August 18, 2008 7:07 AM

Labor Challenges Obama's Rubinomics

From Bloomberg News:

Aug. 18 (Bloomberg) -- AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka delivers a slap at former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin in a slide show exhorting union members to back Democrat Barack Obama for president.

Blaming unfettered global trade and inadequate government regulation for lost manufacturing jobs and a staggering economy, Trumka's presentation cautions that "it will do us little good if, when the next Democrat moves into the White House, Wall Street takes command of our country's economic policy.''

It is definitely good news that unions are speaking up, though not for the reason Washington conventional-wisdom parrot Charlie Cook says:

In the end, the competition for influence between laborites and Rubinites may actually prove politically helpful, says Charlie Cook, editor of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. "What you need is two loud voices in the room to keep Obama down the middle, which is where he needs to be to get elected,'' Cook says.

This suggests that Rubinomics and its embrace of NAFTA-style trade policies has a mass political constituency, and that by echoing Rubinomic themes, a candidate appeals to that constituency. But polls - which Charlie Cook is paid to read - show exactly the opposite. No, there are not throngs of Americans clamoring for more of their jobs to be outsourced. Contrary to Cook's silliness, while up to Bob Rubin may make Obama friends among Washington and Wall Street elites, it doesn't help him win votes in places like Ohio, and doesn't move him into the political center - it helps him lose places like Ohio by moving him out of the center.