Union Members Urge Kerry to Warm Up

[Thrill]

Democrat John Kerry (news - web sites) "doesn't warm anybody up," and organized labor must help him create an emotional bond if fence-sitting union members are to vote for him in November, according to focus groups of undecided union voters.

The findings offer fresh evidence that Kerry's reputation for aloofness is a hurdle the presumptive Democratic nominee must overcome — even among his party's core constituencies. And despite the acidity labor leaders direct toward Bush and his policies, he still appeals to a segment of union members, namely the Reagan Democrats.


Though very early in the race, the focus groups highlight the work facing organized labor as it tries to energize and mobilize voters on behalf of Kerry.


Union swing voters are "one small slice" of the labor federation's 13.1 million membership, said AFL-CIO spokeswoman Lane Windham.


"Our job is to make sure that they have the information to make decisions based on the issues rather than issues that are not particularly substantive," she said.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040413/ap_on_el_pr/kerry_likability&cid=694&ncid=1963&sid=96378798

[JI7]

1. Kerry won the labor union votes but "reagan democrats" are another issue

he will probably need someone who has more appeal among republicans for that. kerry can easily get the majority of union members. but in a close election it would help to have the reagan democrats come to kerry's side. i think john edwards and dick gephardt can help with those voters.

[Thrill]

2. Stuff like this just proves

he is going to HAVE to get someone like Edwards as his VP. I like Clark but he doesn't fire anyone up and neither does Graham. Edwards is clearly the best choice.

[JI7]

3. many Edwards supporters were those who "like" Bush

this means those people don't hate bush as many democrats do, but they are having problems with things he does. in a close race if edwards or someone else can help kerry in getting even a few of those reagan democrats it could help win the state.

these people see kerry as the typical massachusettes liberal democrat. and he has a liberal voting record which backs up that image. in wisconsin edwards closed in on kerry because of the moderate voters, especially moderate independents and republicans. if only democrats could vote, edwards would never have come in as close as he did to kerry in wisconsin.

and i agree, kerry needs to take this into consideration when picking his vp.

[Nicholas_J]

6. Reagan Democrats seem to be vanishing

All polls that indicate which republicans will be voting for Kerry and which Democrats will be voting for Bush have these crossover voters down to the lowest level in the history of the last 60 years. The percentage of Democrats who will vote for Bush has dropped from about 10 percent in December to 3 percent early in April. Slightly more Republicans will cross over to vote for Kerry.

Proving the one thing we all know. That this president has polarized the nation more than any other president in Recent history.

Kerry is smart to wait until the 9/11. comission makes its judgement, and even more intelligent to wait until he comes out in full attack on the presiedents Iraq policies until after July 1st.

The statements about Kerry having no Iraq strategy is simpply coming from journalists who are not paying attention to Kerry's rock steady ideas on going into Iraq in the first place. He has not varied his stance on this from the time he publihed an op-ed piece in the New York Times in Septemeber, 2002.

[JI7]

7. well, they are mostly republicans or independents now

but i think there are still a few conservative leaning republicans and independents what might cross over based on kerry's vp choice. even without the vp , i know kerry already has some republicans crossing over for him.

i agree with everything else you said about making judgements on the 9/11 commission and the lies about having no iraq policy.

[Nicholas_J]

8. What I find most curious

Is the statement that the Bush Administration could do nothing to prevent 9/11 from occuring (the events, not the date. I have to admit that there is no way that they could have prevented the day september 11th from occuring, as it almost always falls between the 10th and the 12th every year).

If you remember that the FBI had 2 of the people who were on two different aircraft, and that these two were piloting two separate aircraft, and then recall the videotape found in Afghanistan in which Osama and his buddies were congratualting thmeselves on the planning,in which they mentioned that each of the four groups operated independently and had no idea that the other groups existed or had any idea of who was part of the other groups so they could not identify the members of the other groups and ALSO that only one person had knowledge of their own groups mission and target, that the others had no idea that they were on a suicide mission, then ratcheting up operations to find and arrest these two men would have prevented at least two of the aircraft from performing their assigned missions, as all the other members of their groups knew was that they were to board certain flights at certain times carrying certain innocouos pieces of equipment (box cutters). They could not pilot the planes themselves, and had no idea of their targets.So at worse, all they could do would be to board the planes and perhaps hijack them. And that would have only occured if the arrested men did not talk and identify the members of their own groups. In any case, this would have prevented at least two of the flights from resulting in a terrorist piloting the aircraft, which could have at least prevented any two of the scenarios that occured from occurring. One trade ceter or both, or the pentagon strike might have been prevented. The terrorist who remained could have hijacked two planes and maybe killed the pilots resulting in crashes somewhere, but theyt really would have had avery hard time of forcing the pilots to willingly fly the planes where they wanted them to and most certainly the pilots would not have flown into a building at the orders of someone who had hijacked the planes. So in essence, the fact that their were warnings out about two of the hijackers who ended up piloting the planes could have greatly lessened the tragedy of that day simply had the FBI been required to step up its search for these two, or if, as Clark had said, their faces were plastered all over the front page of major newspapers and on the television screens for the weeks between the time the FBI wanted to find them. I worked in the Florida libraries where these guys were sneding their emails from, though not at the time they were doing it, but my girlfriend did, and photos or BOLO's sent out to the local libraries would have instantly resulted in the arrest of these guys, as libraries always got BOLO's for criminals suspected to be in the area, and in fact in the town wqhere I live a friend of mine called the cops after a BOLO was faxed to their library and a convict who had escaped from prison was caught within an hour of her getting the BOLO. It turns out that one of the terrorist on the flight was using the library system's internet access to email info back and forth and this could have been easily prevented with something as simple as using this method.

These guys were very obvious in their suspicious behavior according to my friends who worked at the South Florida libraries they used terminals at, and were always screwing up using the email accounts and demanding that the librarians fix what was wrong , but at the same time covering up the poprtions of the screens that had the text they were tying on with pieces of paper so that the librarians could not see it. Had these people been warned to keep an eye out for such overtly suspicious behavior, I cannot imagine these guys not being arrested within ten minutes of the information going out.

[Nicholas_J]

9. What I find most curious

Is the statement that the Bush Administration could do nothing to prevent 9/11 from occuring (the events, not the date. I have to admit that there is no way that they could have prevented the day september 11th from occuring, as it almost always falls between the 10th and the 12th every year).

If you remember that the FBI had 2 of the people who were on two different aircraft, and that these two were piloting two separate aircraft, and then recall the videotape found in Afghanistan in which Osama and his buddies were congratualting thmeselves on the planning,in which they mentioned that each of the four groups operated independently and had no idea that the other groups existed or had any idea of who was part of the other groups so they could not identify the members of the other groups and ALSO that only one person had knowledge of their own groups mission and target, that the others had no idea that they were on a suicide mission, then ratcheting up operations to find and arrest these two men would have prevented at least two of the aircraft from performing their assigned missions, as all the other members of their groups knew was that they were to board certain flights at certain times carrying certain innocouos pieces of equipment (box cutters). They could not pilot the planes themselves, and had no idea of their targets.So at worse, all they could do would be to board the planes and perhaps hijack them. And that would have only occured if the arrested men did not talk and identify the members of their own groups. In any case, this would have prevented at least two of the flights from resulting in a terrorist piloting the aircraft, which could have at least prevented any two of the scenarios that occured from occurring. One trade ceter or both, or the pentagon strike might have been prevented. The terrorist who remained could have hijacked two planes and maybe killed the pilots resulting in crashes somewhere, but theyt really would have had avery hard time of forcing the pilots to willingly fly the planes where they wanted them to and most certainly the pilots would not have flown into a building at the orders of someone who had hijacked the planes. So in essence, the fact that their were warnings out about two of the hijackers who ended up piloting the planes could have greatly lessened the tragedy of that day simply had the FBI been required to step up its search for these two, or if, as Clark had said, their faces were plastered all over the front page of major newspapers and on the television screens for the weeks between the time the FBI wanted to find them. I worked in the Florida libraries where these guys were sneding their emails from, though not at the time they were doing it, but my girlfriend did, and photos or BOLO's sent out to the local libraries would have instantly resulted in the arrest of these guys, as libraries always got BOLO's for criminals suspected to be in the area, and in fact in the town wqhere I live a friend of mine called the cops after a BOLO was faxed to their library and a convict who had escaped from prison was caught within an hour of her getting the BOLO. It turns out that one of the terrorist on the flight was using the library system's internet access to email info back and forth and this could have been easily prevented with something as simple as using this method.

These guys were very obvious in their suspicious behavior according to my friends who worked at the South Florida libraries they used terminals at, and were always screwing up using the email accounts and demanding that the librarians fix what was wrong , but at the same time covering up the poprtions of the screens that had the text they were tying on with pieces of paper so that the librarians could not see it. Had these people been warned to keep an eye out for such overtly suspicious behavior, I cannot imagine these guys not being arrested within ten minutes of the information going out.

[Zinfandel]

4. Why ANY union member would vote for ANY union hating republicans

is mind blowing to me...Republican ideology is to destroy unions on fundamental principles, the are and support corporations whose philosophy is to get rid of, bad mouth and bust unions any way they can. Unions are the workers and the middle class best friend...it's simply workers standing together to insure everything the republican & corporations despise...decent wages, with annual increases if profit are up, health insurance and medical & dental benefits, fighting to keep jobs in the US, increasing minimum wage, overtime pay, safety on the job for workers and vacation and retirement benefits and protecting jobs of it's workers jobs from vindictive management.

Of course that cuts into corporations and republican stock holders bottom line and they want every penny, fuck the workers and unions...
So I can not understand why any union member needs incentive to vote for Kerry and the Democrats?

[sandnsea]

13. Some union people hate unions

It's true. I've read some of the comments on the firefighters for bush web site. They think their union leader is for Kerry because he supports funding for more firefighters and that means the union will get more dues. They hate him. I've heard other union members get angry at strikes for "sticking it to the company". Crazy.

[Township75]

5. Maybe Kerry could start break-dancing on stage or something

to liven up his performance. Just picture him finishing up his speech with a windmill or moon walk. Now that will get votes!

[IndianaGreen]

10. As long as Kerry embraces NAFTA

the only hearts he will warm are those of the union bosses, not the rank-and-file.

[JI7]

11. and that's why they support Bush ?

since when is bush anti nafta ? this refers to union members who prefer bush over kerry and reasons given have nothing to do with nafta but because they see bush as some moral person.

[sandnsea]

12. Bush - "with a nice family and good moral values,"

Anybody who still thinks this is voting against the "ungodly liberals" and it has nothing to do with John Kerry. They aren't swing voters, they're Republicans. The union needs to understand the difference.