Robert Reich's Endorsement -- No Big Deal

Apparently, some people think it's big news that Robert Reich has decided to publicly endorse Barack Obama. We shouldn't be surprised. For months now, Reich has been criticizing Hillary Clinton on his blog and elsewhere, distorting her policies and her positions. He's criticized Senator Clinton's solutions on the foreclosure crisis, on health care and trade. He's been in the Obama camp for some time.

Despite his reputation as a liberal and a friend of working men and women, Reich knows how to walk both sides of the street. I recall that he rarely, if ever, mentioned unions during his four years as Secretary of Labor. He has no problem backing proposals that cheer business more than labor, like ending the corporate income tax. If you read his recent book, Supercapitalism, you would think Steve Forbes was the writer. But no, it's the former Secretary of Labor calling for eliminating a tax that helps keep down the tax burden on working men and women across this nation. Does Senator Obama support that Reich idea? Is eliminating the corporate income tax going to be part of the "change we can believe in"?

Reich says that corporate responsibility is counterproductive. He thinks it's a distraction. That's beautiful. Here we have a former Secretary of Labor, someone who should know better, taking the GOP line that corporations need to focus on making money and forget about everything else. The movement for social responsibility has promoted ethical decision-making in business, community development programs, day-care centers, HIV-AIDS training, family-friendly workplaces, and more. To suggest that those developments are a distraction from the responsibility of corporations to amass profits for shareholders, as Secretary Reich does in his book, is shameful.

So is his support for NAFTA. Reich says unfair trade pacts bear no responsibility for the decline in manufacturing jobs in the U.S. Two months ago, Reich wrote that "it's a shame the Democratic candidates for president feel they have to make trade - specifically NAFTA - the enemy of blue-collar workers and the putative cause of their difficulties. NAFTA is not to blame." He's wrong on NAFTA, just as Obama's chief economic advisor Professor Goolsbee was wrong on NAFTA.

Now the question is: Does Senator Obama support fair trade when his friends Goolsbee and Reich say "No."

Comments

[BrianBoru3]

McEntee says Reich has been in the Obama camp for some time yet he fails to articulate how being in the Obama camp is bad for AFSCME members. I am an AFSCME member and my recollection is that McEntee was thrilled to have Robert Reich attend AFSCME functions. It is telling that McEntee doesn't mention our union once in his post. Any of the top three candidates (Clinton, Edwards, Obama) would have been good for us. Yet McEntee chose to blow milions and millions of our money battling Obama. He should have saved the money for the general election in the fall. Now he is reduced to shilling for Clinton with completely irrelevant attacks on Robert Reich. Reich's endorsment must mean something to McEntee or he would not have written about it.

I am amazed at how many of the former Clinton administration people have endorsed Obama. They are collectively sending the rest of us a very significant message.

[efranklin]

What's the Judas tally now? Richardson, Reich, and who else?

[Benmyoho]

Excellent post there Mr. McCentee. Ony the riffraff and the dullards are attracted to the Obama flame. The better for Hillary to shed the useless and the clueless . And Carter? Yikes!

[Serfie]

Obama is a free-trader and I don't know why the Obama Thugocrats keep denying this. He takes a neo- liberal position during all his speeches.

Actually, all three candidates left are unapologetic free traders. It is disgraceful, really.

In 1994, the US had a billion dollar trade surplus with Mexico. In 2007, the US has a $75 billion trade deficit with Mexico.

The US needs tariffs now. We don't need higher taxes on US labor and business. The US government spent most of its history getting its financing from tariffs. We need to go back to the system that worked for us before.

[lisakaz]

It seems you're disappointed here with Reich "distorting" HRC's views. How is that possible when HRC does such a fine job distorting them herself?

At any rate, I'd rather have Bruce Springsteen's endorsement. I guess my age and social background is showing.

Sign me,
Working Class PhD

[boombox]

This is almost like a parody of a Clinton camp dismissal of an Obama supporter!

"God's endorsement of Senator Obama carries little weight, since so few people actually believe in him, he has shown his support for the unwashed and, last time we checked, there are no primaries in heaven."

[foufou]

Only a big deal if this endorsement had been for Clinton

[deekay]

Your wrong...it is no big deal. He's not even a superdelegate. His opinion is no more important than yours or mine

[jade7243]

Here! Here!...

The fact the Clinton advisors have told the Canadians that she IS PLAYING the wink, wink, nod, nod game with regard to NAFTA excapes Mr. McEntee. But he's looking for a bigger payoff should -- as likely as an asteroid striking downtwon Philly at 3 p.m. TODAY -- become the Democratic nominee.

Members of his union should be concerned that he has associated himself with persons known for the facility with which they lie. That does not bode well for the men and women McEntee should be representing. It means that they should expect him to set up sweetheart deals that line his pockets while they go without the representation their hard work deserves.

Yep, the former Secretary of Labor under the Clintons, a man who had the cajones to DEMAND that Hillary report to the Cabinet just what the hell she was doing with regard to healthcare, and who knows the Clintons intimately enough to know the "say-anything" politics of the 1990s continues with them unabated, endorsed Obama.

Big deal he says. DAMN BIG DEAL, I say.

[PauletteRevere]

He doesn't mind Hillary's apparent *winkwink* to Colombia either---sending Penn (as it appears, and she hasn't said otherwise) to reassure Uribe that she believes differently about trade behind the scenes. Or Bill's $800,000 from Colombia which, in a shared account, becomes THEIR $800,000 from Colombia.

Hillary, not Obama, is very vulnerable on trade issues (not to mention having as her top campaign strategist, Mark Penn, who is an anti-union lobbyist).

[DinOhio]

I wasn't aware that the Democratic Party was supposed to be monolithic in its thinking about policy matters. I see nothing wrong with the diversity of opinions within a cadre of advisors - isn't this what Obama has indicated he wanted? Reich has been decrying the negative Clinton campaign now for some time. I think it is also significant that two former US Senators, known as conservative Democrats, have also endorsed Obama. This sends an important signal to like-minded Democrats that Obama can bring the Party together after his nomination is finally secured.

[UrsaMajority]

I've read a couple of Reich's books and have met him when we worked in the same small government agency. He's a lot more complex about trade and corporate issues than McA gives him credit for. The dude is so astonishingly brilliant in his ability to comprehend the effect of action A on sectors B, C and D that it would make your head spin. He was probably the only Clinton appointee that could understand the linkage between their actions and actual American prosperity, while able to do that with something more than the standard Republican approach of "let's let the corporations do whatever they want."

His endorsement means a great deal on matters far beyond economic policy. Perhaps most importantly, he's seen Hillary at close range when she was "getting all that experience in the White House" and isn't particularly impressed with her character. That speaks volumes. And just because he may have been leaning toward Obama for some time hardly disqualifies him as an endorser -- it just means he's given some thought to the matter.

[tangolopez]

Well, well, well. Is James Carville your middle name?

[kindofblue]

Mr. McEntee may be looking for a job in November.

[hwebb54]

Thank god there are people on this web site that actually have sense. Reich has telegraphed his endorsement for months and now its big news? Just because someone worked in the Clinton adminastration doesn't mean that he is automatically going to endorse Hillary Clinton. Frankly after what was in this article, I'm actually glad he is not on her side. Thanks for being a minority voice of reason on here. We need more people like you writing.

[suntzu]

Sour grapes? Would Clinton has turned her nose up at a Reich Endorsement?

Let us put this in perspective: on his blog Reich himself says his endorsement of Obama does not mean much politically. He says, and I take him at his word, he is doing it because he became appalled at Clinton's negative tactics.

So whatever McCentee thinks about Reich's endorsement, Reich has made an important point, that point being even though he is a past member of a Clinton administration, he has only so much tolerance for dirty politics.

Strangely this echoes the sentiments of another former Clinton cabinet member who has since endorsed Obama for the same reasons. Clinton's own former associates are appalled at the way Hillary is trying to win the nomination, and they are speaking up.

[AuntSally]

Newsflash: Clinton surrogate proclaims that "Whoever just endorsed the other guy, it's no big deal. Really"

[Tejano1]

i see through this guy like a saran wrap. totally ridiculous to try and smear reich, a former clinton cabinet member, and make like it's no big deal. talk about whistling past the graveyard. it's over for clinton the lying hack. maybe she can go duck hunting now. she'll have plenty of time.

[RobertArend]

As a recently retired Commonwealth of Pennsylvania employee, I have the comfort of good pension and quality healthcare coverage. This could not have been without the exceptional representation most Commonwealth employees have depended upon from AFSCME over the last forty years..

Still, McEntee must recognize that governmental services depend on private-sector jobs that provide the very same quality of life wages, healthcare and security in retirement enjoyed by unionized government workers. Hillary Clinton lies when she says she never supported NAFTA nor supports expansion to Peru and Columbia.

To all the taxpayers of Pennsylvania, thank you for appreciating and paying for the plows of winter, the pothole patchings of spring, the parks of summer, the year-round care of our veterans and so much more. We need you to keep doing that, so we need you to earn enough to continue doing so. You are the source of all that is good about government, and you deserve the very same wages and benefits you so generously grant your employees.

The fantasy of the rich and powerful that, no matter how poor and sick regular Americans become, we will just strum on our banjos and dance the night away in ignorant bliss, is to revive the very stereotype of the slave that, if urgent changes are not made soon, will be the common condition.

So, for the hope of this nation, I must break ranks with my own union. I will be voting April 22nd for Barack Obama.

__two hats