Michael Kelly Mort Kondracke Ch. 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. Unions had far more delegates than blacks and Hispanics did, and far more lan with membership numbers suddenly on the uptick than did feminists, who compromised their principles to defend Bill Clinton.
Some answers are obvious.
Teachers unions were the most heavily represented at the convention, and from Gore they get rock-solid opposition to vouchers, even for kids in failing schools and a silencing of Joseph Lieberman's contrary view. 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.