AFL-CIO's Trumka: 'Socialism would be a step up for me'

Everyone else is focusing fire on this article because, in it, AFL-CIO poobah Richard Trumka claims that unions just might withhold funds for Democrats next year. Yeah, sure they will. 95% of the article is a smokescreen for Trumka to try extorting even more out of Democrats than Big Labor already gets, and is a way to intimidate other Democrats into not doing what Democrats in Massachusetts are doing, namely, the same thing Republicans in Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana have already done. All this has nothing to do with “enthusiasm,” it’s just more union thuggery from the biggest union thug of them all.

So I don’t care much about any of that. Read it if you want, but in my opinion it’s not to be taken at face value. It’s strategic bluster. This, however, is revealing.

Trumka said he’d like to see the U.S. become more like a European nation that provides pensions and health care for all its citizens. He said he is accustomed to criticism and doesn’t mind if conservatives call that socialism.

“Being called a socialist is a step up for me,” he said.

This is clearest statement I’ve ever seen of exactly what Big Labor wants to get from all the money it spends electing Democrats. Big Labor wants nothing less than the end of the American experiment.