The Labor Movement Fucked Up By Supporting Hillary Clinton

[phantom power]

With the backing of the big unions, Hillary Clinton stands today as the statistically likely nominee. Since Sanders’ upset win in the Michigan primary, she has been raising her voice about her promised opposition to the TPP and other free trade agreements that she supported not too long ago. So it is as good at time as ever for labor leaders to ruefully review Hillary’s actual record on these things. As Dan Kaufman laid out in the New York Times this weekend, that record is not encouraging. She was a happy Walmart board member as the company busted unions; she has repeatedly talked out of both sides of her mouth on free trade, assuring workers she is against various free trade agreements during campaigns only to help enact them once she is safely in power. At a time when manufacturing wages have been stagnant for 35 years and wage inequality across the board continues to grow, there is nothing in Hillary Clinton’s record that should give average workers confidence that she will keep her many promises to them if the political situation should favor breaking those promises.

By backing the perceived safe choice over the candidate who actually agrees with it more, the labor movement helped to ensure that the candidate who agrees with it more will not get the nomination—during what could well be the only election campaign in our lifetime that a candidate as pro-labor as Bernie Sanders could actually win, thanks to the insane and unelectable opponent that the other side could nominate.

Well done, union leaders. You have successfully sold your own interests out in advance. When Hillary Clinton inevitably sells you out again in the future, you’ll have no one to blame but yourselves.

http://gawker.com/the-labor-movement-fucked-up-supporting-hillary-clinton-1764719202

[desmiller]

1. I can't see how people allowing themselves to be easily charmed by this woman.

[LiberalArkie]

2. But the leaders have got theirs now. They do not need to worry about the little pissants crawling

around below them.

[phantom power]

7. There is a logic to supporting HRC as the best way to serve union members...

The basic logic is that if HRC is "certain" to be the eventual Dem candidate, but as a union leader you endorse Sanders, then your union is less likely to have the ear of a Clinton administration, compared to any organization that *did* endorse Clinton.

So, I get it.

The problem with this kind of tactical thinking is that it always works in favor of the status quo. "We endorse the status quo candidate because that's who is most likely to win, and by endorsing that candidate we help to make their election even more likely"

That kind of tactics can never deliver change outside the framework of the status-quo system. But the system itself has become the problem.

[TDale313]

3. Let's see how that works out for them when she rams through the TPP. n/t

[in_cog_ni_to]

6. Exactly.

Nothing like cutting off your nose to spite your face. One must wonder what the Union leadership's agenda actually is? They know for a fact she supports the TPP.

PEACE
LOVE
BERNIE

[EdwardBernays]

4. This a election

Proves that Democrats are just as willing and likely to vote against their own best interest as anyone.

[RoccoR5955]

5. Damn straight they did.

And AFSCME has already heard it from me.
I sent letters to the head honchos there telling them that they screwed up, and why. They have yet to respond.
I do not expect them to respond either.

[dana_b]

8. Glad that I'm a nurse

But yeah, all of those labor for Hillary endorsements made no sense to me EXCEPT that they didn't realize that Bernie was going to be in it for the long haul.

[phantom power]

9. I grind this axe a lot, but the circularity of electability arguments make me crazy.

"Well, you see, strategically Clinton is the likely nominee, so blah blah blah."

Hey brainiacs, if you all just pulled your head out of your electability group-think vortex and supported Sanders, he'd be -- you know -- electable!