Well, what have we here?

[Vektor]

I have a "funny feeling."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=3165054&mesg_id=3165054&page=

[TayTay]

1. Yup, National Writers Union guy...

I'm sure he's got 'solidarity with the working man' engraved on his pen or something. He does have a point though. The Dems do have to stop selling out labor. No Dem (sorry Senator) should be voting for those damn labor agreements, like NAFTA. (Really, Senator. What were you thinking?) Those agreements were the key to lower wages, job insecurity and the selling out of the Dem base. (We had this out, what, ten years ago? I was well and truly pissed about that NAFTA and GATT vote. But, I considered all the options and the whole of the record and kind of got over it. Sort of. It's a damn sore spot, okay?)

I don't think the guy's a troll, just a lefty freeper. And kind of stupid. Labor needs to align with somebody and the Dems are better than the Rethugs on issues that affect the working folks of America. But the Dems need to try harder and remember that Big Business hates them and wants them poltically dead so the Corporate interests can repeal interstate commerce laws and labor law and basically make anyone that isn't 'to the manor born' a low-wage serf. This is wrong and the Dems need to oppose it most vigorously.

[LittleClarkie]

2. Like the arguement that Dems don't do enough for minorities

so let's go align ourselves with our abusers. What is this, the Stockholm Syndrome?

So what you're saying Tay, is that it was ever so slightly hypocritical of John to talk about "outsourcing" when he had voted for one of the main reasons it was happening?

Speaking of which, what was up with Clinton and that thing, anyway? One of my friends, a Conservative, thought it would ultimately be good because we were supposed to get jobs in return. Not happening, is it.

Not completely up on NAFTA, though. Is the gist of it a "free market" economy?

[elshiva]

3. NAFTA is crap. All those Idonesian and Mexicans in

sweat shops earning $0.60 an hour just so the corporations can make more money. Dems should repudiate it. That was one of Clinton's worse ideas.

[TayTay]

6. Yeah, but then I think that position has softened

somewhat from the mid-90's. (I only hold 3 things against him in his 20 year career in the Senate. That ain't bad. But this is one of them.) This goes to the question of who are the Democrats and what do they stand for. (Or perhaps who do they stand for.) The whole DLC movement came out of the Dems not wishing to fail with another 'textbook' liberal like Dukakis. So the geniuses running Clinton in '92 decided to win as Repubs-lite. And that won the Presidency. (Well, that plus Clinton's charisma, but I digress.) But it also killed the Dems in '94 and led to the loss of both houses of Congress in one of the most stunning rebukes in Americanplitical history.

To go back to one of my pet peeves, why are the Dems losing West Virginia. Those are our people. West Virginia should be a lock as a Dem blue state. What the hell happened? Why are blue-collar union guys, miners, lower and middle class West Virginians voting for the Rethugs at the top of the Pres ticket? Because they got picked off by minor issues that became glaring character faults for DEms. (Kerry would have been a damn sight better for these folks than *. That's just a fact.) If Dems had opposed NAFTA and GATT and unfair trade rules, maybe they would have had a more consistent leg to stand on in trying to persuade WV voters that Dems are on their side.

The Dems are the liberal party in America and always will be. However, liberalism implies change and change is risky to most people. The Dems, in the past, were able to wrap the changes up in other issues that were of paramount importance to working people. So the Dems were not just the party of women's rights and civil rights and gun control and reproductive rights, but the party of the working man, the People's Party. Dems worked for labor law and to protect unions and for good minimum wage laws and so forth. One side balanced the other and gave us a coalition that worked. Now, take away what drew the working people to the Dems in the first place, the protection of labor and what do you have? Guns, Gays and God. And we don't win on that turf. We just don't. (Change is too risky, unless it is balanced by something else.) So yeah, I am miffed over the unfair trade votes. They screwed us over.

That said, I think Kerry knows he bought into a false argument when he voted for the trade agreements. We need free trade and I understand that. (I'm not an ostrich.) But we need fair trade and the stipulation that any country that trades with us respects human rights, worker's rights and a fair working wage. When did the trade agreements ever work like that? The jobs being shipped to China will do nothing for the Chinese work force, they have subsistence wages. And the Dems got pegged as the out-of-touch party of millionaires who have no sense of ordinary people. Sigh!

[LittleClarkie]

7. So in a way Clinton won at the expense of the rest of the party?

what would happen if Hillary got in, do you think? How much different is she from Bill in this regard?

I'd heard folks say that while they appreciated Bill's knack for winning, some in the party were relieved when his tenure was over.

It's weird though. The Republicans were in favor of NAFTA, right? So in moving to far to the Right, trying to be Republican-lite and losing our base, we sent these people into the arms of ... the Republicans? That's just weird.

I wonder why the Republicans hated Bill so much, considering he was a Centrist. Why so partisan? When did that start happening in earnest? The Reagan years? During the rise of the BFEE?

[paulk]

4. an interesting thread

I have to agree with one of the posters (k-w) about the fallacy of the Democratic Party abandoning unions and the rise of the DLC. Parties have to go with who can put them in office - that's the whole point of being a political party. If the unions can't deliver - then the party will turn elsewhere - and that accounts for the rise of the DLC.

That certainly was my experience - I belonged to a nationwide union for over 20 years - a blue collar union - and while the union supported Democratic candidates, the rank and file was at least 50% Republican - and I worked over a 4 state area.

[LittleClarkie]

8. It didn't help that Reagan busted much of the union movement

So are those 50% Republicans only in the Union because it's the only way they can have the job in a Union shop?

[paulk]

9. I have never been able to figure out why union people voted

Republican - and I spent 20 years asking and trying to convince them otherwise.

The only answer I could come up with is the "God, Guns, and Gays" one.
Even when their own economic well being was at stake, these people would vote on social issues. We're talking rural Colorado and Wyoming here. Guns are a huge issue that turns people away. But even people I knew who rejected the Republican ideology would vote for a third party rather than a Democrat. The democrats have a lot more work to do in this area than many realize. When Dean talks about a 50 state strategy and going after rural voters, I have to question that. The antipathy toward Democrats in some areas of the country is not going to be overcome that easily.

Another factor in the loss of union power that is overlooked is the rise of mechanization in the workplace. Not as many workers are needed, and union membership (especially in blue collar jobs) goes down. When I hired out in '79, there were almost a hundred people on my roster - when I quit in 2000, there were only fifteen. And that's just my craft - all the other craft rosters were similarily affected.

[TayTay]

10. Gawd is this true

One of Dr. Dean's most interesting pronouncements last year was his statement that Dems need to disassociate from the whole Gun Control debate nationally and leave it to the states. New York should set policy for New York and Colorado set policy for Colorado. (I know it's more complicated than that, but the Dems are screwed on this. We have to get beyond this.)

Have you read the Thomas Frank book "What's the Matter With Kansas?" It talks about this in depth and is a great read. (Due out in trade paperback on May 1st.) Basically, when Dems abandoned labor, labor abandoned Dems. (And there is a lot of truth in this.) We have to redefine what labor means and then spend a lot of money to bring labor issues to the forefront. (Every Dem should be out front in the drive to unionize Wal-Mart. That is front #1.)

Sigh! It will be a long road back. But in the last election, if we could have changed the vote of 1 in 30 *ies, JK would be Pres. So, it's not impossible.

[paulk]

11. The problem with letting states control gun laws

In Colorado - the Republican controlled Legislature overturned gun-control laws for Denver that prohibited concealed carry. So... you get a situation where a rural gun philosophy gets imposed on a major city. There still needs to be some form of overall Federal control - if only to protect states from themselves.

I don't have the answer on the gun control issue - that's for sure. Democrats get hurt on this - the big problem is that a lot of voters just aren't informed. (that's the polite way of saying that a lot of voters are just plain stupid, and there's not much you can do about it)

I'm about two thirds of the way through "what's the matter" - it's a great book - and having spent a lot of time in eastern CO and southern NE, I can really relate to a lot of what he's saying from my own personal experience.

The Democratic Party does need to refocus on labor - on strengthening unions - getting them into WalMart, etc. While I think the DLC is a valuable ally, there influence does need to be mitigated.
What it will take is money. Money is what politics is all about - if regular donors like ourselves can make up the difference lost from the unions - then the power of the DLC will wane. Kerry's campaign and money raising was a step in the right direction - and it does seem like the Democratic Party has been getting the message.

I don't agree that labor abandoned the Dems simply because the Dems abandoned labor - I think it's a lot more complicated than that.
Labor was unable to deliver votes for various reasons - declining membership, union members voting on social issues before union issues - I tend to think it was the other way around.

The unions couldn't deliver - the Democrats suffered two crushing defeats based on the old liberal, union coalition model -Mondale/Dukakis - so the party turned to the Clinton/DLC model.

[TayTay]

12. It is more complicated that what we put up

The gun laws situation is way more complicated because place like NYC can't legislate what happens in Georgia, and people from NYC can buy guns in GA and get them back to NYC and so forth. This is a huge problem. But nothing is going to happen the way things are now. (Chicken or the egg as to how to solve this.)

But Guns, God and Gays are ruining us. Even the remaining labor folks (down to 8% of the working pop, which is so sad) vote against what they see as an elitist, citified agenda. What to do?

Labor unions have to change. We need to go after segments of the working pop that haven't unionized before, but now, due to outsourcing are scared to death. (High Tech, more service workers like Wal-Mart and so forth.)

Sigh! We shall see. I keep telling myself that there is hope, but even I get depressed sometimes.

(Oh and there are a lot of areas in New England that would fit right in with your analysis of CO. We are not that different when all is said and done. What makes us a blue region is the high city pop.)

[paulk]

14. it's kind of funny -

I grew up in rural upstate New York - so, yes, I understand that there's a lot in common between here and there.

When I first arrived out west (I was 23) - I lived in Wyoming for two years - places like Wamsutter, Rock River, Bosler - this isn't even rural - this is ghost town territory. Many of the people I worked with were from Cheyenne - which is a fair sized city. They'd hear I was from New York and automatically assume I was some kind of urban street punk. I was, in fact, far, far more of a country boy than they were. I mean, these are people to whom "back east" refers to Missouri... Their conception of the east coast was just as ignorant (if not more so) than my conception of what the west was like - it wasn't Cowboys and Injuns, it was meth and 4 wheel drive pickups.

[TayTay]

13. Out of curiosity...

what's your take on this NYTimes article in today's paper:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/25/national/25labor.html?pagewanted=print&position=


For what it's worth I like the last paragraph, it's innovative.

Mr. Sweeney outlined a broad program for the federation, saying it would increase efforts to elect a worker-friendly Congress in 2006 and would expand an organization, known as Working America, in which 800,000 nonunion workers have signed up to cooperate with unions on politics and legislation. He said labor had mounted a large grass-roots mobilization intended to block President Bush's effort to revamp Social Security.

[paulk]

15. that's the right idea

but - Sweeney is too old, and from a generation where Labor meant something different - the AFL-CIO needs visionary leadership - I think they need someone younger.

Actually, I think it's a great idea - use some of that union money to build unions - to organize.

[saracat]

5. I don't agree with his conclusions but he makes some good

points. He basically wants to ditch BOTH parties and develop unions. It might actually be a good idea if we could get the new members to vote Democratic! BTW the DLC hasn't won anything worthwhile in nine years. I just don't get that they are "winners" and the liberals aren't. That is crap. The DLCer's have cost us two presidential cycles so far and a House Majority Leader. I certainlr am not willing to give them another crack at anything. I think they should be disbanded.