PEP, September 2008: Compare the candidates

Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama is staunchly pro-working people and is endorsed by the AFL-CIO, AFSCME, District Council 37 and hundreds of progressive organizations.

Obama graduated from Harvard Law School, where he was the first African American president of the Harvard Law Review and became a civil rights lawyer who worked as a grassroots organizer in Chicago’s South Side.

The people of Illinois elected him to the state senate and in 2004 to the U.S. Senate. Obama attained national prominence with his Democratic Convention speech that year, which countered Republican divisiveness with an inspiring call for unity.

Barack Obama’s presidential campaign for change and its empowering battle cry, “Yes we can!” resonate with millions of middle-class and working poor Americans, and he has involved more first-time voters, young people, students and new citizens in the democratic process than any candidate before.

He has shown an unprecedented ability to organize, get people to the polls and raise tens of millions of dollars in small campaign contributions. Abroad, he visited American soldiers in Iraq, met world leaders face-to-face and addressed hundreds of thousands in France and Germany.
Obama’s poignant message of hope and change from politics as usual rings true for Americans suffering under the brutal economics of the Bush administration — tax bonanzas for the rich, rampant home foreclosures and runaway gas and food costs — and its misguided war in Iraq.

With his wife, Michelle, and two daughters, Obama, 47, represents the 21st century American family. He told AFSCME delegates in July that as president he would spend $10 billion to prevent public service cuts. By the end of his first term, Obama said, “the battle for health care will be won,” and the Employee Free Choice Act that protects employees’ right to join unions and organize, “will be the law of the land.”

—Diane S. Williams

The 2008 Republican candidate for president is Arizona’s senior U.S. Sen., John Sidney McCain III. In 2000, the decorated war hero campaigned for the Republican nomination against George W. Bush and lost.

McCain was born into a military family in 1936, during the Great Depression. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy and served in the Vietnam War. McCain was aboard the destroyer USS Forrestal when it was set ablaze by a missile. He continued bombing the Vietnamese people until his plane was shot down.

Badly injured, McCain was captured and held as a prisoner of war for over five years. Despite torture, he refused earlyrelease from his captors. The United States exited Vietnam in defeat in 1975.

In 1980 McCain divorced his first wife and months later married current multimillionare wife Cindy, the daughter of a wealthy liquor distributor. They own at least seven homes. Elected to Congress, McCain voted against a national holiday to honor Martin Luther King Jr., who died in Memphis supporting striking sanitation workers.

McCain was one of five U.S. senators known as the Keating Five, who were linked to the massive savings and loan scandal that led to the collapse of 787 banks in America and cost taxpayers $160 billion. A federal criminal investigation exonerated only the two military heroes, McCain and astronaut John Glenn, for lack of sufficient evidence.

A conservative, McCain gained notoriety for his temper and a “maverick” media reputation for disagreeing with his party on a few issues. McCain’s recent voting record shows that he skipped the vote on the bill to improve veterans’ health and education benefits, and that despite global warming and today’s astronomic gasoline and heating costs, McCain ducked eight recent votes on renewable energy bills. Not independent at all, McCain has a longstanding voting record that is anti-working family and supports George W. Bush 95 percent of the time.

— DSW