CT-SEN: Lamont To Get UAW Endorsement?
Ned Lamont is poised to receive the coveted endorsement of the United Auto Workers, a source familiar with talks between the two camps tells me. The endorsement could be announced as early as tomorrow at a big event being planned for the occasion, the source says, and a press advisory could go out as early as tomorrow morning. The support of the group -- which remained neutral in the primary -- could give Lamont an organizational and political boost at a time when Lieberman is leading in polls and is building support among GOP voters.
While nothing is certain until there's a public announcement, and anything could happen between now and tomorrow, the source tells me that he thinks it's a "done deal," adding that Lamont looked to be getting the endorsement because of "Lieberman's positions on trade and health care -- he refuses to support universal health care and enabled Bush's right-wing judges." More coming.
UPDATE: It turns out Jane Hamsher wrote about this first.
I don't think this will be the last union endorsement for Lamont. The union membership in Connecticut wasn't all that inspired by Lieberman pre-primary.
I suspect that in the end, the number of union endorsements for Lamont will be directly proportional to the amount of Republican help for Joe Lieberman.
August 21, 2006 4:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is great news. W/ Lieberman channeling Cheney & Bush on the war, health care, & Liebs being the last "Democrat" to say he supported SocialSecurity, Labor support switching to Lamont should be clear and immediate.
August 21, 2006 4:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
If past elections are any indication union endorsements don't really matter on the ground except in the media story line on endorsements. What matters is if Lamont can counter Loserman's negative attacks by painting him as a sore loser who is really the candidate for the discredited Bush/Cheney regime. No American likes a loser!
August 21, 2006 4:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Lieberman hires new Republican Consultants
Still think Lieberman will vote with the Democratic caucus?
Lieberman adds GOP firepower
August 21, 2006 6:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
A well organized union operation can add several points. In California, we were able to beat back Schwarzenegger's ballot initiatives in 2005 and the Angelides campaign was able to win despite being heavily outspent by his primary opponent, not to mention the highly questionable attacks from the Westly campaign. Without the union support it's likely that both results would have been the opposite. I've been extremely impressed by the energy that unions bring to the campaigns I've been involved in.
Progressives need to help encourage unionization as an end in itself. Electoral effects will follow.
August 21, 2006 6:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
I believe the thinking regarding political parties has to change.
The republicans are a ramshackled shell, an ediface of its former self, that houses, or is possessed by an alien being, the Neocons.
Lieberman is a Neocon.
Plain and simple.
Formal party names matter little. Adherents too, and support for or against Neocons is the defining element of politics today.
We need to craft a message that suggest that Neocons are anti-enlightenment, anti- constitution, anti-pragmatism, anti-rationalism, anti-American foriegn invader to the American body politic.
It is time for Democrats at large, to start wooing over to our side, prominent, exposed rational Republicans, as has been done in Kansas, if only for a short period of time. If necessary call it the "Rational-Democratic Alliance". Rational Republicans can stay aligned with us until the Neocons are chased from power. This would then be turning the latest and suddenly new Neocon claim of centrism on its ear.
When I get a virus, there is soon cleanex's piling up the room, over spilling the waste basket, until I am well enough to clean things out. What my bedroom looks like after being victimized by a virus, so does our nation: Body counts and wasted infrastructure in New Orleans, New York, Washington, Kabul, Baghdad, Basra and so on - with $500 billion in lost treasure to boot. The political system thoroughly ravedged while Neocons make off with looting the treasury and a polity confused and divided and with a surprising number falling under the spell of authoritarianism. Never, I thought, would come the day.
Our body politic has been raveged. And it shows little chance of letting up. The Democratic party, like a weakened set of lymph glands keeps sending out T-cells to find a way to destroy the invasion, but has yet to find an answer.
Lieberman is just a weakling, he has his finger in the air, and seeing that our political immune system has failed to neutralize the neocon invader, has gone HIV and so invades the Democratic party the way HIV destroys t-cells in its assault on the immune system itself. And so Lieberman finds himself firmly in the Neocon camp.
His hipocracy of feigning some morality of the middle is enough to choke a horse on. An Eigth grade civics class would expose the obvious and rediculous policies that Neocons like to mouth off.
If the embrace of positively difficient civics is not enough to disuade Lieberman, he should consider the following: He who makes alliances with the Republican Neocons rides the tiger. For the Repulican Neocons, Lieberman is all win and no lose. Because they lose nothing if Lieberman loses, Lieberman has almost nothing to protect him if the tiger turns on him. He might want to talk to Richard Clark or Paul O'Neal, or Colin Powell.
A coward dies a million deaths and after all that, gets to pass through the lower intestents of the tiger. Someone needs to inform Lieberman.
He that hath a trade, hath an estate - from Poor Richards Almanac - Benjamin Franklin
August 21, 2006 8:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
gqmartinez is right. I would add that in addition to organization and energy, it's the ground game that unions bring to the table that can not be under estimated. They get your votes to the polls on election day. In a closely contested election like this one is sure to be, it's the difference between winning and losing.
August 22, 2006 9:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
I suspect that a union endorsement for Lamont is quite useful.
TPM is reporting that polls currently show Lamont and Lieberman within the margin of error -- ie. Lieberman's trend is downward.
TPM is also reporting (War and Pieces) that Bush is calling around to get a new SecDef and so far no takers.
Do you suppose Lamont - who is getting savvier about his political remarks about Lieberman, eg. "stay the course is not the same as winning" -- would consider floating a "rumor" that Bush has called Lieberman to offer him the Secretary of Defense job?
Well has he? And did Joe turn it down?
August 22, 2006 2:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
UAW in Conn is Local 571, mostly Marine Draftsman at Electric Boat. They have, at most, in good year of employment, 1800 union members.
This is a really whopping big major endorsement for Lamont.
A local with 1800. The hype is getting hip-deep. When are you gonna start handing out the hip boots to go with it?
LOLROF!
edited for addendum--
Just a suggestion, anything that Jane "blackface" Hamsher cranks out you should take with a grain of salt the size of a cowlick.
August 22, 2006 4:30 PM | Reply | Permalink