Independent Unions
by digby
There's lots of chatter about Richard Trumka's speech today reiterating that labor is going to be more independent of the Democratic Party in the future. But I think people may be misunderstanding what that means in practice.
Some people believe that the only way to be independent of the Party is to back people who aren't Democrats. This means third parties or Republicans. But that isn't likely. The GOP is as anti-labor right now as it's possible to be so there's little hope there and the history of third parties in this country is littered with wasted money and broken dreams.
So is this just PR put out there by another compromised institution to make it look as if they have some way of challenging the status quo? Maybe. But it might mean something else entirely. It's just possible that labor is going to use its money and ground troops to only support the kind of candidates who are strongly progressive ideologically instead of being the Democrats' house boys and working to elect anyone the Party chooses. Perhaps the unions have seen that they need solidarity with the rest of the progressive movement as they fight the right's full blown assault. Certainly in Wisconsin it was a common article of faith that the various groups that came together to support the union were all stronger as a result.
What this means in practice is that unions could stop doing the kind of transactional politics that got Janice Hahn in CA-36 their help and endorsement for past favors and look to the long term health of their movement and the health of liberalism as a whole. They need all the help they can get and they aren't going to get it from business.
I have no idea if this is what Trumka has in mind. But it is a way for them to be "independent" while still working to elect Democrats. It's just that their help would be conditional on something other than the fact that the candidates is wearing the blue jersey. We'll see what happens.
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