Bill Clinton finally got to screw the SEIU for endorsing Barack Obama in 2008.
Yesterday's Arkansas primary wasn't as much a victory for Blanche Lincoln than it was payback for the Clintons. Despite the Clintons' virtually identical positions as Obama's on Healthcare, Financial Reform, and Climate Change, Blanche Lincoln did everything she could over the last 18 months to obstruct, dilute, or defeat everything the Democratic leadership and Barack Obama proposed. She was instrumental in killing the Public Option; she continues to oppose Employee Free Choice; she tried to block the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases. In other words, on key issues important to most Democratic voters, she sided with Republicans and big business.
So what did she get for screwing her constituents, her party, her president?
She got Bill Clinton to come down to Arkansas and campaign for her. She got Bill Clinton, demi-god rock star of the Democratic Party to say Blanche Lincoln was "one of us" while she votes to make it easier for Walmart to intimidate and fire employees who dare talk to union organizers. She got Bill freakin Clinton to say that Blanche Lincoln was the candidate who would stand up to special interest groups, while she took more campaign money from Big Oil than ANY OTHER POLITICIAN in America. WTF is going on here?
Good old Arkansas politics, that's what's going on here. In 2008 the SEIU stayed away from endorsing a Democratic presidential candidate during the early campaigning. Despite being wooed by every major candidate, including both Obama and Clinton, they waited. In February, 2008 as the giant Texas and Ohio loomed, and Hillary Clinton was gaining momentum, the SEIU stepped up and endorsed Obama. The Clinton's believed they deserved the endorsement, and saw it as a stab in the back (even though the SEIU never made any pretense that they were very happy with Clinton's tepid support for real labor reform during his presidency). Once SEIU broke, other labor unions followed, and Obama ended up with the support of a majority of unions, including the AFL-CIO and UAW.
Together with the AFL-CIO and other unions, SEIU is estimated to have spent 10 million dollars to show Blanche Lincoln what they thought of a Democrat who votes like (and with) Republicans. How supporting Big Oil, Big Banks, Big Business, and Big Insurance will not get you Big Labor support, but the back of their hand. Despite Lincoln's unapologetic and undisguised contempt for legislation that benefits rank and file labor, the most loyal supporters of the Democratic Party - and helps most middle class Americans too, Bill Clinton decided to get his pound of flesh at the cost of the very union workers who went door-to-door, worked the phones, and donated millions of dollars for his campaigns in 1992 and 1996. Bill Clinton flushed 10 million dollars of union workers paychecks down the sewer in a classic game of FU, Arkansas, down-in-the-mud politics. Clinton got Blanche Lincoln, the darling of every group that hates unions, the Democratic nomination.
My blinders are officially gone. I now know that Bill Clinton really doesn't give a crap about anybody except Bill Clinton. It's truly ironic that after getting so much support from Democrats after being caught screwing an intern, ten years later Bill ends up screwing those supporters too.