Click here for a special offer. Click here for our free newsletter. When Democrats gathered in Los Angeles 40 years ago, Theodore H. White identified the party's three major constituencies as big city machines, Southern governors, and labor unions. Today the machines are gone and the Southern governors are mostly Republican, but the unions, after a long decline, are picking up strength. Some 31 percent of Democratic delegates were union members, compared with 17 percent of Democratic voters.
Some answers are obvious.
Nearly half of union members are public employees, and Gore's initiatives have always taken care to protect public employees' jobs. The old industrial unions are strongly opposed to Gore's support of free-trade agreements. We must set standards to end child labor, to prevent the exploitation of workers and the poisoning of the environment. But, as in the case of stands favored by other interest groups, these are policies also backed by many reasonable and disinterested voters. More disturbing are the questions about Gore's attitude toward union corruption raised by his campaign's closeness to figures convicted or implicated in violations of law revolving around the hotly contested election for Teamsters union president in 1996.