The 1972 decision by organized labor…to destroy McGovern

[phantom power]

Joan Walsh wrote a very nice piece about McGovern that's well worth reading. This excerpt speaks to my point above and, I think, may explain to some younger folks the dynamic that created so much of what we see today:

When I asked labor historian Jefferson Cowie in an interview whether he could identify one crucial moment in the Democratic Party’s post-’60s unraveling, I expected him to fudge like a good academic, but he surprised me; he had one: “The 1972 decision by organized labor…to destroy McGovern. Because that solidified a moment. It said, ‘We can’t work with the unions,’ to the left and to the women’s movement and the rest. It said organized labor is just about guys like George Meany, and Mayor Daley, it’s really the same monster, we can’t deal with them. And that creates a natural alliance between the New Left and the New Democrats, who were much more sympathetic to important issues of diversity than to labor.”

McGovern’s campaign manager, Gary Hart, would pioneer the idea of “New Democrats” who owed no allegiance to labor. When he ran for Senate in 1974, Hart titled his stump speech “The End of the New Deal.” That same year he proclaimed that his new generation of Democrats were not just ”a bunch of little Hubert Humphreys,” slandering labor’s longtime champion. A young Bill and Hillary Clinton got their start on the McGovern campaign, and it’s hard not to see the impact of McGovern’s defeat on Clinton’s careful centrism and Democratic Leadership Council politics. The DLC was formed in direct reaction to Walter Mondale’s 1984 loss, which was even more lop-sided than McGovern’s. But it was designed to eradicate McGovernism from the party – to define Democrats as tough on crime and welfare, friendly to business, hawkish on defense – everything McGovern supposedly was not. It also involved the party running away from its proud New Deal legacy, and defining itself more as what it wasn’t than what it was.

We now bemoan the loss of the labor movement in America and for good reason. But the rift between labor and the left during that earlier era deprived both of a necessary ally. Labor thought perhaps in those days that they were powerful enough that they could ally themselves with the right on cultural issues without weakening their political clout. And after the defeat of their idealism, the left thought they could co-opt business and industry for their own aims. Both were completely deluded about the reactionary nature of the American Right.

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2012/10/george-mcgovern-too-decent-to-be.html

[BeyondGeography]

1. Reading Cowie's book on the 70's (Stayin' Alive) right now

Corrupt unions finished off the postwar working class every bit as much as the greedy owners with whom they were in bed.

[Ikonoklast]

3. George Meany killed Labor's influence more effectively then Republicans could ever hope to.

He ignored the declining industrial membership, and refused to acknowledge the rise of minorities and women in service unions as equal to trade unions.

Also, was enamoured of being inside the Beltway.

[BeyondGeography]

4. Had Vietnam all wrong, too

A total disaster.

[Ikonoklast]

5. Meany ignored what people outside of the executive council were telling him for near twenty years.

He refused to understand or acknowledge that the struggle for Labor was not won, it was still continuing, but he acted as if there was no need to put money into organizing those he felt weren't 'worthy' of being unionized.

He got to be one of the influential people in D.C., and forgot who put him there.

[Brickbat]

2. He sure had his revenge, though.

Speaking out against EFCA. Gross.