Democrats court labor at Iowa convention
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By Jens Manuel Krogstad | Thursday, August 16, 2007 |
WATERLOO, Iowa — A parade of Democratic presidential candidates touted the virtues of universal health care and criticized unfair international trade practices Wednesday afternoon at the annual Iowa Federation of Labor convention.
In stark contrast to last week’s AFL-CIO debate in Chicago — which featured all the candidates on the stage at once — the candidates stayed away from personal attacks and stuck primarily to the issues.
The six candidates who attended spoke to the audience of union members individually, answering questions from moderators for 30 minutes.
John Edwards and Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware managed to deliver fiery, impassioned responses despite a less raucous crowd than at last week’s union-sponsored debate.
Edwards, who has been courting the union vote heavily, drew the loudest cheers of the day and chants of “Edwards, Edwards” in his closing remarks when he promised to walk picket lines as president of the United States.
Biden, who looked ahead to the general election, showed no fear in taking on the eventual Republican nominee.
“I can hardly wait to debate Rudy Giuliani, I will eat him alive on national television,” he said of the front-runner in the national polls.
The change in format forced the candidates to focus more on the issues, but Edwards and Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois took an indirect swipe at Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York by proclaiming they don’t take lobbyist money.
After Edwards bragged of all the union work he’s done in the past two years when “nobody was looking,” Biden followed up by noting he’s been walking the picket lines for 30 years in Delaware, a pro-business state.
Bill Richardson touted his pro-union record as governor of New Mexico, which included restoring collective bargaining in his second week in office. Richardson, as did Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut and Obama, said he would extend the same insurance plan Congress receives to all Americans.
None of the candidates said they would exclusively support a single-payer health-care system, a plan that Republicans deride as socialized medicine.
Rather, they all offered up a combination of government and private programs to reform health care. The candidates all supported expanding Medicare and Medicaid to those who can least afford health care —children under 5, low-income working families and people 55 and older who now must wait until age 65 to receive Medicare.
Biden said in his first year as president, he would pass universal health care for catastrophic coverage and children, which he cited as two of the highest costs to employers.
He emphasized renewable energy and energy independence as a way to build manufacturing jobs in America. But to do so, he said the U.S. must change its tax policy to cut the deficit. Because China controls so much of America’s debt, it makes it hard to force China to change its trade policy to make it easier for American companies to compete.
“As we get tight on them on trade policy, they threaten not to buy our debt,” he said.
To enforce trade policy, Hillary Clinton said she would also support legislation to appoint a trade prosecutor.
“We need to go after countries who don’t follow trade agreements,” she said.
She said in upstate New York, along the Canadian border, she found that goods were flowing into the country, but Canada had put several trade barriers restricting U.S. exports into the country.
“When I told a Bush trade representative about this, they just shelved it,” she said.
For much of his speech, Obama stayed on a message of change and unity, because Congress can’t govern in such a divided country.
“We’ve got to change how we do politics. We need to engage those who feel cynical about the political process,” he said.
He said by engaging the black voters in Mississippi, for example, he can put the state into play for Democrats for the first time in generations.
Jens Manuel Krogstad can be contacted at (319) 291-1580 or jens.krogstad@wcfcourier.com. Comment on this story at qctimes.com
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