This post is inspired by my social media feeds filled with attacks on an assortment of Democrats running for President, who are not “pure enough” in the eyes of progressive activists because of their lack of unquestioned support for Medicare for All and the Green New Deal.
Yet one of the biggest constituency of the progressive coalition, labor unions, are not big fans of either.
A simple search for “Union support for Medicare for All” is met with scores of articles of various unions either skeptical or down right opposed to the plan.
The same is true with labor unions who lack of enthusiasm for the Green New Deal…even if it is being billed as a big job creator, unions apparently are only looking at the jobs it will kill.
The point of this post is not to attack unions. No, it is to point of the lack of honest debate and the group think that is poisoning public discourse. Just as Trump fans live in a world where the Mueller report exonerates Trump, we progressives live in our own group think in which anyone that opposes “obvious truths” like M4A or the GND are so wrong that the only explanation is they have ulterior motives that are driven political expediency and not by sincere concerns.
So the forces advocating for Medicare for All will be dumbfounded when they try and pass the bill and find people who they thought were allies–unions–are opposed to the bill because these unions are part of the 180 million US families that have private health insurance. And why would a union who negotiated hard–sometimes going on strike–for those medical benefits, let politicians take away these for benefits?
Same is true for many unions who fear the GND will eliminate their coal jobs, or phase out the factories where they have jobs building SUVs. Sure the GND will create more jobs, but the 55 yr old auto worker in OH is smart enough to realize that they won’t be getting a new job in the solar industry that will be created elsewhere.
Nor is my post intended to be critical of M4A or the GND. Rather it is to suggest the supporters of these two measures are doing a terrible job of selling these ideas to the US electorate. Instead they simply insist on purity in the Primary and complete intolerance to people (and candidates) that suggest an 4 year transition to M4A is bad policy and that a public option maybe a safer course, or that they’d like to support zero-carbon emissions by 2030, but it is scientifically impossible and they are proposing goals that are based on facts and not “aspirational” falsehoods.
And when these kind of truths are articulated, the bearer of the bad news is labeled as a corporate sell-out who is not a true progressive. This is all par for the times we live in. When one side says if you don’t want to build a wall, then your for open borders and the other says if you don’t support scientifically impossible goals, then you are a corporate sell out.
We have met the enemy and it is us.
Could it be that our divide in the USA is not left/right or lib/con or Rep/Dem or black/white…..but it is mostly along the lines of have/have not?
Probably some of that. I’ll have to look up where the SEIU is on medicare for all, seems they represent many with no insurance and they would welcome it.
But I don’t think union workers (or leaders) are skeptical about M4A or GND because they “have” a job or health care. Sure maybe they have “union privilege”, but they are afraid of losing something basic–like a job or health care–that drives their concerns.
My point is that the way M4A and GND is being used as progressive litmus tests ignores the political troubles ahead.
Well, I am going to insist on a livable planet, and avoiding massive suffering for billions of people, including my own kids. Anything less than that is a non-starter. Call it a litmus test; I call it survival. I do indeed hope that union families recognize this as a necessity for their own kids. Why this issue is left up to “environmentalists” — you know, people who care about that stuff — is truly baffling to me. I mean, there are Trump-voting farmers in the midwest who can’t plant their seeds; this isn’t just money — it’s food. Etc. This is an existential threat much worse — because much more certain — than nuclear war.
Part of this is what you describe: Legitimate fear of job loss. Some of it is typical interest-group narrowness, parochialism and siloing on behalf of the unions — including the inability to recognize a massive opportunity to replenish their own membership.
But yeah, I find it amazing to see union leaders who can’t think a few steps ahead, who can only fight a rear-guard battle, and can’t even imagine anything different. More conversation is needed, I guess — but why don’t *they* pick up the phone, too?
I’ll add that American unions have always been torn by two competing but equally compelling goals. To organize on behalf of their members and to organize on behalf of the entire working class. Most American unions do the former, but very few do the latter. I have sympathy for the locals that won hard earned health benefits in their contracts and do not trust that single payer will get done. This is one of the reasons a public option is a better idea.
As for the GND the onus is on Democrats to emphasize that it is the biggest job creation program in recent memory. The climate arguments sadly won’t win the day with the trades, but the job arguments will.
And the members inside certain unions are seriously retrograde in their politics. Unions have a way of eating themselves.
I don’t doubt that. Trump/Gonzalez voters do exist and they’re in my local. People that feel our district is being overwhelmed by immigrants without any help from the state and that Baker is a union busting coward on charters and public school funding. It’s an internally consistent worldview, even if it’s wrongheaded. As a fellow MTA member and organizer, all I can do is listen and help steer them in the right direction. Our candidates need to learn how to do that.
This comment is not directed at you, but rather the “my way or the highway” activists I see at events and/or social media. I think there are a few ways to achieve real health care reform (100% access and much lower costs) and M4A is be one of them. But not the way the bill is written with a 4 year implementation phase, that increases the risk of a FUBAR and will blow the whole thing up. Yet, the mere mention of a public option, that most likely will lead to M4A over a longer period of time, makes me a callus person who will let people die in the eyes of many M4A zealots. Saying I want people to die (as one person stated to me here) is not going to win me over.
Same goes with the GND. AOC should not be lauded for for her role in this, but she should have been sent back to the locker room for handing climate change deniers a gift when announcing the plan. I was one of those people that thought they downloaded the plan to read it and the GND I downloaded was actually a “brainstorming” document her staff put together about tearing down privately owned homes and buildings if they could not be upgraded to carbon neutral; or virtually eliminating planes or the cattle industry. My God, talk about giving you opponents a gift! Yet GND advocates waved off the criticism “oh, those were just draft ideas” and continued on their merry path. Someone should have gotten fired (like AOC’s Chief of Staff, who posted them) but proponents have their head in the clouds and didn’t see the talking points as the disaster they were. Talk about tone deaf.
Where are the GND press conferences in West Virginia or Ohio? Where is the messaging that focuses on the new economic engine that will give jobs to the children of coal and steel workers? Instead the messaging is always about intangibles like polar bears starving or one million species facing extinction. All things that are horrible, but it doesn’t motivate the average person.
I wish we lived in a world were people would pick up the phone unprompted. But we don’t. We live in a world where we focus on what is in front of us. Humans are far closer to their animal past then the enlighten being we hoped for when the Declaration of Independence was written. So unless people get a phone call and listen to a message that requires a prompt call back, don’t expect a phone call out of the blue.
Coal jobs are down 17% under this President, despite his best efforts to prop up the coal companies. I think part of our messaging has to be that no matter what government does, the days of good coal jobs are rapidly coming to an end.
What smart Democrats need to do is show those miners they can get even better jobs helping build a 21st century energy grid. Jobs that pay more and are fundamentally easier on their lungs and the natural resources in their community. Calling them deplorable and helicoptering in from out of state to lecture them on climate change is exactly the approach that re-elects this President and his planet killing agenda.
Advice from someone old enough to remember Environmentalists for Full Employment:
Find out what they want and make alliances. None of the above things is a deal breaker, in principle. We’re going to need all the help we can get, and this is getable.
Exactly. That’s way it’s hard for me to get excited about the GND…I’ve seen this movie a few times and it doesn’t have a happy ending.
Brian Schatz shows how climate can be a blue collar issue. If we frame the GND as a traditional jobs program we win. If we frame it as you’re killing the planet if you oppose this, we lose.
I’d rather talk to the trades about the huge job opportunities for their members the Green New Deal will provide rather than lecture them on their short sighted morality.
Both of these things feel like “Repeal Obamacare!” for Democrats– more a campaign bumper sticker than a thing that has much chance of happening.
I hear you, and at the same time I fear you miss a fundamental distinction. It is far easier to attack something that exists than to propose something that does not.
“Repeal Obamacare!” is a negative that was strong enough to put the GOP in power. It failed because there is no reasonable replacement, even for the GOP (never mind the rest of the country).
“Medicare for All” and “Green New Deal” are each positive slogans. To the extent that either contributes to a Democratic victory, the governmental challenge is to make it happen. The margin of victory in the election can and should be used as a mandate to force the resulting legislation into law.
“Repeal Obamacare!” was an effective campaign slogan. The GOP built its 2016 legislative majority on the fruits of its relentless campaign against Obamacare during the Barack Obama administration. If a viable alternative had existed in 2016, that alternative would now be law.
Of the two, I think “Medicare For All!” is the better of the two, primarily because I think the GND is a bigger political lift. I think both are vital.
I think it’s hard to generalize about unions. We are a diverse bunch.
The MTA, to which I belong, supports and provides resources (workers, media) to issues that really don’t benefit the membership, at least directly. We do those things because we believe in them. Some police unions–see New York City–tend toward fascism. There may be some progressive police unions, but I’ve never seen one. Trade unions are concerned about work. A lot of people in these unions don’t work a full year so every bit counts. Nurses are an entirely different ball of wax when it comes to health care. They see what we don’t see, even though we may disagree in interpreting what we see.
I agree with CMD on Medicare for All. It’s a catchy slogan. It’s an unclear policy. The revolutionaries want single-payer, though that would mean all of us with decent, but costly insurance, would lose our insurance for something that hasn’t been invented yet. Everyone deserves good health care they can afford, but an incremental approach that starts at birth and maybe lower than retirement age would be my preference and a more realistic path.
The Green New Deal was never anything but a list of goals that include employment. It’s hard to blame trade unions that want to preserve their jobs. They should be skeptical of a list of goals that offers no policy path for their livelihoods. It’s nice to say they’ll be displaced into different, greener jobs, but that’s pretty abstract when it comes time to pay the bills.