Strike This?

By now it’s common knowledge that major unions such as the AFL-CIO, the Teamsters and the Service Employees International Union have withheld their endorsements of candidates as they pore over their records and solicit views on a variety of issues. One specific candidate in question has been Hillary Clinton, due to her questionable record of having outsourced to India for campaign contributions. How her campaign squares that circle of malcontent escapes me. Think about it: She and her party practically won the House by targeting districts such as Heath Shuler’s (D) in rural North Carolina by playing the “trade” card — fear-mongering tactics that lament job losses “outsourced” overseas. Only later, Hillary tells a crowd of business investors (read: campaign donors) that you can’t “build a wall” to keep American jobs from escaping overseas. Where was that pearl of macroeconomic wisdom on the Democratic National Committee talking points last cycle?

According to a recent article in The Washington Post, it seems that unions themselves have been guilty of outsourcing. You know the story: Companies want a good job for a good price, so they hire non-union labor. Unions find out and they picket. Only this time, they are recruiting homeless people from local shelters and paying them $8 per hour to do their protesting. This is only a dollar above the minimum wage and they are offering no benefits. What kind of fat-cat union is this?

For generations, the picket line has been the calling card of these so-called “working man” organizations. Are they now such unbelievers in the cause that they have to outsource their protesters? What’s next — outsourced union protesters picketing the unions for intolerable work conditions?!? I love it when the left steps on its own message. They do it so often and so poorly …