Keep your eyes on the prize: Dump Trump and Ditch Mitch

By BERRY CRAIG

AFT Local 1360

Political parties are like big league baseball teams. Okay, I'm a Democrat, a Yankee fan and it's spring training.

The good of the team and of the party are supposed to take precedence over the good of an individual player or a politician. Everybody is supposed to pull together all the way to the World Series or to the White House.

So my mind wandered to the Grapefruit League on Super Tuesday while I watched the returns roll in on MSNBC. 

Too many "my-way-or-the-highway" attitudes on the field on in the clubhouse can ruin a team's chances of a slot in the Fall Classic. The same attitudes can rob a party of the presidency, especially in a hotly-contested primary. 

It now looks like Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders with be taking on Donald Trump. Both have said they'll support whoever wins. Both have their eyes on the prize: beating Trump.

So does Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., who is strong for Sanders. "I’ve said throughout this entire process that what is so important is that we ultimately unite behind who that Democratic nominee is,” she declared on Late Night with Seth Meyers Thursday night." And I think it’s a two-way street. I’ve been concerned by some folks that say if Bernie’s the nominee, they won’t support him—and the other way around.

She added, “Right now, November, you know, this is more important than all of us. And we really need to make sure that we defeat Donald Trump at the polls."

Kudos to her for promising she'll vote for Biden if he wins. Here's hoping other ardent Sanders supporters will do likewise. Ditto for Biden backers if Sanders wins.

Anyway, Jeff Wiggins, our Kentucky State AFL-CIO secretary treasurer, has a message for the "my-way-or-the-highway" types in politics: "If your candidate loses in a primary, you can’t take your ball and go home.” 

He's right. Party members who refuse to get behind the primary winner and not vote for him or her in the general election is, in effect, casting a  ballot for the opposition. So is protest voting for some third party candidate who has no chance to win. 

Meanwhile, a lot more unifies Biden and Sanders than divides them.  

Memo to "Bernie Bros:" Cool it with your online bile, bloviating against Biden and demonizing anybody else who doesn't "Feel the Bern." That's straight out of Trump's playbook. Biden is center-left, but that doesn't make him Trump lite.

Memo to Biden-leaning Democrats tempted to red-bait Sanders over his Castro comments: Sanders is a democratic socialist, not a communist. They're not the same thing, not by a long shot. Insinuating that they are is more Trump-style bilge. (Some of us lifelong Democrats--admittedly an endangered species in Kentucky--are fans of Scandinavian-style democratic socialism, also called social democracy.

Memo to Bros and baiters: Trump is loving how you're doing his divide-and-conquer dirty work for him.

At any rate, the AFL-CIO hasn't endorsed anybody for president. But individual unions and union members are with "Uncle Joe" and "Feeling the Bern." It's no wonder, both candidates have collected labor support in their past campaigns. Click here and here to see their 2020 labor platform planks.

But every union member I know is voting Blue, no matter who, on Nov. 3. Me, too.    

The Democratic Attorneys General Association is clued in. "We're hearing Democrats say they'll sit out the 2020 election if their first-choice candidate isn't the nominee," the group says in a fun-raising email. "The only thing that matters in the 2020 presidential election...[is] defeating Donald Trump." No Democrat can beat Trump "if Democrats can't agree to rally behind the eventual nominee."

Amen again. 

Unions know about rallying together on general election days for candidates who are in our corner. It's called "solidarity." 

We saw it last year when a trio of Democrats vied for a crack at Republican Matt Bevin, one of the most--if not the most---anti-union governors in Bluegrass State history. Rocky Adkins, Andy Beshear and Adam Edelen had union support; hence the state AFL-CIO stayed neutral for the  primary. No sooner did Beshear come out on top than the state AFL-CIO unanimously endorsed him, and he won in November.

Jeff and I are on the state COPE Committee that voted thumbs-up for Beshear. Jeff and I go way back; before he headed for the state HQ in Frankfort, he was a longtime president of the Paducah-based Western Kentucky AFL-CIO Area Council, where I'm the recording secretary.

In 2016, most of us supported Sanders in the Kentucky primary. But all of us who were for Sanders pledged to vote for Hillary Clinton if she won the nomination. Our pro-Clinton brothers and sisters promised to vote for Sanders.

I'd bet next month's Social Security check that there'll be the same solidarity at our CLC--and in union halls nationwide--after a nominee emerges this time, either from the primaries or at the Democratic National Convention.

 We know what's at stake on Nov. 3. We know that if you get mad because your candidate happened to lose and you "take your ball and go home," you're helping reelect Donald Trump as sure as if you voted for him. 

Trump claims he's on our side. Not even when hogs fly and kids quit shooting hoops in Kentucky.

Trump is the most anti-union president since Herbert Hoover. Click here, here, here, here and here.

Donald Trump's not just a union buster, he's also a serial liar, a pandering bigot, a hate monger and a dangerous demagogue who believes that government’s main function is making rich people like him richer.

We know that Trump was born on third base and acts like he hit a triple. (Neither Biden nor Sanders came into the world with silver spoons in their mouths. They got where they are on merit.)

We know that Trump thinks government has no responsibility to help people who need help and has no obligation to safeguard workers on the job. We know that Trump spurns our democratic allies, worships military might (but "Cadet Bone Spurs" actively avoided the draft and fighting in Vietnam in his youth) and cozies with murderous dictators like his pal Putin. (All that's un-Biden and un-Sanders.)

By all means vote your choice in the May 19 presidential primary. But come fall, it's time to back whoever wins the primary.

PS: The same goes for the Senate primary. We're blessed with three Democrats who stand with us: Charles Booker, Mike Broihier and Amy McGrath. Vote for your favorite, then get behind the winner against Mitch McConnell, Trump's top toady. 

It's easy to remember: Dump Trump and Ditch Mitch.