few conclusions. Let’s
give it an early try.
First, with the world’s news media focused
on our cliffhanger vote count, it’s time for people to see
that our perfect democracy is not so perfect. Millions of U.S.
voters — and bewildered observers abroad — just found out
about our Electoral College. This colonial-era system means
that a majority of votes does not necessarily determine our
next President. Everyone just found out about our sorry system
of state-by-state, even county-by-county, elections, with no
standard system of voting or counting the results. So from
here on, let’s hope that people around the world will think
twice before they allow — or encourage — planeloads of
U.S. human rights know-it-alls to show up to sit in judgment
of their elections. Our self-appointed role as chief lecturer
to the people of planet earth about how to run an election
might be coming to an end after this fiasco. Forget about the
world. We have our own mess to clean up.
'The
Lesson of West Virginia'
Second lesson; I’ll call it the lesson of
West Virginia. Bush defeated Gore in West Virginia by a 52% to
46% margin. And at the same time that Bush was winning the
Presidential vote, Democrat Congressman Bob Wise was winning
the governors race. Legendary Senator Robert Byrd (D) also won
re-election with a massive 78% of the vote. So in a nutshell,
Senator Byrd received 462,566 votes; Bob Wise was elected
governor with 320,430 votes; and Al Gore in defeat received
291,088 votes.
Just do the math. All are Democrats, yet Al
Gore only got 63% as many votes as were cast for Senator Byrd,
and 91% as many votes as were cast for governor-elect Bob
Wise. All of this is even more remarkable given that in West
Virginia registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by more
than two-to-one, 632,000 to 295,000. Had Al Gore been able to
win the votes of just 72% of those who voted for Senator Byrd,
he would have taken the state. It’s obvious that something
went wrong. And it didn’t have anything to do with Ralph
Nader.
One of the reasons that the Gore campaign came
up short in West Virginia — and a lot of other places —
was that he really believed his own baloney about our
"booming" economy. As someone who lived and worked
in West Virginia for several years, I can tell you that Gore’s
campaign didn’t bother to check the facts before they
decided to tell the good people of the Mountaineer state that
things were "booming". Other than coal and
chemicals, West Virginia’s biggest export is its young
people. And this is nothing new; even during the industrial
expansion of the 50’s and 60’s it was almost a truism to
refer to Akron, Ohio, or Detroit, Michigan, as the biggest
cities in West Virginia.
Despite the "boom" that we read
about in the papers, or heard about in Al Gore’s speeches,
working people in West Virginia suffer from unemployment rates
that in the past year have fluctuated from 2% to 3% higher
than the national average. It’s also a state with a
per-capita personal income of just less than $20,000 per year,
and median income of just barely above $25,000. Average annual
income is just above $24,000. More than 270,000 residents have
no health insurance. And the next time you take a trip through
this beautiful state see how many "Help Wanted"
signs you see — and ask the clerks you buy gas from how much
they make. It won’t be much more than minimum wage,
unfortunately.
What
Boom?
For working people in West Virginia, life is
hard. If you are lucky enough to have a good job in a
unionized coal mine, factory, or chemical plant, you are
probably doing pretty good. Some of the unorganized workers in
these industries are also doing OK, since companies have used
better wages and benefits to keep unions out. But if — or
these days more likely when — you get laid off, or your
plant or mine closes, you have a tough choice staring you in
the face. If you are old enough, you retire. If you are young
enough, you get a lower paying job and make the best of it. If
you are too young to retire but too old to get hired anyplace
else, you do the best you can. And you can always move away.
You might end up closer to your kids that way.
So when Al Gore came blazing through West
Virginia during the election campaign it’s no surprise to me
that he had a hard time peddling his "boom". And you
should know that I’m not the only one wondering why Al Gore
went to West Virginia — and every place else — bragging up
his "booming" economy. Three days after the election
I dropped-in on a press conference at the National Press Club
here in Washington, D.C. Held by the Campaign for America’s
Future, and hosted by Co-Director Bob Borosage, pollsters
Stanley Greenberg (Greenberg Quinlan Research) and Celinda
Lake (Lake Snell Perry and Associates) told it better than I
ever could. Greenberg (pollster for both Clinton and Gore)
reported that in his post-election poll of over 2,036 voters
that, of those voters who voted for Al Gore, the state of the
economy was seventh on their list of reasons for supporting
him.
But Celinda Lake (pollster for the AFL-CIO,
Sierra Club, Planned Parenthood, among others) held the
blockbuster; in one of her polls a full 66% of the respondents
reported that economic prosperity had not yet extended to
their families. Pollster Lake reported to the assembled news
media point blank that in the campaign "Gore needed to
talk about money ... . Women and downscale men were concerned
about the need for higher wages ...". Imagine that!
'Bosses
for Gore'
And in case you missed it, the Gore campaign
chose suburban Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as the place to
announce their grand-finale of the "booming" economy
pitch. On October 27th, in front of an audience of corporate
executives, Gore proudly announced that "More than 2,750
business leaders from across the nation today personally
endorsed Al Gore and Joe Lieberman, praising their plans to
help extend prosperity for all." I wonder how many votes
this scheme pulled in? This is the third lesson; "Bosses
for Gore" didn’t work.
So what’s ahead? With Republicans in control
of Congress, let’s get ready for some early battles when
Congress returns to Washington, D.C. in January. It’s pretty
safe to predict that very quickly we will be faced with
attempts to slash the already minimal taxes of rich folks and
big business. Soon after that will come the struggle to defend
Social Security from the privatizers, to prevent overtime pay
from being repealed, and to stop Congress from expanding NAFTA
to all of Latin America using the Free Trade Agreement of the
Americas" (FTAA). Get ready to get busy.
Happy Holidays to all!
Chris Townsend is political action director
of the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of
America (UE). Due to the elections and a trip
out-of-the-country, Chris was unable to provide his regular
"Capitol Hill Shop Steward" column to the Labor
Party Press.
