More on the Democratic coallition

Rachel Swarns writes in the NYT of the Dean/Gephardt contest in Iowa, focusing on the unions. What is interesting here is the fact that the complaints mentioned in the article are Dean's old neo-liberal policies, that is his openness to free-trade and willingness to slow the growth of the kinds of middle class entitlements that union members typically rely upon. There is no mention of the hostility that rank and file union membership are likely to have with Dean's more recent progressive policy approach. Consider, Gephardt backed the war in Iraq as well as the $87 billion for Iraqi reconstruction. Traditionally unions, or at least labor unions (Dean's support is far more from government employee unions than labor) have been more hawkish than other members of the democratic party. One of the sources of Reagan democrats were union members who were socially conservative, pro-gun, and rejected the dovishness of Dems on the Cold War, including Vietnam. The NYT article quotes Steve Rosenthal, the longtime political director of the A.F.L.-C.I.O, as saying, "It's not like the day after there's a presumptive nominee everyone's going to kiss and make up. There's going to need to be some time for healing."

My reading of this is that if given a choice between Bush and Dean, the unions are going to have to figure out where to go from there. And its gonna take some time. Dare I say, soul searching?