"21 National Unions Supporting Gephardt"
"Major Service Unions Supporting Dean"
And on the ground in Iowa, the unions are at each others' throats over the competing candidacies, which leaves a lot of people worried the wounds might take a while too heal-- time we don't really have given the need to mobilize in the fall.
A Quick Kill: In many ways, I want Dean to beat Gephardt in Iowa, not just because I obviously like Dean, but because a loss in Iowa basically means Gephardt's out of the race and the inter-union conflict will not spread to other states at the same fever pitch.
But even that worry may be exagerated, since local labor politics in any state is always more complicated, since a national union endorsement not only doesn't always deliver the rank-and-file, it doesn't even fully control what local union leadership does.
A Yankee in South Carolina: Take this story from South Carolina, where Dean was talking about NAFTA before a ground of workers:
Dr. Dean, as he does daily, acknowledged his support for Nafta and other treaties but said he would sign no more until trading partners raised their labor and environmental standards. Next to Dr. Dean on the rostrum here was the president of the local steelworkers' union, who could not hold the rally at his local's hall because his parent union has endorsed Mr. Gephardt.
The international union can (at times) control how union resources are used and probably block a formal endorsement, but this kind of appearance by a local industrial union leader shows the "industrial versus service union split" is not the overwhelming reality many might worry about.
South Carolina is in many ways the heart of this recession's "rust belt", hemmoraging textile and other industrial factory jobs to overseas competitors, yet Dean has clear appeal to southern industrial workers -- in some ways the constituency the media says he would have the least appeal to. (BTW I'm sure Gephardt could find a nice crowd of latte-drinking yuppies who would cheer him on, against any stereotypes to the contrary).
Coming Together in the Fall: But this story gives me hope that the big union divisions, while real and probably personally a bit bitter among the top leaders, won't translate into real problems on the ground at the local level in coming together to defeat Bush in the fall.
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Comments
A prediction:
Whether the unions squabble over the Dem nominee, or jump in line to support whoever gets the nomination, it won't matter that much, since most union members will vote for Bush.
Posted by: Michael Brown at December 31, 2003 11:25 AM
Most union members didn't vote for Reagan in '84, so why would most vote for Bush in '04?
I don't see the division between the service and the trade unions as being all that serious. They will unify in short order because the common enemy is so obvious and so threatening.
There wasn't any media coverage, but the Dean campaign held it's Washington "From Mousepads to Shoeleather" grassroots organizing training at the Seattle hall of Machinists Lodge 751, the local union for Boeing workers. (The Machinists' international union has endorsed Gephardt.)
Posted by: Carter Wright at December 31, 2003 01:20 PM
i for one see silver lining in all this . as locals are more likely to act as their members are inclined to , it is making the system more decentralized and democratic .
mr.brown seems to see LOTS of problems in any one who criticises repubs and sees all kind of support for them . it is a broken record...
Paleo writes "Most union members didn't vote for Reagan in '84, so why would most vote for Bush in '04?"
I stand corrected on that. I should have written "a significant percentage of union members will vote for Bush."
As far as my seeing "LOTS of problems in any one who criticises repubs and sees all kind of support for them," I take some issue with the characterization. I'd say I see A problem with anyone who criticizes repubs, which is that I don't think they will be convincing enough to induce a majority of voters to vote Democratic.
Is that in any way a suggestion that I think critics of the Prez should back off? Absolutely not, as long as the critic believes what he or she is saying makes sense. I'm an advocate of free markets, which includes the Marketplace of Ideas.
Posted by: Michael Brown at January 2, 2004 11:16 AM
By JAMES TARANTO
Shut Up, the Former Enron Adviser Explained
The election year has dawned, and former Enron adviser Paul Krugman, tribune of the Angry Left, has a message for Democrats who don't share his madness: Shut up already!
Krugman likens almost all the Democratic presidential candidates to Ralph Nader:
The Democratic Party has its own internal spoilers: candidates lagging far behind in the race for the nomination who seem more interested in tearing down Howard Dean than in defeating George Bush. . . .
Some of Mr. Dean's rivals have launched vitriolic attacks that might as well have been scripted by Karl Rove. And I don't buy the excuse that it's all about ensuring that the party chooses an electable candidate. . . .
Let me suggest a couple of ground rules. First, while it's O.K. for a candidate to say he's more electable than his rival, someone who really cares about ousting Mr. Bush shouldn't pre-emptively surrender the cause by claiming that his rival has no chance. Yet Mr. Lieberman and Mr. Kerry have done just that. To be fair, Mr. Dean's warning that his ardent supporters might not vote for a "conventional Washington politician" was a bit close to the line, but it appeared to be a careless rather than a vindictive remark.
More important, a Democrat shouldn't say anything that could be construed as a statement that Mr. Bush is preferable to his rival. Yet after Mr. Dean declared that Saddam's capture hadn't made us safer--a statement that seems more justified with each passing day--Mr. Lieberman and, to a lesser extent, Mr. Kerry launched attacks that could, and quite possibly will, be used verbatim in Bush campaign ads. (Mr. Lieberman's remark about Mr. Dean's "spider hole" was completely beyond the pale.)
So here's the Krugman strategy for beating President Bush: Nominate a candidate who (1) thinks Osama bin Laden may be innocent, (2) wishes Saddam Hussein were still in power, (3) wants to raise taxes through the roof, and (4) says that "dealing with race is about educating white folks." And while you're at it, divide the party by angrily attacking any Democrat who has the temerity to point out that Emperor Dean has no clothes. It sounds like a great way to build a majority coalition--for the GOP.
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