Things We Thought We'd Never hear from the WhiteHouse again

According to the Chicago Sun Times President-elect Barack Obama put himself on the side of the workers at the Republic Windows and Doors factory Sunday:

"When it comes to the situation here in Chicago with the workers who are asking for their benefits and payments they have earned, I think they are absolutely right. What's happening to them is reflective of what's happening across this economy."

Josh Marshall thinks this designates a 'new' day. Certainly, it's a different day. Not of the Bush malapropism nor the nearly 20+ years of conservative fundamentalism that suggested unions and strikers were quasi communist scum and the root of all evil.

But for America I would suggest it's harking back to a fine tradition that began in the progressive movement of the 1800s and lasted well into the '60s. It is a fierce struggle against Babbitry on one side and the ruthless machinations of Capital on the other. For nearly two decades we consistently were lossing that battle and Nixon Reagan and Bush were the ignomonious spoils of the victor. Intellectually obtuse, cynically manipulative for the purposes generally of crony Capitalism and pushing forward a mean spirited social agenda as far removed from America's heart as the infantile meanderings of Sean Hannity.

Voicing support for people struggling to survive is not 'new' to America. What's new is the idea that pond scum like the current conservative movement should have smeared unions for so long and with such vehemence that even now it's difficult to imagine that a union is a good thing and that its collective effort has done more for the working and middle class of America than all the lying Limbaughs, Hannities, Coulters and O'Reilly's rolled into one putrid ball.

But the truly 'new' day will come, when we turn off the radio and flip off the television and instead devote our energies to helping ALL our citizens put their children through school, bread on their table, and shelter their old and infirm.