Democrats without labor must be addressed: author

Bill Knight column for Thursday, Friday or Saturday, Sept. 28, 29 or 30

Eighty-seven years ago next month, humorist Will Rogers spoke in support of a GOP candidate for California governor, commenting, “The governor is a Republican, but I am a member of no political organization. I am a Democrat.”

After Hillary Clinton released excerpts from her new book about the recent past and Democrats started debating the future, author Thomas Frank says that unions have been increasingly excluded from the Democratic Party. And discussion on what’s ahead – involving labor and many issues – is healthy. Conversations are sure to accelerate with the release of Clinton’s “What Happened” and Joe Lauria’s “How I Lost, by Hillary Clinton” (a compilation of remarks by her and her close associates, plus commentary by the award-winning Wall Street Journal journalist).

 “The accepted wisdom is that Trump succeeded in awakening a popular movement of anger and frustration among white, blue-collar, less-educated, mostly male voters, particularly in non-urban areas,” writes Omri Ben-Shahar in Forbes magazine.

“This story is mostly wrong,” he continues. “Trump did not win because he was more attractive to this base of white voters. He won because Hillary Clinton was less attractive to the traditional Democratic base of urban, minorities and more educated voters.

“Take Michigan for example,” he adds. “A state that Obama won in 2012 by 350,000 votes, Clinton lost by roughly 10,000. Why? She received 300,000 votes less than Obama did in 2012. Wisconsin tells the same numbers story, even more dramatically. Trump got no new votes. He received exactly the same number of votes in America’s Dairyland as Romney did in 2012, 1,409,000 votes. But Clinton tallied 230,000 votes less than Obama did in 2012. This is how a 200,000-vote victory margin for Obama became a 30,000-vote defeat.

Still, Clinton’s book criticizes Bernie Sanders and claims the more progressive primary candidate leveled unfair attacks on her.

“Because we agreed on so much,” she writes, “Bernie couldn't make an argument against me in this area on policy, so he had to resort to innuendo and impuning my character.”

Frank, interviewed on the Real News Network, said, “This stuff about Bernie Sanders certainly seems peevish.

“Sanders is basically picking up where the New Deal left off in the late 1940s,” Frank said. “He was reviving elements of what the Democratic Party used to be. Here's the modern Democratic Party saying, ‘Oh, no no no, that stuff is all pie-in-the-sky nonsense’.”

Frank – author of “What's the Matter with Kansas?” and last year’s “Listen, Liberal” – said the relative absence of working people is noticeable.

“Towards the sort of end of the New Deal era, like in the 1960s, labor unions were very powerful within the Democratic Party. Members of Congress often came from a blue-collar background, came up through organized labor – that sort of thing was fairly common. This is not to say that they were ever a perfect party, but there was a real shift … an enormous change in the Democratic Party. They basically decided to remove organized labor from its structural position within the Democratic Party.”

Clinton and some Democratic and even labor leaders criticize Sanders for “sowing division,” but Frank isn’t having it.

“When you go into union halls, they love Bernie Sanders,” he said. “The rank and file, they love Bernie Sanders. [And] that's who funds the Democratic Party by and large. The Democratic Party really plays these guys. They string them along and they promise them all sorts of things.”

Changes in population seem to favor Democrats, with an increasing percentage of more progressive and younger adults. But as Clinton’s campaign showed, the Democratic base must still be reached and mobilized.

Turnout is difficult for unpopular candidates when a campaign message is essentially “We’re not as bad as them.”

Frank said, “Unions were the key from the 1930s up to the 1970s, but that's not really part of the Democratic [Party]. They like unions, and they love it that unions come out and support them and do all the grassroots work on election day and all that sort of thing. But they have allowed unions to deteriorate.”

So it’s possible – depending on conversations, commitments and a core including labor – the Democratic Party could change, or party pro’s could block reform, or it could disintegrate.