If you want to have the secret ballot in presidential elections, OK.  I mean, what does a president decide, after all?  But unionization elections?  They’re too important for the secret ballot. That in essence was the argument of a union official today.

Stephen Lerner of the SEIU made it on this afternoon’s Hardball . . .

CHRIS MATTHEWS: The problem you [unions] have got, most Americans believe, if I had to vote for president, and some guy came around with a card and said “who you for, McCain or Obama?” and I had to say so, and I had to have everybody know how I voted, that wouldn’t be America. You guys want unions to go that way . . . What’s wrong with the secret ballot?

STEPHEN LERNER: Here’s the fact in reality. When a worker in this country right now says I’m tired of making $8 an hour. I’m tired of the head of this company being a billionaire and not sharing any of that.  When they try to form a union right now, they are crushed. They are threatened. I think the hard thing for a lot of people to get: when you vote for a politician, he doesn’t decide whether you work or not. And employers have so much power.

Got that?  President? Meh.  What does he decide?  But a union?  Really, too important to permit a secret ballot.

Note: A bit later, Steven Law of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said that “just today, when the bill was introduced a national labor leader said: ’since when is the secret ballot a cornerstone, or a fundamental tenet, of our democracy?’”

These are the people who were crucial to Pres. Obama’s election . . .