by Jill Zuckman
With union voters in Rust Belt states expected to make up to as much as 35 percent of the electorate there, thousands of AFL-CIO volunteers will make a final push beginning Saturday to get out the vote for Sen. Barack Obama and other candidates.
Tens of thousands of volunteers are expected to visit more than 3.9 million union homes, make 5.5 million phone calls and hand out more than 2 million leaflets at worksites in 21 states. In particular, the get-out-the-vote effort has targeted undecided union members who are gun owners, veterans and retirees in key states such as Ohio.
Union officials say they have seen an increase in support among those hardest-to-persuade groups since they began targeting them, trying to peel them away from John McCain.
Among union gun owners, support for Obama has risen 21 points since the beginning of September. Among veterans, support has risen 18 points. And among retirees, officials say, there has been a jump of 14 points.
"We're seeing a wave of support for Sen. Obama among union voters as they learn more about his positions on the issues they care about and contrast those positions to Sen. McCain's failed proposals," AFL-CIO Political Director Karen Ackerman said. "But this is no time to let up. We're going full throttle this weekend to ensure every union voter knows just how critical a vote on Election Day is to our country's future."
Comments
Get out the vote, union brothers and sisters !! That is the only true response to the onslaught of the Bush-Cheney administration and its cadre of NeoCons. Stop and look at the areas most effected by the " incompetence " of the Bush administrations. In the Banking and Mortgage Scandal of 2008, the building trades, not to mention all of the bankruptcies that many unionized Corporations will now have the " right " to jettison their union contracts !! Many targets were hit with this strategy, all precipitated by the unexplained rise in gasoline prices. Increases, that at first blush, seemed to be, simply put, good old human Greed, but are the Oil Corps that stupid !!? They didn't get to make, since the Bush-Cheney administrations, a low-ball estimate of 600 BILLION DOLLARS IN PROFITS, by being stupid !!! The chain reaction went from people's personal lives, driving to work to vacationing, to the delivery of foods and goods and services. That in turn assisted the Mortgage debacle by undercutting the ability of thousands of borrowers from making their payments, thus the collapse of the housing market, still an industry with strong unions. It is still the historical assault on the unions by the Reagan-Bush-McCain Republicans and their union-busting dreams !!! Now, that the government is close to bankruptcy, we can expect a loud hue and cry about the cutting back on all the New Deal programs from Social Security, to public schools. A concerted effort of the return to America of the days of predatory capitalism !! Forget about a concerned government, there's no money, with two destructive wars, a Banking Scandal and greed, run amuck, by the Corporation. This is the legacy of the Bush-Cheney-McCain Republicans and if you want it to continue, than vote for McCain-Palin. They will not disappoint you, even though, they both have been investigated for official misconduct !!
SUPPORT OUR TROOPS, BRING THEM HOME, ALIVE AND WHOLE. NOW.
Posted by: Don Fitzgerald, Chicago | October 29, 2008 7:51 AM
"Get out the vote, union brothers and sisters !!"
That is what all this union support is about: getting rid of the right to vote in secret-ballot elections, in the privacy of a voting booth, on whether or not to be unionized. Under Employee-Free Choice Act, if over half the employees in a shop are convinced to sign cards, only those seeking legal authorization of the union will have any choice about whether there will be an election or not (fat chance). So, nobody who would have voted "no" to a particular union (they are not all the same) will be able to do so. Thanks for the exclusionary voting eligibility restriction, Barack.
Posted by: someone who knows Barack knows this is wrong. | October 29, 2008 2:39 PM