The ever-astute folks over at Commentary magazine’s Contentions blog report back on some EFCA-related intelligence from a McCain conference call conducted today. In response to a question about Obama’s trade policy, Rudy Giuliani said that Obama would likely keep his campaign pledges on restricting trade, because of his fidelity to Big Labor – proof of which is Obama’s “support for doing away with secret ballot [union] elections.” It’s nice to see EFCA finally make a campaign conference call with a high level surrogate. But it also begs the question – why hasn’t the issue been mentioned more? The probing bloggers over at the Weekly Standard asked that question last week (scroll to bottom on link). The response they got from an anonymous GOP campaign source was that: a.) EFCA doesn’t move voters b.) voters don’t understand it. Now, we don’t live in a labor cocoon so much as to believe that EFCA is going to decide the election. It isn’t. But in the midst of an economic crisis, couldn’t it play some meaningful role? To respond to the Standard’s campaign source, part of the reason why voters don’t understand EFCA is because nobody in the GOP has really explained the issue. Everybody knows that campaigns take very complex issues (taxes) and boil them down into nice, digestible sound bites (Obama wants to spread the wealth). Yet, we went through a presidential campaign for the past two years, and three recent presidential debates in the middle of a major economic crisis and nary a mention of EFCA. On the second point – is EFCA really that complex for the average Joe Plumber voter to understand? Again – using sound bites – McCain favors secret ballots, Obama doesn’t. That’s really the major part of the bill in a nutshell. It’s stunning in some respects that a huge economic and workplace change could be coming down the pipe line very soon, but, neither presidential candidate has talked about it at any length – even the candidate (McCain) who has the easier position to defend, both on substance and style.
