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The great betrayal of the unions by the Democrats starting with NAFTA by Bill Clinton, and the national unions acquiesence in this is made more dramatic by the

• kevin_thibedeau 9y ago
  NAFTA was begun as a Bush 1.0 initiative. Clinton just signed off on it.
  • guelo 9y ago
    NAFTA was a big issue in the 1992 election with Ross Perot basing his 3rd party run on it. Clinton stood with HW Bush as pro-NAFTA. In 1988 Dukakis had been much more protectionist. But since Dukakis and Mondale before him had lost badly Clinton was espousing himself as a New Democrat moving to the right and taking some of Reagan's positions such as tax cuts, welfare cuts and free trade.
    • TheCowboy 9y ago
      If the political environment was shifting right, and Democrats were forced to make compromises, how is that considered a hyperbolic "great betrayal" instead of acknowledging political reality? Additionally, globalism was well under way before either Clinton/Obama held office. As far betraying unions, statistics for union membership are first available starting in 1983. The biggest declines for recorded data in private union membership happened before Clinton, and held steady under Clinton until Bush took office where it declined again. In summary, Republicans have consistently tried to undermine the political influence of unions, while Democrats tried to prevent that. https://www.bls.gov/spotlight/2016/union-membership-in-the-united-states/pdf/union-membership-in-the-united-states.pdf https://www.bls.gov/spotlight/2016/union-membership-in-the-u... This is just one tiny part of a complicated issue. Boiling it down to "Democrats betrayed unions" isn't a useful contribution and is more of a rant in terms of how honest it is. Protectionism isn't a solution either. Manufacturing output has increased under Obama, but it has largely been increased through use of automation instead of blue collar labor. Manufacturing is coming back in the form of robotics.
      • flukus 9y ago
        > If the political environment was shifting right, and Democrats were forced to make compromises, how is that considered a hyperbolic "great betrayal" instead of acknowledging political reality? So they abandoned their base and went with the political wind instead of fighting for the people they represent, sounds exactly like a great betrayal to me.
      • guelo 9y ago
        The point is that by shifting to the right they moved away from being the defenders of unions and the working class and that has now come around to bite them in the rear as the electorate is shifting against free trade. Whether that was politically expedient at the time is neither here nor there. I'm sure the union's calculations at the time were also short-sighted political self interest.
        • TheCowboy 9y ago
          It's a little too pat as "Democrats got what they deserved". It also ignores the shift of the political landscape toward the right and dismissing it as "whether it was politically expedient etc." is just flat out ignoring political history. It also ignores that there are net economic gains that could benefit everyone in society. You don't get to look at economic history and ignore political history because it fits your narrative. It's not honest and is only done to score political argument points. The problem isn't free trade itself, it's how the benefits should be distributed.
          • guelo 9y ago
            You don't know if your cause and effect is backwards, maybe the electorate shifted to the right because the Democrats shifted to the right, no one was advocating the ideas of the left anymore. As far as how the benefits should be distributed, the Democrats completely gave up on trying to do any redistribution of wealth, Clinton pushed through the biggest welfare cuts in a generation and criminalized the poor. It didn't take a magic ball to figure out who was going to benefit from free trade.
    • smitherfield 9y ago
      Reagan was actually probably the most protectionist President between Kennedy and Obama. Albeit less so than most of the Democrats who unsuccessfully ran in '84 and '88.
      • guelo 9y ago
        That is not correct. Reagan was a big free trade supporter. He launched the GATT Uruguay Round that created the WTO. The original NAFTA vision was a Reagan campaign pledge from the 1970s.
• PKop 9y ago
  Part of the problem, as mentioned in the article, is that unions among other things increased costs for these workers. So, you can wish they were maintained, or built up, or whatever.. but how would that prevent offshoring of union jobs?
  • guelo 9y ago
    Protectionism.