"SEIU Warns Dems: If You Don’t Back Reform, We Won’t Back You"

[Clio the Leo]

I'm not usually a fan of primarying Dems ... no matter how bad they are. But even *I* am in favor of this one....

SEIU Warns Dems: If You Don’t Back Reform, We Won’t Back You

Hardball time.

In what seems intended as a shot across the bow of House Dems wavering on health reform, top officials with the labor powerhouse SEIU have bluntly told a Democratic member that they will pull their support for him — and will likely field a challenger against him — if he votes No on the Senate bill.

Dem Rep Mike McMahon of New York met yesterday with a top SEIU official and told him he’s likely to vote No, the official tells me. The official: Mike Fishman, president of SEIU 32bj, the largest property workers union in the country, with 120,000 members in eight states.

Fishman told McMahon that the union would not support him if he voted No — and suggested the hunt for a primary or third-party challenger would follow.

“He let us know he’s not supportive of the health care plan,” Fishman says. “We’ve let him know that we can’t support somebody who doesn’t support it.”

“We are going to begin talking to other unions about finding someone else for that seat,” Fishman continued.

McMahon enjoyed heavy labor backing when he was elected to his conservative Staten Island district in 2008. He voted No on the bill last time but was said to be undecided on the Senate bill, and labor had hoped to win his support for the crucial final vote.

Fishman said SEIU officials were intent on sending a message to other House Dems that they risk losing the union’s support if they don’t vote for the bill — and said the union’s rank and file membership strongly wanted reform to pass.

“We put an enormous amount of effort into electing Democrats,” Fishman said. “This is the most important issue on everyone’s plate. We’re sending a message to Democrats: If you can’t support this, we can’t support you.”

http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/labor/big-union-warns-dems-if-you-dont-back-reform-we-wont-back-you/

To which Kos snarkily replies...

SEIU, AFL-CIO, AFSCME and all of labor are corporatist sellouts for supporting #HCR. If only they had Kucinich's magical spine.

http://twitter.com/markos/status/10403830760

"In our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded gold...."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYiKdJoSsb8">Sing it Brother Pete.....

[ORDagnabbit]

1. bout time! hope they keep the promise... a corporate dem is the same as a republican n/t

[Cha]

2. They're dinos which are worse

because they're stealth.

[Clio the Leo]

3. ANY Dem who stands in the way of one of the most progressive bills of our lifetime...

.... is the same as a Republican.

THIS time, our problem isn't the Blue Dogs.

[Oregone]

4. Holy Irony, Batman!

:)

Organized labor really was a roadblock for the Kennedy-Mills bill in the 70's. Everyone in America would have payroll-tax funded insurance if it wasn't for their stance (I think they wanted a more liberal bill without co-pays, or something like that).

And today, in the remnants of Bush's America, they will refuse to back those who wont support the Nixonian bill (which Kennedy even opposed vehemently from the left).

My my....have times changed. Its a clear illustration of how far to the right this country has shifted.

http://books.google.ca/books?id=rIvM9Tk0mqUC&lpg=PA92&ots=_4AdKkfCRb&dq=kennedy-mills%20compromise%20afl%20cio&pg=PA93#v=onepage&q=kennedy-mills%20compromise%20afl%20cio&f=false

[TheCowsCameHome]

5. You mean your vote isn't guaranteed?

Well, I'll be darned.

[slipslidingaway]

6. SEIU was one of the first to endorse the Jacob Hacker plan ...

but then they, like many others who signed onto the original idea, never said a thing as the PO plan became weaker and weaker.

Now we have mandates to buy insurance from private companies.

:(

THE HISTORY OF THE PUBLIC OPTION.

http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=08&year=2009&base_name=the_history_of_the_public_opti

"...The rest is history. Following Edwards' lead, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton picked up on the public option compromise. So what we have is Jacob Hacker's policy idea, but largely Hickey and Health Care for America Now's political strategy. It was a real high-wire act -- to convince the single-payer advocates, who were the only engaged health care constituency on the left, that they could live with the public option as a kind of stealth single-payer, thus transferring their energy and enthusiasm to this alternative. It had a very positive political effect: It got all the candidates except Kucinich onto basically the same health reform structure, unlike in 1992, when every Democrat had his or her own gimmick. And the public option/insurance exchange structure was ambitious.

But the downside is that the political process turns out to be as resistant to stealth single-payer as it is to plain-old single-payer. If there is a public plan, it certainly won't be the kind of deal that could "become the dominant player." So now this energetic, well-funded group of progressives is fired up to defend something fairly complex and not necessarily essential to health reform. (Or, put another way, there are plenty of bad versions of a public plan.) The symbolic intensity is hard for others to understand. But the intensity is understandable if you recognize that this is what they gave up single-payer for, so they want to win at least that much.

The alternative history question would be: What if they had pushed for single-payer all along? Could the political process then have sold them out and compromised by supporting the public option we now look likely to lose?"

[FreakinDJ]

7. Remember when SEIU trashed Schwarzenegger

Followed him all over the country protesting him from coast to coast.

I'd recommend the Dems to not "Fuck with them" - It's not likely an outcome they will win