Engaging with Democrats

Disillusionment with Democrats is one of the oldest—and most familiar—sentiments of labor progressives. Sadly, the first twenty-one months of the Obama era haven't done much to alter those feelings. Without question, there has been progress on a number of critical issues—economic stimulus, health care reform, financial reform, key appointments at OSHA and the National Mediation Board (which oversees railway and airline labor relations)—which would have been unimaginable in a Republican presidency. But the frequent ideological and political vacillation of the new administration and its congressional allies on a range of issues has given rise to a surge of anger and frustration among labor activists who had fervently hoped that Obama's victory would at last inaugurate a new progressive era in American politics. Especially in the weeks leading up to the vote on health care reform in late March, as numerous labor-backed members of Congress abandoned those who had worked so hard to create a powerful Democratic majority, feelings of betrayal among labor political activists were palpable and deep.

The situation is immeasurably worse at the state level, where devastating budget crises have driven debate over fiscal and budget issues, as well as attitudes toward public sector unionism, dramatically to the right. In state capitals like Trenton and Albany, it is almost as if the Obama victory, and the potential ideological shift it signified, never happened. The vicious rightward skid of state and local politics, drenched in the economic anxiety of the Great Recession and echoing powerfully of Reaganism and California's Proposition 13, has been stunning to labor and community activists. In New York State, for example, an incipient property tax revolt and relentless editorializing against tax increases on the wealthy seem to have paralyzed Democratic legislative majorities struggling to close a $9 billion budget gap. The state's first black governor, David Paterson, has warned that the wealthy—the putative engines of the state's economy—will flee if required to endure their fair share of the state's tax burden. He vociferously argued that New York's historically generous social spending represents a kind of "addiction"—as if pre-kindergarten programs, rebuilt infrastructure, small class sizes, a robust higher education system, and a clean environment are the symptoms of some kind of rare disease. Leading Democrats refuse to impose even temporary tax levies on the bloated bonuses of Wall Street bankers, even though 2009 financial sector profits would simply not exist were it not for the massive—multi-trillion—taxpayer-funded bailout of 2008.

Across the Hudson, much of New Jersey's Democratic Party establishment has joined an escalating public crusade to pin the state's persistent fiscal problems on the allegedly excessive compensation of teachers and public employees. In this, they deliberately pit struggling property taxpayers—who have lost any hope of pension or health care security in Wal-Mart America—against middle-income public employees desperately hoping to preserve their modest pensions and decent, though hardly extravagant, health care benefits. Perhaps the state's loudest Democratic proponent of this approach has been Ironworker leader-turned-state senator, Steve Sweeney. Upon becoming the Senate majority leader earlier this year, Sweeney rammed through a package of bills, slashing pension benefits for future public employees and imposing health care cost-shifting on any public sector contract that does not already include it. So much for collective bargaining.

The bills sailed through the Democratic-controlled state senate with only two abstentions and not a single vote in opposition; only a handful of Democratic assembly members risked editorial board wrath by voting against the package. Sweeney is actually playing junior partner in this crusade to Republican Governor Chris Christie, who has won national conservative acclaim for his vitriolic attacks on the state's largest union, the New Jersey Education Association. The situation has deteriorated so far that Christie felt comfortable earlier this year accusing the teachers of using their students as "drug mules" to advance a parochial political agenda.

Many labor activists, myself included, would not have predicted this depressing state of affairs on November 4, 2008, when Obama's movement-like campaign triumphed...