Re: Short-Term Tactics at Odds with Medium-Term Needs
Marvin Gandall wrote:
Nathan Newman wrote:
Politics is about choices in use of resources. Unions and their allies have made the judgement that minimum wage and fair share health care are two of the best strategies to make advances for working people this year. And there are campaigns supporting both of them in states across the country.
This is an important point which has wider applicability beyond this discussion.
One of the great misconceptions in politics, especially on the left, is that you get to “choose” your campaigns, rather than have them chosen for you by the opportunities which present themselves.
But large actors, like organized labor, can redefine those alternatives. Unions like SEIU have chosen to make a big deal out of “fair share” health schemes - this wasn’t presented to them by someone else. It’s very hard to imagine a real grassroots movement spontaneously developing over something as wonky as pay or play - it’s a creature of policy professionals, enthusiastically embraced by unions that don’t want to rock the boat too much.
Doug