WASHINGTON, D.C.—One segment of the electorate that was especially fired up about the presidential election was the working people. Surveys show that they strongly supported Obama.
Many unions led a nationwide mobilization and outreach effort that reached millions of working families across the country to elect Barack Obama and other Democrat candidates. They saw Barack Obama as better able than John McCain to help the working man or woman achieve the “American Dream,” which seems to be slipping away for many, according to “Change to Win.”
“Change to Win” is a coalition of seven unions, which had endorsed Barack Obama in February. The group held a news conference on Nov. 6 at the National Press Club to describe their efforts to get out the vote for Obama. Union workers and spokespersons were joined by Democratic pollster Celinda Lake and economist Lawrence Mishel, who gave their interpretations of the meaning of the election results.
“Barack Obama scored a decisive victory, winning among working Americans 51 percent to John McCain’s 39 percent, with 10 percent either not sure or voting for a third party candidate,” said Celinda Lake, president of Lake Research Partners, which conducted the sixth American Dream Survey—a telephone survey of 900 non-supervisory workers nationwide, during, and just a few days before the election. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.3 percent.
Among young workers, the difference is even wider: Obama with 58 percent to McCain’s 34 percent.
“Solid majorities [of working Americans] believe it is Barack Obama over John McCain who [had] the best vision for restoring the American Dream, 54 percent versus 27 percent,” said Ms. Lake.
The American Dream survey determined that the American Dream includes: having a job to support a family, being able to ensure children have the opportunity to succeed, having a secure and dignified retirement, and having affordable quality health care.
The picture for working people is bleak, according to Dr. Mishel’s statistical charts.
“The typical male’s hourly wage has been stuck for 34 years and only grew in the late 1990s,” said Mishel. Women’s wage growth did better, but his graph showed no wage gain for either men or women workers in recent years.
In 1973, Mishel said CEOs earned 27 times the typical worker. In 2007, they earned 275 times the wages of a typical worker.
“…working Americans [perceived] John McCain as the candidate who [was] most influenced by big corporations and CEOs–46% McCain, 23% Obama, 15% both influenced by corporations and CEOs,” said Lake.
Dr. Mishel added that unemployment is on the rise, with more than two million more unemployed since March 2007, and 1.5 million working part-time but want full-time work. Compounding a sense of loss of the American Dream is the fact that employer-provided health coverage has been shrinking.
The Election: Once in a Lifetime Opportunity
When a battleground state like Ohio went for Obama and red states in the past, Indiana, Virginia, North Carolina, and Nevada, were turned into blue states, the result was partly due to Obama’s army of volunteers who worked in these states. The ‘red’ states Indiana and North Carolina preferred Obama by only 26,000 and 12,000 votes, respectively, according to the final tallies. No doubt campaign workers who knocked on doors and expanded the electorate played crucial roles in delivering these two states.
The victory margins were larger in other battleground states that Obama won–Ohio, Florida, Nevada, Colorado, and New Mexico–but Obama’s army of volunteers may have been critical there too in converting these red states in 2004 into blue states in 2008.
“We didn’t have to encourage or cajole people to campaign. They came out in droves,” said Edgar Romney, from UNITE HERE, which focused on turning out record numbers of Latino voters in Nevada. More than three-fourths (76%) of Latinos voted for Obama in Nevada.
Romney said that he and his volunteers saw this election as a once in a lifetime opportunity.
Several working persons, who held no leadership roles in their unions, gave testimonials–short emotional speeches at the press conference about their experiences of knocking on doors for Obama in often very uncongenial areas. Sometimes they spoke of what it was like in poor areas where the occupants despaired that their lives could be improved by voting.
“It was an incredible experience,” said Teresa Ransone from the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 400 in Virginia, “to talk to people one on one.”
“You can’t imagine how difficult it is out there, especially in North Carolina,” said Keith McCorkle, who has been with the Teamsters for 27 years. He ridiculed the Reagan economics’ ‘trickle-down’ theory, whereby the financial success of the well-to-do will lead to more income for those at the lower end.
“I didn’t see any of the trickle, I didn’t see a drop,” McCorkle said.
McCorkle’s sentiments against Reaganonomics were echoed in the American Dream Survey, which found two-thirds (68%) of workers agree that government has to be part of the solution compared to 27 percent who said government is the problem. The American Dream Survey found that a majority (56%) of American workers say that the current economic crisis is the result of deregulation, and “a lack of corporate oversight that let greed run wild,” said Celinda Lake.
The union workers frequently mentioned the importance of health care provided by their employer. Jennifer Pullom, SEIU in Columbus, Ohio, left her job of treating troubled 12-21 year-olds to volunteer, concerned that her clients would be losing coverage. “Obama—He brought hope back alive in me,” she said. She said the youngsters she worked with “needed someone for them to look up to,” and that “was why Obama was important.”
All the union speakers expressed immense satisfaction in seeing the red state they worked in turn into a blue state.
Change to Win is a partnership of seven unions founded in 2005 that represents a total of six million workers. The seven affiliated unions are: Service Employees International Union (SEIU), UNITE HERE, United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW), International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Laborers' International Union of North America, United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America, and United Farm Workers of America