{"id":284,"date":"2008-11-05T11:09:14","date_gmt":"2008-11-05T09:09:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/?p=284"},"modified":"2008-11-05T11:09:14","modified_gmt":"2008-11-05T09:09:14","slug":"roosevelt-or-clinton-obama-must-choose","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/roosevelt-or-clinton-obama-must-choose\/","title":{"rendered":"Roosevelt or Clinton? Obama must choose"},"content":{"rendered":"

After the cheering has died down, the empty champagne bottles recycled and we awaken to a new day in America, many of us are asking the question: what next?<\/strong>
\nOne doesn’t need a crystal ball to predict what Obama will do in his first few months in office. The new Democratic president is going to introduce new legislation, re-order budget priorities, and attempt sweeping change. Top priorities will include grappling with the economic crisis, climate change and health care.
\nIt’s important therefore to contrast the first few years of the Roosevelt administration with that of Clinton \u2013 and to ask which type of president Obama will be.<\/p>\n


\nIn 1992, Bill Clinton had a long shopping list of changes he promised to implement with health care at the very top of his agenda. But he failed on that central issue and within two years, Republicans had regained control of Congress.
\nRoosevelt, on the other hand, managed to pass the most sweeping package of social reforms ever \u2013 the glorious New Deal. And his New Deal coalition kept the Democrats in power for twenty years. In fact, it wasn’t until 36 years after Roosevelt’s 1932 victory that a right-wing Republican would enter the White House. You could even make the case that it wasn’t until Reagan’s 1980 landslide that the New Deal coalition was finally broken \u2013 after dominating American politics for 48 years.<\/strong>
\nOne difference between the Clinton and Roosevelt models is what happened to the trade unions under their administrations.
\nIt’s been said by some historians that much of the New Deal \u2013 the \u201cbank holiday\u201d, the injection of public funds into the economy and so on \u2013 was actually a continuation of policies that Herbert Hoover and the Republicans had started. That may be true. But there was one piece of legislation the Republicans would never have passed: the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA).
\nThe significance of the NLRA was that it lead to a massive growth of industrial unions. Those unions provided the foundation for the New Deal coalition<\/strong> that dominated American politics for nearly a half century.
\nIt was by enabling workers to organize themselves that Roosevelt permanently<\/strong> transformed America. Many of the other New Deal laws have long since been forgotten \u2013 but unions remain a force in America even today.
\nClinton, on the other hand, did not enact new legislation to make it easier for unions to organize. Despite strong union backing for Clinton, the unions received very little in the eight years of Democratic rule from 1993-2001.
\nTo really, truly change America (or any other country), you need strong and independent trade unions. They are the bedrock of democracy. They are the engine of social change.
\nThat’s why unions today have made the enactment of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) central to their legislative program. It should be President Obama’s top priority<\/strong>.
\nThe EFCA will enable unions to secure workplace recognition using card check. It will make it much harder for employers to terrorize workers into rejecting unions. If enacted, unions will grow.
\nIf you can get this part right, if you can end the climate of fear in American workplaces and allow unions to flourish, a second New Deal coalition becomes possible.
\nAmerica doesn’t need a one-term Democratic president. For real change, the country needs decades of liberal Democratic rule \u2013 just as it had in the years that the New Deal coalition dominated the country’s politics.<\/strong>
\nThose were the decades that created the American middle class.
\nNo other plank in the Democratic platform \u2013 not health insurance, not ending poverty, not even dealing successfully with climate change \u2013 will be possible in a country where unions represent only a tiny fraction of the workforce.
\nStrong unions are the key to making real change happen. Everyone who voted for Obama must know that. It’s a message the unions have got to get out.
\nThe question for President Obama and the Democratic Congress is whether they will emulate Clinton’s failure or Roosevelt’s success.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After the cheering has died down, the empty champagne bottles recycled and we awaken to a new day in America, many of us are asking the question: what next? One doesn’t need a crystal ball…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-web-exclusive"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}