Blue On Blue, Part One

“SEIU unionists strike over Obamacare-related cuts,” as the Purple People Beaters are not happy with the Great Blue State Hope:

Members of the Chicago-based Service Employees International Union Local 1 have gone on strike over recent job cuts by a janitorial company called Professional Maintenance.

The reason for the cuts? The employer says it is because of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. This is ironic since SEIU is a major supporter of the law.

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SEIU enthusiastically backed Obamacare when it passed and remains a booster of the law today. Earlier this month, it announced that it was sending nurses, doctors and other health care professionals out to promote the law in 30 cities over the coming months.

It’s more than a little ironic that SEIU are striking over ObamaCare, since the president’s namesake socialized medicine program was born there:

In March 2007, he found himself on the same stage with a highly confident Clinton at another health care forum, this one sponsored by the Service Employees International Union in Las Vegas.

Obama staggered through a discussion that left policy wonks convinced that he was out of his league, particularly when compared to Clinton, arguably the nation’s premier expert on health care after her unsuccessful attempt to enact reform in the 1990s.

While she dominated, he was confronted by an audience member who asked why he didn’t have a health care plan yet. He responded that his campaign was only eight weeks old and promised to come up with one soon. At one point, in response to a question about health care disparities among minorities, Obama talked about lead poisoning as Clinton aides giggled.

Obama knew before he walked off the stage that he had screwed up.

“He conceded that he really got his head handed to him — and that didn’t happen very often,” said former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), an early Obama adviser. “It was a real catalytic moment.”

Obama crammed, law-school style, on the details. He became “a student of health policy,” Daschle said, consulting with liberal think tanks like the Center for American Progress, reading the research, learning the language and drawing up a plan.

Which apparently, nobody but the president and his truest of the true believers want. Others are increasingly frightened of the bill, including the unions who once championed Obama’s presidential bid:

Last Thursday, representatives of three of the nation’s largest unions fired off a letter to Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, warning that Obamacare would “shatter not only our hard-earned health benefits, but destroy the foundation of the 40 hour work week that is the backbone of the American middle class.”

Shatter the middle class? Mr. Obama considers that very much a feature.