Obama’s union pandering: I’d walk picket line with you as president
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Democrat Barack Obama is telling union activists he would walk a picket line as president if organized labor helps elect him in 2008.
The Illinois senator also criticized President Bush’s policies toward working people.
`We are facing a Washington that has thrown open its doors to the most anti-union, anti-worker forces we’ve seen in generations” Obama said in remarks prepared for delivery Saturday night. “What we need to make real today is the idea that in this country we value the labor of every American.”
Obama was scheduled to speak to Iowa’s largest union representing more than 20,000 state workers.
Four other Democratic presidential candidates have courted activists at the annual convention of Council 61 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
Like his rivals, the Illinois senator challenged Bush’s labor policies and said he was committed to union causes.
“I stood on the picket line and marched with workers at the Congress Hotel in Chicago last week” Obama said. “I had marched with them four years earlier and I told them when I left that if they were still fighting four years from now, I’d be back on that picket line as president of the United States.”
Semi-related: Brian at Iowa Voice smacks down the leftosphere for another glaring example of their blatant hypocrisy, this time over a sign Mitt Romney held up at a recent campaign appearance which disparaged Obama the Great, a sign Dan Riehl doubts Romney even looked at before holding up next to the supporter who probably made it.
Wanna talk “offensive”? How about DNC Chair Howie Dean wearing a black and white kaffiyeh, which symbolizes solidarity to “the Palestinian cause,” back in 2004? Or making buddy buddy with Socialist candidate for president of France Segolene Royal and other Socialists back in 2006? Democrats have absolutely no room to talk when it comes to ‘offensive’ signs or symbolism.