Union Power

Slate has an article about how the Iowa caucuses are non-democratic crap. Fine. In a paragraph focusing on the lack of secret ballot, we get this:

What if you're in a union and want to pick someone your union hasn't endorsed, and your shop steward is there, watching you from across the room? Or the person who holds your mortgage? Or your spouse? Tough.

Isn't it time we retire the "union as tyrannical enforcer of 'solidarity'" trope? If there was a time that this meme had some validity, it is long past. A union "hard sell" these days lasts about 10 minutes and involves heavy use of the phrase "come on." What are they going to do to hypothetical Iowa union voter guy? Slash his tires? Haze him at work? Please. Any steward with his or her salt knows that they are going to need every single union member out knocking on doors for whomever does win the nomination. You're not going to alienate anyone over a freakin' caucus vote.

Of course, the idea that the guy holding your mortgage might do some unnamed but vaguely threatening because you voted a different way in a party primary has even less validity. What is the theoretical Iowa voter supposed to be worried about, that Old Banker Johnson is going to violate the terms of the mortgage by illegally attempting to foreclose because you stood with Obama's people...okay this is silly. To think that anyone who "holds your mortgage" might actually be at a Democratic Iowa caucus is bad enough. To think that they might do something with your mortgage based on your caucus vote is beyond silly.

I can see some women being afraid to vote different than their husbands. Still, if your marriage is so shaky that you can't publicly vote for someone different than your husband, you have more worries than the non-democratic nature of your state's caucusing system.

I love the secret ballot as much as the next guy and wouldn't want to go without it, but I don't think it's the end-all and be-all of democracy.