I've come to the conclusion that the minimum wage debate nicely captures the absurdity of American life under Republican rule and what's a stake in this election. Consider this. The annual income at which the federal government says that a family of two is living below poverty is $13,200 -- but a single parent working 40 hours a week at the federal minimum wage of $5.15 makes less than $11,000 a year. If I didn't know us better, I'd swear that all we're doing as a nation is mocking those efforts.
Rep.
Pelosi has said that raising the federal minimum wage to $7.25
an hour would be a top priority in the first 100 hours of
a Democratic Congress. By way of contrast, even Rick Santorum admits
that the current House leadership doesn't care a lick about even discussing
wages -- even though it's a priority
of 68 percent of Americans.
This question of wages came up again and again at a noon-time GOTV rally today in Philadelphia's Love Park. On stage was a great crop of Democrats, with very special guest John Edwards, Mayor Street, Rep. Schwartz, Rep. Fattah, Rep. Brady, Lois Murphy, Patrick Murphy, Bob Casey, and Governor Rendell.
Under Rendell's leadership, Pennsylvania has raised the wage floor up two bucks above the federal level. More than 420,000 Pennsylvanians will take home more in each pay check now. But lemme take a minute to make a plug for organized labor. Part of the team that brought PA a living wage was Working America (WA), the AFL-CIO affiliate that extends union membership to non-union workers. At a canvassers' briefing this afternoon, Bob Casey himself praised the part that WA played in the minimum wage campaign.
In the sort of very close races we're seeing here in PA, winners and losers will be decided by who turns out the vote. It's friend-to-friend and neighbor-to-neighbor combat at this point. Many of us will be doing our Democratic duty in the next four days by going door-to-door, sharing with our fellow voters what we think in our heads and know in our hearts is at stake on Tuesday.
I
spent the early morning today with a handful of members of the Transportation
Workers Union (TWU) leafleting the SEPTA bus depots in West Philly. A
secret trick I picked up from them is that the campaign lit you hand out
is like a handshake -- something to occupy your target for the first few
awkward seconds. It's up to you to make the sale by pretending to be a
normal human who can carry a conversation that makes sense to them. The
TWU leaflet was nothing more than friends talking to friends, colleagues
to colleagues -- what in political mythology Republicans are so good at.
One canvasser interrupted a SEPTA employee who already committed to voting
on Tuesday with "I've got kids 15 and 16 years old. They can't go
in the booth but I take them with me..." "Just to be there,"
the worker interrupted right back."That's right," she said.
"Umhum," he affirmed.
As I go door-to-door, I'm going to talk about the minimum wage, about restoring America as the land opportunity, about having a model for working your way up in this country that makes some degree of rational sense. But that's me, that's what I'm gonna use. Let's share -- what language will you use to make the sale to your friends and family in the next four days? When you knock on your neighbor's door, what are you going to tell her when she asks you point blank why she should vote? I'm looking for talking points we all can use.
Nancy's "Election 2006 Pennsylvania Tour" is brought to you by the AFL-CIO's Labor 2006 Program.
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