NEA moves to endorse Obama, and I react
The National Education Association makes its formal political endorsements at its Representative Assembly, which occurs each year around July 4. In 2011 the assembled Representatives will have a motion to endorse Barack Obama for reelection in 2012. The union's Political Action Committee made that decision this past week. Sam Stein provides good detail of the background of the decision in this Huffington Post piece. In short, the decision is in part payback for the number of teacher jobs saved by the stimulus, and also is because so far no one even remotely likely on the Republican side comes close to Obama on issues that matter to the NEA.
There is one more consideration. Had the state presidents not proposed a resolution for this year's assembly, formal endorsement would not have been possible until July of 2012. Stein quotess the union's director of campaigns and elections, Karen White:
If there was going to be any action taken this calendar it had to happen this week,” she said, noting, with a tinge of regret, that the union had only had four months during the 2008 election to help campaign for Obama. Owing to that constraint, she added, the NEA’s state presidents made the calculation at their annual meeting on Thursday that no one currently in the GOP presidential field -- or in the field of potential entrants -- offered a more favorable platform for its members.
That's the context. Below the fold is my reaction.
