Liberal Los Angeles Times Defends Wal-Mart

The Los Angeles Times is a liberal newspaper, but apparently not all liberals are hostile to Wal-Mart.

EDITORIAL
Democrats’ Shameful Wal-Mart Demonization
Presidential hopefuls only hurt themselves when pandering to unions by bashing the country’s largest employer.
August 23, 2006

WITH ONE EYE ON 2008 and one on their labor union base, Democratic luminaries are canvassing Iowa and other states this summer to campaign against the nation’s incumbent . . . retailer. They obviously see Wal-Mart as this season’s Enron, the one corporation that represents all that is wrong with America.

Too bad the party can’t simply draft Costco or Target to run for president. Instead, Democratic presidential aspirants — including Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana, former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina and Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico — feel compelled to bash one company, the largest employer in the U.S., to score points with labor organizers. The candidates are so intent on gaining tactical advantage in the primary season that they risk alienating possible supporters in the general election.

Most Americans do not want their politicians ganging up on one company. Wal-Mart may be a behemoth that employs 1.3 million people in this country and earned $11 billion in profit last year, but it still looks like bullying when politicians single out one business to scapegoat for larger societal ills. And when they start passing laws aimed at their scapegoat — as the Maryland Legislature did when it passed legislation forcing Wal-Mart to spend a certain amount on employee healthcare — the judiciary rightly balks. A federal judge struck down the regulation, holding that it violates laws requiring equal treatment of employers.

But there is no stopping the campaign rhetoric. At an anti-Wal-Mart rally last week in Iowa, Biden noted that the retailer pays people $10 an hour, and then asked: “How can you live a middle-class life on that?” It’s clearly the company’s fault, at least from a skewed senatorial perspective, that all Americans cannot live a comfortable middle-class life. How dare it pay prevailing retail wages? Bayh, who appeared at another rally, was quoted as saying that Wal-Mart is “emblematic of the anxiety around the country.” That may be true. But if it’s the emblem he’s worried about, he should stay in Washington and work to make healthcare more affordable for working families.

The gusto with which even moderate Democrats are bashing Wal-Mart is bound to backfire. Not only does it take the party back to the pre-Clinton era, when Democrats were perceived as reflexively anti-business, it manages to make Democrats seem like out-of-touch elitists to the millions of Americans who work and shop at Wal-Mart.

One reason the Democrats may have a tin ear on this subject is demographic. Certainly most of the party’s urban liberal activists are far removed from the Wal-Mart phenomenon. The retailer has thrived mainly in small towns and exurbs, which is one reason a Zogby poll found that three-quarters of weekly Wal-Mart shoppers voted for President Bush in 2004, and why 8 out of 10 people who have never shopped at Wal-Mart voted for John Kerry. Denouncing the retailer may make sense if the goal is to woo primary activists, but it’s a disastrous way to reach out to the general electorate. Or to govern, for that matter.

Both American political parties, lacking the things that strong parties have (control of nominations, a majority of all campaign money, activists loyal to the party and not to a cause or candidate) have to appeal to their activist core.

This may require taking positions that are unpopular with the general public. This is true for the Republicans with embryonic stem cell research, and the Democrats with partial birth abortion.

But not all appeals to the “core” are equal.

Some are simply ill-advised, giving the activist core more concessions than they deserve, with too much damage to the party’s standing with moderate voters.

And some are simply dishonest. The candidates know better. This is the situation with gas prices and the Democrats demonization of the oil companies.

Quite likely, the attacks on Wal-Mart are ill-advised. Most certainly, they are dishonest.