More tealeaf-reading

A strange issue (seemed strange to me, anyway) of New York Teacher, the NYSUT publication, gives us a side-by-side two-page spread comparison of McCain and Obama on the issues.

The blurb at the lower left tells us:

The decision is yours

• How you vote is a personal decision. The information contained on these pages is being provided to help you make an informed decision about issues that affect working families

Here's the thing: our parent union, AFT, has endorsed Obama and NYSUT has gone along with that. They were, however, early and enthusiastic supporters of Senator Clinton. (An issue of one of the publications that I can't locate at the moment, which came out around the time that she suspended her campaign, said merely something along the lines of "we're considering what to do now.")

And I can't recall a past presidential election in which they did anything parallel to this two-page spread. Looking back in the archives for 2004, for example, yields nothing as far as I can see lays out the two choices as if there were any doubt about which one we would support. But then, interestingly, the two-page spread does not appear in the online version of the current issue either, as far as I can tell. And also, what you can't see on the online version, is that there is a banner across the top of the cover advertising this spread. (Pages 4-5 of the hard copy.)

For what it's worth, the union leadership right down to my local is voicing support for Obama (or opposition to McCain) and the local is actively seeking volunteers for GOTV.

I have no idea what this all means. (And it's certainly possible there was such a spread in the past presidential elections and I've forgotten it.) But putting it together with the fact that I've seen a grand total of 5 Obama buttons in all my travels around the city over the past three weeks since the semester started... makes me go Hmmm.