A bold claim:
Al Franken could be the missing piece of the puzzle for passage of the labor movement's No. 1 legislative priority this Congress, a senior union official said Wednesday.
Once seated, the Democratic Minnesota Senate candidate would be the 60th vote for cloture in the Senate on the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), said Bill Samuel, director of government affairs for the AFL-CIO.
"That is likely to be the case. We are not giving up on other senators," Samuel said. "In the very worst case, we are going to have to have Al Franken."
This is certainly plausible, and wold make more sense why Republicans are fighting tooth and nail on a court case that is seemingly lost cause of them. The Employee Free Choice Act scored 51 votes for cloture in 2007. Throw in Democratic Senator Tim Johnson, who was sick at the time, and that makes 52. Add seven more freshman Democrats in Congress who took over Republican held seats--Mark Begich, Kay Hagan, Jeff Merkley, Mark Udall, Tom Udall, and Mark Warner--and EFCA support rises to 59. And then, only Al Franken, plus holding all 2007 voters in line, pushes EFCA over the top and into law.
Labor reform, media reform, immigration reform, election reform--these are some of the policy areas that can shift the major institutions of our country to the left. As far as building long-term progressive governance is concerned, passing these positive feedback loops into law is second in importance only to saving the economy through a re-organization of public spending.
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