Sanders momentum stalls in union front offices, by @Gaius_Publius

The powerful union behind the fast food workers' wage movement endorsed Hillary Clinton for president Tuesday.

The 2-million-member Service Employees International Union approved the endorsement through a vote by its executive board. ...

Clinton now has the support of unions representing about 9.5 million union members, or nearly two-thirds of the U.S.’ 14.6 million union workers.

Democratic Party insiders-- not especially less craven or less corrupt than Republican Party insiders-- are completely in the bag for Hillary. Of the 712 Superdelegates-- a disgraceful scheme to tamp down the "excesses" of democracy by crooked, power-hungry careerists like Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Steve Israel and Chuck Schumer-- 359 have pledged to vote for Clinton, whose campaign has been arm-twisting with shocking aggressiveness, while only 8 are pledged to vote for Bernie. 

Bernie Sanders' momentum Stalls in an Unlikely Place: Union Halls

... Despite Sanders’ deep support for labor, the national nurses’ organization that [Glendora nurse Allysha] Almada sought to join is the only major union to endorse Sanders in the race for the Democratic nomination for president. It is dwarfed by much larger labor groups that are lining up with his arguably less committed, less reliable rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

National unions representing more than half of America’s 14.6 million unionized workers are already in Clinton’s corner, and many of the rest are heading in that direction. It is creating significant tension in some of the organizations and raising the question of whether the Sanders campaign is faltering or if union leadership has lost touch with its rank and file, large numbers of whom are turning out to support Sanders with unrivaled enthusiasm.

“There is no incentive for elected officials to support working-class values if union leaders are going to then say, ‘We need someone more conservative because they will win,’” said Larry Cohen, a former president of the Communication Workers of America who is advising Sanders. “That is what we are getting here. … Secretary Clinton is fine. But she is a corporate Democrat. That hasn’t worked.”

About 80,000 union members have enlisted in the Labor for Bernie campaign, through which they are pressuring the heads of their various unions not to endorse Clinton. They launch social media campaigns denouncing their union leadership when they are ignored. Local chapters of unions in key early states have gone rogue and thrown their support behind Sanders. Many of them parrot Sanders’ call for massive change — the kind union leaders have been demanding for decades — and they are resentful that their organizations would back the establishment at a time the insurgency finally has so much momentum.

Even so, the next major union poised to make an endorsement — the Service Employees International Union, which represents 2 million workers — is expected to throw its support behind Clinton.

“Union leaders are negotiators by nature,” [Cornell University Law professor Lance] Compa said. “They understand you can’t get everything they want. You get the best deal in the end. That is what they are looking at now” as they weigh whom to endorse.

WILL SEIU ENDORSE CLINTON TUESDAY?: Officials at the two-million-member Service Employees International Union have been told to clear their calendars Tuesday [November 17]. Will this be SEIU’s long-expected Hillary Clinton endorsement? “Everyone is saying the endorsement happens on the 17th,” an SEIU insider tells POLITICO. A final vote from the union’s executive board has not yet taken place, but it will have the chance to hold one at its Tuesday meeting. (The announcement could take place at a planned event with low wage workers also scheduled for Tuesday.)

SEIU spokesperson Sahar Wali confirmed that the executive board will meet Tuesday but said no endorsement decision had been made. SEIU executive committee Member David Rolf told us the same.

Joe Biden’s decision not to run cleared the path for a Clinton endorsement, the SEIU source tells POLITICO. Some staffers were less than thrilled when Hillary balked at endorsing a $15 minimum wage (she opted for $12 instead). But Clinton was the only presidential candidate to appear (albeit by phone) at SEIU’s Fight for $15 conference in June, and she’s shown up repeatedly alongside SEIU-represented home health care and child care workers during the past several months.

There are also some personnel ties between the campaign and the union: SEIU’s former deputy national political director, Heather Stone, became Clinton’s chief of staff in August.

The most important thing to consider when thinking about the Sanders campaign is this. Everyone else who's running, on both sides, is an insider playing within — and supporting — the "insider game," the one that keeps insiders wealthy and outsiders struggling, the one where the wealthy and their retainers operate government for their benefit only. What sets Sanders apart is his determination to dismantle that game, to take it apart and send its players home (back to the private sector) or to jail.

Sanders is not the first labor absolutist to confront this kind of betrayal. Other similarly positioned Democrats have been through it, including former presidential candidates Tom Harkin and Dick Gephardt.

Ironically, it is now Harkin, a former Iowa senator now supporting Clinton, who is trying to rally laborers for the establishment candidate. He took a swipe at Sanders this week during an interview on Boston radio, heard in New Hampshire, where Democrats are threatening to disrupt Clinton’s march to the nomination by voting for Sanders.