‘If Democrats win, it won’t be nirvana—but you’ll be out of the ring of hell.’

Politics and policy dominated the AFT Public Employees divisional meeting at the convention, and political writer John Nichols was just the person to set the stage for the November elections.

“I’m here to advocate for realism,” said Nichols, an associate editor of The Capital Times  in Madison, Wis., and a political writer for The Nation. He warned that public employees should be prepared for an all-out assault on their jobs, pay, benefits and workplace rights, if voters return President Bush to the White House with a GOP-controlled Congress.

“On Jan. 20, 2005, Bush will say, ‘We are broke,’” Nichols said. And the GOP solution to the federal budget shortage will be to “squeeze every last bit of state and local aid.”

“If Democrats win,” he said, “it won’t be nirvana—but you’ll be out of the ring of hell. John Kerry comes from Massachusetts. Everybody in Massachusetts is in a union. I think CEOs in Massachusetts are in a union. John Kerry understands unions.”

Voters will decide in November whether they want a world in which things function for everybody, Nichols said, or one that offers opportunities only to the wealthy. And it is the workers who make up the labor movement who can influence the election outcome, he said. “The trade union movement has done more for America save the civil rights movement, which was, by and large, funded by the trade union movement. Be involved upfront in small ‘d’ democracy issues.”

Regardless of the election outcome, the union should take on Grover Norquist, the conservative movement’s anti-tax, anti-government guru who is on record for wanting to “starve” government, Nichols advised. “You have the best public employee operation in the country,” Nichols said. “You have to begin to make the case that public employees are the backbone of a functional society.”