by Berry Craig

MAYFIELD, Ky. – Apparently, some white Democrats didn’t vote for Sen. Barack Obama in the primaries because he is African American.

That’s wrong. It’s also dumb if you pack a union card.

“It’s been a long time since we had a president who stood up and said unions are good thing,” MSNBC quoted Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee. “It’s been a long time since we had a president who said workers are not getting their fair share.”

Pro-union deeds back up Obama’s pro-union words. He has a 96 percent positive labor voting record, according to the AFL-CIO’s Committee on Political Education. Few senators score higher.

Now that Sen. Hillary Clinton has conceded defeat to Obama, Sen. John McCain is wooing Democrats who voted for her. The “straight talker” Republican nominee would never admit it, of course. But the Clinton voters McCain thinks he’s most likely to get mainly are the white folks who rejected Obama because of his skin color.

At least Sen. McCain is color-blind when it comes to working class Americans, according to one top labor official. McCain shafts them all, no matter if they “are white, Black, Hispanic or otherwise,” says Leo W. Gerard, international president of the United Steelworkers of America.

The numbers support Gerard’s claim. McCain has a 16 percent pro-labor COPE score.

Jeff Wiggins, a Kentucky Steelworker leader, agrees with Gerard. “We’re on to McCain,” said Wiggins, president of the Paducah-based Western Kentucky Area Council, AFL-CIO. “He’s ‘John McSame,’ as in the same old anti-union policies of George W. Bush.”

Voting on race or gender is wrong, period. To have voted against Clinton because she is a woman is stupid, too, if you belong to a union. Her COPE score is 94 percent.

I’d bet the farm that Obama would be the first person to say it is also wrong for anybody to vote against McCain because he’s a white man. He may have said it already.

Anyway, I learned in the Presbyterian Church that racism and sexism are not what Christ taught. Jesus said we are all God’s children. Like a good parent, God loves us all the same. That’s in the Good Book, too.

In addition, Jesus admonished us to do unto others as we would have others do unto us. Christians call it the Golden Rule. But the same principle can be found in other religions, including Judaism and Islam.

For the record: Obama is a Christian despite the lies being spread by religious crazies, notably Internet nut jobs. One of my teaching buddies calls these wackos “the Christian Taliban.”

“You need to come to church in the first place precisely because you are first of this world, not apart from it,” Obama said in one of his best known speeches. “You need to embrace Christ precisely because you have sins to wash away -- because you are human and need an ally in this difficult journey.”

Wiggins added a Baptist “amen.”

“Unions believe in ‘do unto others,’” he said. “But we don’t just preach brotherhood and sisterhood. We practice it every day. In a union everybody is equal.”

The record backs him up. African Americans and women have been delegates to his council or on the council executive board for a long time. That’s true for other labor councils across the Bluegrass State, Wiggins said.

The W.C. Young Award, the highest honor the Western Kentucky Area Council bestows, is named for its first recipient, an African American and national labor and civil rights leader from Paducah.

“W.C. was a brother to those of us fortunate enough to have known him,” Wiggins said. “He is an inspiration to our younger brothers and sisters who didn’t know him.”

My guess is that very few white Democrats who voted against Obama on race are union members. I am confident Obama will do well among union voters from Paducah to Pikeville and, for that matter, from Palo Alto to Presque Isle.

Come November 4, most union members will do what they always do. They will vote for the candidate who will best protect their unions and their jobs. “That’s Barack Obama,” Wiggins said.