Diminished Role in Presidential Race

Two weeks ago, I wrote what might be called a pre-mortem column on Sen. Tom Harkin’s dying race for the presidency, noting that most of America’s largest unions were belatedly but sensibly rallying behind him because of his unequivocal support of the agenda of liberals, labor and minorities.

A lack of money and no early primary victories except in his home state forced him out of the presidential race before the large unions could offer any substantive help.

Now there is no presidential candidate remaining who is proudly advocating the agenda of progressives.

Leaders of the unions that finally endorsed Harkin met last Thursday and decided nothing--except to await further developments until trying again to see if they can agree on a candidate before one is nominated by the Democratic convention.

Their discussions about their dilemma were fascinating but private. One of the few who commented publicly was Jack Sheinkman, president of the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers, and he only summarized the quandary they’re facing:

“No candidate is dealing enough with the problems of working people yet for all unions to rally around him.”

Unless unions representing a two-thirds majority of the 15 million AFL-CIO members support a candidate, the giant labor federation itself cannot make an official endorsement, although individual unions can back any candidate they want.

So, acting together but not speaking for the entire federation, 14 unions representing millions of workers endorsed Harkin just before his campaign collapsed.

Had they moved earlier, they might have saved him, because his populist message was essentially the same that brought victory to Pennsylvania Sen. Harris Wofford, the underdog in his recent reelection race against his Republican foe, former U.S. Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh, who had strong, active support from President Bush. Harkin’s message was great, but he was a poor messenger indeed.

Most unions, especially the large ones, are working feverishly to get equally strong labor representation at this summer’s Democratic convention in New York.

If no candidate has a delegate majority by then, a large labor bloc could be decisive in the final choice of the Democrats’ presidential nominee.

The best hope--albeit a very slim hope--for the old liberal-labor-minorities coalition that once was the heart of the party is for a deadlocked convention that could not agree on any of the remaining candidates.

It would take something of a miracle, but those things do happen, and the convention delegates could then draft a nominee more in the Democratic tradition of former presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson (before the Vietnam War) and John F. Kennedy.

Most labor delegates to the convention would quickly support a call to draft a liberal such as New York Gov. Mario Cuomo, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) or Rep. Richard Gephardt (D-Mo.), the House majority leader.

Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, who is ahead in the delegate count so far, has some labor support. But he is despised by labor leaders such as Owen Bieber, president of the United Auto Workers, and others for a host of reasons ranging from his support of the proposed anti-worker free trade pact with Mexico to his refusal to at least try to get rid of Arkansas’s “right-to-work” law that helps employers break unions.

The only way Clinton might garner labor backing before the Democratic convention is if former Sen. Paul Tsongas (D-Mass.) wins in today’s Michigan and Illinois primaries and thereby gets a real shot at the nomination.

A serious possibility of a Tsongas nomination could unite most unions behind Clinton just to avert that threat. Tsongas is proud of his pro-business stand, which implies opposition to workers and the unions that represent them.

But there are other reasons for opposing him, including his attacks on a law that prohibits employers from permanently replacing strikers. In theory, workers have the right to strike without fear of punishment. Tsongas also advocates compulsory arbitration as an alternative to strikes, which should always be legal in a democracy.

California’s former Gov. Jerry Brown is actively courting labor support and is pushing for meaningful labor law reform that would help labor’s cause. Also to his credit, he is now denouncing both political parties, neither of which has done much to close the increasingly wide income gap between the rich and most other Americans.

But he advocates a regressive flat tax of 13% on all incomes and what amounts to an even more regressive sales tax, both of which would make the rich even richer and force low- and middle-income workers to pay higher taxes than they now do.

And all of the remaining Democratic candidates are plagued by what President Bush might call, “that electability thing,” a problem he faces in his own party.

So, as things stand now, most of organized labor is sort of hanging around, speaking out for such good things as national health insurance and hoping for a miracle that they don’t realistically expect at the Democratic convention.

Labor will almost certainly endorse whoever is nominated there, even Tsongas, to end the economic misery caused by the anti-labor policies of Bush and former President Ronald Reagan.

But that isn’t much of a role for labor, which is such a major player in politics and certainly should be in this election, when its future depends so much on the outcome.