The "idle" vote

Below is a tiny snippet of an email that came to me yesterday...

Attached, please find a press release announcing endorsements of Corey O'Brien for Congress from the Northeast Pennsylvania Building & Construction Trades Council and the Scranton Building & Construction Trades Council. Together, the two councils represent over 10,000 union members in 15 building and construction trades unions.

These are the sorts of union endorsements that our incumbent, Paul Kanjorski, could always count on receiving with absolute certainty in past election cycles. What's changed? I'm not entirely sure, but I'll share this much.

Very recently, I met a big, big union honcho from the local building trades. Gort, you wanna talk "union label?" Dude, this guy's basement looked like a union label museum. And predictably, in an unfinished corner of the basement were Gore, Kerry and Obama campaign yard signs.

I asked the guy if the deplorable state of the economy had much of an impact on his union boys, and man oh freaking man did he react. He went off big time. And on and on and on he went. He said, among other things, that he's never seen it this bad. And he mentioned that he's never had so many union brothers out of work at once. And all during this rant of his, he kept on using the same word over and over--"idle."

Again, what's changed? Well, I'm not in a position to say why Kanjo's obligatory union support might be shifting to the upstart kid from up north, but it seems that union members and non union workers have at least this one trait in common, unbeknownst to most of Washington...they don't enjoy being unemployed or underemployed for prolonged lengths of time.

And since I'm the only blogger in these parts not all smitten with the far left commie manifesto, note that this union honcho's ire approaching apogee and well beyond was not directed at democrats or republicans in particular. Nope. By and large, it was being directed at Washington as a whole, as a single dysfunctional unit.

And the thing that struck me was, he sounded no different than your garden variety member of the fledgling Tea Party. Or as you commie youth would likely say, Tea (insert not-so-clever insult).

So, obviously the unions are voting for jobs. Like the other 17% of Americans that are out of work, they are ready to vote against being idled. Meanwhile, the Democrats are promising all involved the 1,0001st incarnation of a health care reform bill that will kick in some years from now.

And the Republicans? Well, they're prepared to keep their heads down so as to not get tarnished by the record amounts of tar and feathers that are sure to fly at Washington and relatively soon.

Obama is promising a health care debacle. Kanjorski is promising tougher regulations for and more oversight of his biggest campaign contributors. And O'Brien? Well, it seems that the relative neophyte has been talking about creating jobs, now don't it? Sure does. Yep, it seems to me as if O'Brien is winning the "idle" vote.

Don't much matter to me. All of a sudden, I've got more work than I can handle. Oh, and a great health care package, too. And great benefits. And profit sharing. Just got a raise and a...

Later