> Marvin Gandall wrote:
>
>>Nathan Newman wrote:
>>
>>>Politics is about choices in use of resources. Unions and their allies
>>>have
>>>made the judgement that minimum wage and fair share health care are two
>>>of
>>>the best strategies to make advances for working people this year. And
>>>there are campaigns supporting both of them in states across the country.
>>---------------------------------------------------
>>This is an important point which has wider applicability beyond this
>>discussion.
>>
>>One of the great misconceptions in politics, especially on the left, is
>>that
>>you get to "choose" your campaigns, rather than have them chosen for you
>>by
>>the opportunities which present themselves.
>
> But large actors, like organized labor, can redefine those alternatives.
> Unions like SEIU have chosen to make a big deal out of "fair share" health
> schemes - this wasn't presented to them by someone else. It's very hard to
> imagine a real grassroots movement spontaneously developing over something
> as wonky as pay or play - it's a creature of policy professionals,
> enthusiastically embraced by unions that don't want to rock the boat too
> much.
--------------------------------
But don't you have to assume that the union policymakers decided on the
strategy because they think forcing some state legislatures to implement
mandatory employer coverage is more politically "realizable" at this time
than getting legislation for universal medicare at the state or federal
level? Wouldn't they, in deciding between these two approaches, have taken
into account the strength of the opposition they would face from corporate
lobbies and at the political level as well as the potential for mobilizing
their own base as a counterweight in each case? What self-interest do they
have in preventing their members from making larger gains?
Most every strategic discussion I've been involved in - and I expect his is true of others on the list in their different fields as well - has ultimately turned on the "relationship of forces" issue. I often disagreed with those who I thought were being too conservative in their anaysis, sometimes mistakenly. But I had a lot of first-hand information at my disposal about the forces on either side, how they were likely to react, the implications of the conflicting proposals being debated, and consequently could make a more informed decision about the outcomes. The issue of how vigorously to rock the boat at any particularly time depends on the shifting winds and currents, and it stands to reason you get a much more reliable read on these if you're navigating from the boat rather than the shoreline.