3-24-06, 9:06 am
Lake gave her findings, of gloom and doom for Bush and the GOP, but of warnings to Democrats and their labor allies, at the March 12 opening session of the Communications Workers’ four day D.C. political/legislative conference.
“Voters view both parties as distasteful,” she added. “There is no clear Democratic alternative in voters’ minds.”
One key CWAer, Secretary-Treasurer Barbara Easterling, agreed, adding the union would push the party to build a platform to take to voters this fall.
“People are sick and tired of leaders giving them the shaft and of being lied to. But the Democrats have to get their act together and run a national campaign,” Easterling, a Democratic National Committee member, declared in her address the same day. If the Democrats don’t, “We’ll have to push them into the right strategy.”
Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean, speaking to the several hundred delegates the next day, tried to answer Lake’s findings.
He stated the party would run this year on a 6-point message of honesty in government, “telling the truth to our citizens and our soldiers before sending them off to war, jobs that will stay in America,” retirement security, full funding for education and a health care system that covers everyone.
“Will we be the party of change? Yes,” he promised.
And even though Lake’s poll showed the delegates that the Republicans still retain an edge in voter trust on fighting terrorism (54 percent-37 percent) and on the war in Iraq (48-45 GOP), Dean said Democrats will battle on Bush and the GOP on that.
Citing the now-dead deal that saw the Bush administration approve a $6.8 billion sale of terminals at six U.S. ports to the United Arab Emirates-owned Dubai Ports World, Dean noted the Bush administration has spent $20 billion on airport security since the 2001 terrorist attacks but only $631 million on port security.
And its proposed budget for the year starting Oct. 1, he adds, cuts security funds for “first responders” – police, Fire Fighters and emergency medical technicians, such as the IAFF members who died at the World Trade Center – by 23 percent.
“We’re less secure now than before 9-11,” Dean said, referring to the terror attacks. “It’s been five years, and they’re weak on security. Osama Bin Laden is still running around somewhere. North Korea has nuclear weapons and Iran is closer day by day to doing so,” he declared, of both the terrorist leader and the two nations. The Democrats would attack on those security issues, Dean added.
But while Lake said Democrats win with voters on the issues, she also warned the crowd that issues are not the whole story. After all, she pointed out, polls showed voters in 2004 agreed with the Democrats on the issues, too – but they lost the White House to Bush. “It’s not issues,” she warned. “We need to articulate a vision.”
And on the issue that voters termed the largest – the Iraq war – a majority now agrees that “we should have stayed out,” but voters are split on what to do now that we’re there. Of those surveyed, 38 percent favor withdrawal but on a set timetable, 27 percent favor immediate withdrawal, and 23 percent favor keeping present troop levels.
In a conference spiked with plans to register and get out the vote this fall, Lake also warned that taking back the GOP-run Congress in 2006 would be largely a matter of turnout. While the Democrats have a 13-point lead among all those questioned in terms of whom voters would like to see running Congress, the lead falls to six points among likely voters, she noted.
Further, she added, when asked whether they voted in 2004, key Democratic constituencies such as poor women (65 percent), young people (53 percent) and Hispanic voters (56 percent) trailed far behind the key GOP constituency of born-again Christians (83 percent).
Easterling added one other big target to nationalize the fall election: Bush.
“King George is acting not as an executor of democracy, but more like the ruler of a totalitarian state,” she noted, just days before Bush reiterated his policy of pre-emptive war. But in case any CWA delegates missed what Bush’s totalitarian tendencies mean for themselves, their families and their unions, Easterling added: “This is a government of, by and for big business – and they seek nothing less than the total destruction of the labor movement.”
From International Labor Communications Association
