God I hope not. Not only do I love the labor movement, but I feel they're one of the Democratic Party's greatest assets. But does anyone else remember this big news from last summer?:
IAFF Endorses Chris Dodd for President
All of a sudden, people were paying attention to Dood. Prompting reactions like this from many political observers:
In 2004 Kerry was written off in the nomination fight. He was down, he was out, and he was a laughingstock. One of the things that turned that around for him was the IAFF (International Association of Fire Fighters). They endorsed him and they formed his ground machine and they did one hell of a job (including making it clear to the college kids working for Dean that nomination battles often go to the ground team that can be most, how shall we say, intimidating.)
Chris Dodd came in 6th with 0.02% in Iowa.
On Thursday, it was Hillary Clinton who won the union vote with 31%. Followed by Obama at 28% and Edwards, who had more union endorsements than anyone, came in third with 24%. Huh?
And remember how Obama got ripped to shreds for not attending that AFSCME Forum in Nevada last February? He instead spent the day at a Town Hall Meeting in, you guessed it, Iowa. AFSCME held a similar event for the presidential candidates in 2003 as well. Absent from that event? A guy by the name of John Kerry.
IAFF endorsed Dodd out of loyalty to Dodd for years of service. The IAFF president was burned in 04 because he defied the rank and file by going with Kerry and we saw how they were embarrased there. He wasnt going to risk his presidency of the IAFF by screwing up that one. There were two people in serious contention for the support of the IAFF, Edwards and Hillary. They did the safe thing and stayed away from both of them.
Labor is and should be a significant presence in Democratic party politics. It is just a screwed up year.
I think labor's death is premature: all three candidates (and the others too) are so much better than any of the Reps., that many national Unions (including mine, the CWA) don't need to recommend one candidate.
Personally, I think labor's true power comes from the workers and not the Union bureaucrats and I'm happy that in Iowa they appreciated Obama.
You're probably right about individual union members going there own way though. Which is good because Democrats should appeal to regular folk, not the handful of bigwigs who dish out endorsements.
We are writing to protest in the strongest terms the negative campaign that AFSCME is conducting against Barack Obama. We do not believe that such a wholesale assault on one of the great friends of our union was ever contemplated when the International Executive Board (IEB) made its decision to endorse Hillary Clinton.
Having said that, in a general election, both Change to Win and the AFL-CIO will most likely support the Democrat. I honestly couldn't see either one of these groups going with any of the Republican candidates because the GOP is pretty anti-labor nowadays.
In Virginia, especially, members of both AFL-CIO and CTW affiliated unions work together and are not as divided as their leaders at the national level.
In some of the 2007 Virginia races, I think labor support, including both the money they gave and the workers they turned out for labor-to-labor GOTV efforts, such as phone banking and door-to-door canvassing of union households, made the winning difference. In NoVa, this effort certainly helped George Barker in Lee District.
So please don't discount labor's value to the Democratic Party. And given that Democrats generally support policies that are more favorable to the middle class and working families, unions should not, and do not, discount their value either.