Ol' George sold his soul to Berman & Co. Hope he got a fair price.
McGovern was elected Senator by the eastern, populist half of the state but he has always harbored serious conservative instincts that he rarely indulged himself in. One of them was his distaste for unions, a western SD mania/paranoia. He managed to keep this under control (and under the radar) until, as Perlstein says, George Meany took the AFL-CIO to Nixon, a move I personally never have and never will forgive him for.
It's one of the subplots of NIXONLAND: the bright-eyed anti-war reform Demorats who formed the core of McGovern's movement became locked in a civil war with the old-line union leaders who were as uncomfortable with reform as they were comfortable with the Vietnam War. It got ugly. Long story short: AFL-CIO president George Meany, who chose to remain neutral in the 1972 presidential election but who obviously favored Richard Nixon, got the last word. At a Steelworkers convention in September, he explained that the "Democratic Party has been taken over by people named Jack who look like Jills and smell like Johns."
snip
None of which completely explains McGovern's right-wing TP's. I mean, in the old days he might not care for unions someplace deep in his soul but he would never have parroted conservative propaganda word-for-word and shamelessly attach his liberal credentials to it...unless....
Glorioski, Mr Holmes! Could it be there's a...DLC-er in the woodpile? Why, YES! And it's our old buddy Al F.
Ian Welsh at Firedoglake unearthed a secret to this strange betrayal of his progressive brothers and sisters: strange bedfellows.
It's safe to say George McGovern is a patsy for anti-union lobbyist Rick Berman, the leader of a $30 million front group interfering in key Senate and House races this cycle.
McGovern sits on the board of FirstJobs, another pro-business Berman front group, alongside the likes of Bush Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao, oil billionaire T. Boone Pickens, the editorial page director of the Washington Times, and the head of Sam's Club.
Actually, I find the most telling of McGovern's fellow board members to be Al From. I wonder if From regales McGovern at board meetings with his conviction that McGovern turned the Democratic parter into a monstrous aggregation "defined principally by weakness abroad and elitist, interest-group liberalism at home." One of the FDL commenters asked, "How old is he now? Seriously...is age-related stuff a factor here?" That's not quite it. The fact is, George McGovern is one of those Democrats who, along with Al From, has never had much use for the AFL-CIO.
More proof if you needed it that DLC poison has contaminated even the best in the Democratic party.
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