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Monday, March 24, 2008
Republicrats, Obamacans, and the Unions
So Doug Kmiec has endorsed Obama. But the number of such Obamacans is less than one might predict, given Obama's appeals for such support.
One section of the GOP seems ripe for the picking -- the Northeast-New York section of the Republican Party. These are the Ur Republicans -- the descendants of Federalists and Whigs like Hamilton, Adams, Daniel Webster, forming a Northeast-New York faction once ruled the Party up until, say, Dewey’s defeat by Truman. Teddy Roosevelt, Elihu Root, and Henry Cabot Lodge once epitomized what it meant to be Republican – namely, to be for “sound money” (i.e., the gold standard), mercantile values, and a powerful national government led by the Puritan-Brahmin-merchant elite.
These Old-Style Republicans still exist, although they now probably call themselves independents or even Democrats (of the Prius-driving, advanced degree variety). Call them the Republicrats. They are scattered in a diaspora of earnest Yankee reformers from New England through upstate New York and across the Western Reserve section of Ohio to the northern section of the Old Northwest. And Obama – well-educated, coolly eloquent, urbane but yet morally compelling, surrounded by profs -- appeals to them. So why don’t they flock to his banner as “Obamacans” (or “Obamadents”)?
In a word – unions. Unions are an important part of Obama’s coalition: Their influence might be detected in Obama’s attitude towards NAFTA. But the Old Republicans and their Republicrat descendants never were, and still are not, lovers of unions. Even Rockefeller, the most union-friendly of the breed (allying himself with Peter Brennan and the craft unions), could not abide the public employee unions like Victor Gotbaum’s District Council 37 in NYC.
Why the aversion to organized labor? The Old Republicans were always internationalists: The names of Root and Lodge are synonymous with internationalism. And modern Republicrats like to think of themselves as tolerant cosmopolitans. But unions urge cartelizing labor policies that wreck the international trading system and attack immigration in ways that antagonize our neighbors. The Old Republicans were elitists who detested “machines” – that is, political organizations that prevented merit-based compensation and promotion policies in civil service. And modern Republicrats love “meritocracy” (meaning, perhaps, nothing more than rule by those with the right sorts of alma mater, magazine subscriptions, and test scores). But, to Republicrats, public sector unions are the new machines: Public sector unions wield political clout to pad payrolls and protect jobs for low-performing rank-and-file more effectively than Tammany Hall ever did. The idealistic Republicratic “Teach for America” volunteer is not likely to become a fist-shaking unionist after being decried as a scab by AFT regulars. In the eyes of good Republicrats, prisons in California and public schools everywhere have been ruined by the intransigence of corrections officers’ and teachers’ unions.
So what are the ideological descendants of Root, Lodge, and TR to do? Suppose that you’d like to vote for an intelligent and well-educated President whose policies, in the main, are reasonable, whose character is admirable, and who is likely to staff the government with people like you – academics and do-gooders. But you’d also like to vote for someone who was not beholden to organizations that endorse draconian immigration laws, Smoot-Hawley trade nostrums, and Scargill-style staffing rules in our schools and prisons.
Are you out of luck, stuck between the religious enthusiasms of the Sunbelt and the trade-bashing enthusiasms of the CIO? Perhaps there is some ground for Republicrat hope: The critical recent change in the Democratic Party that might lead the Republicrats to cross over to Obama's column this year is the rise of the SEIU as the dominant private-sector union: Being less threatened by foreign outsourcing, the SEIU is less adamant on trashing free trade. Obama's strong stance in favor of lenient immigration policies also will help assuage Republicrat Internationalists.
In any case, I'm curious to know how many Republicans reading this blog are thinking about jumping ship this year.
Posted by Rick Hills on March 24, 2008 at 09:26 AM | Permalink
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Comments
Gosh, I hope the phrase "unions urge cartelizing labor policies that wreck the international trading system and attack immigration in ways that antagonize our neighbors" is meant as a caricature of what anti-union folks think about unions, and not as any accurate report of what unions actually do. Same for "The idealistic Republicratic 'Teach for America' volunteer is not likely to become a fist-shaking unionist after being decried as a scab by AFT regulars."
Unions institutionally have a more progressive view of immigration politics than does the "base" of the Republican party we hear so much about. In trade agreements, unions urge (thus far unsuccessfully) that something approaching the same consideration be given to labor rights as to, say, intellectual property rights. And several people in my family are members of teachers' unions and have worked for them as institutions, and I'll be darned if I can remember any of them screaming "scab" at some young idealist. Not that's there's anything wrong with trying to discourage strikebreakers by using free speech. But most public employees aren't allowed to strike.
I could go on at length about the good things that unions do, but hey, I'll admit that unions aren't perfect, and some behave badly sometimes (like any other major institution in the U.S.) Still, many Republicans have caricatured stereotypes of unions. Moreover, many Republicans don't like unions because those Republicans are reflexively pro-business, and some business interests are not always consistent with the interests of the working and middle classes that unions have traditionally and usually effectively represented.
We've talked about gender issues and race issues in this campaign, but class has always been important and under-reported in U.S. politics. And Republicans have always understood their class interests better than Democrats have understood theirs.
Posted by: Joseph Slater | Mar 24, 2008 9:42:54 AM
Isn't the group of NE/NY Republicans the GOP equivalent of old Southern Democrats? The difference is that Southern Dems fully made the switch to the GOP (a process starting w/ Nixon and ending early in this decade, when Al Gore lost Tennessee), this group has remained part of the GOP, despite being marginalized and having more in common politically with the Democrats than the dominant core of the Republicans. We could speculate as to why this group has not switched--are unions so much more anathema to this group of Republicans than Republican tax/fiscal policy is to working-class Christians? Maybe Obama will be the candidate to complete the geographic transition that started w/ Nixon.
Posted by: Howard Wasserman | Mar 24, 2008 11:22:03 AM
Wow - so Obama picks up NY/Northeast republicans - and that gets him exactly how much closer to winning the presidency (i.e., which states does he now win that he would not have already won)? To me this post (and a lot of the hoopla around Obama) is a big - who cares. The question should be and should always be - can Obama (or Clinton) win Florida and/or Ohio. That's all that should matter to the Democrats if their primary focus is on reclaiming the White House. The rest of this (first woman, first biracial, first this, etc.) is "just smoked-filled coffeehouse crap" -- as Aaron Sorkin might say.
Posted by: Alex | Mar 24, 2008 1:05:54 PM
I think this is mostly wishful thinking...although Obama makes an intruiging character to Northeast Republicans, he'll have more difficulty peeling them away from McCain, an internationalist who is also hawkish on defense (which is a part of the northeast Republican values unmentioned above), who is also not seen as part of the "core" of the Republican party (I suspect having Leiberman at his side helps him very much in this regard, and with Northeast Republicans generally. If Obama were running against Romney, he'd have more of a shot of doing this, but many Northeast Republicans are perfectly happy with McCain.
Honestly, I think
Posted by: Random Person | Mar 24, 2008 1:29:05 PM
When I canvassed for Obama in New Hampshire, I met people over and over again who were genuinely at a loss as to whether to support Obama or McCain. I think it is a close question for many. In the end, I doubt it will matter over much, because Obama will carry every state that John Kerry did, Nevada (Kerry lost by six thousand) and New Mexico (Kerry lost by one thousand and change), and will win Ohio handily. Hardly another state has been hit as badly as Ohio by the downturn in the economy and if people think that the election of Sherrod Brown over a moderate Republican Senator in 2006 was a fluke, they have another thing coming. There are plenty of Geraldine Ferraro's Archie Bunker Democrats in Ohio, but they will decide by November that their economic pain overcomes their racism and they will pull the lever for Obama.
It is an entertaining game to wonder if Obama can beat McCain among certain sub-sects of Republicans, but with the tremendous shift in party ID in the last few years, even though McCain was an exceptionally wise choice for Republicans given his appeal to independents, any Democrat will win in a walk this year barring a truly fantastic development. That development will have to be external to the campaigns themselves. The gift that the Clintons have shared with us in their ugly little exit from the national stage is that there are no skeletons left in Obama's closet. The great likelihood is that he will be our 44th President. (This is why the primary fight has been so bitter. Everyone knows that the prize is not just the nomination but the Presidency.)
People should stop talking about Hillary Clinton as a viable candidate. She lost. She's a demented version of Mike Huckabee at this point. Let's move on.
Posted by: Bart | Mar 24, 2008 5:07:59 PM
In response to Joseph Slater: Yes, my remarks were intended as somewhat tongue-in-cheek. But not entirely. Some unions have built up a track record of knee-jerk opposition to international trade even when it is necessary for the well-being of impoverished nations.
In particular, consider two points:
1. Unions often oppose international trade in the name of stopping evils like child labor. But most academic economists report that international trade improves the welfare of poor nation. See, e.g., Edmonds, Eric and Nina Pavcnik. 2006. “International trade and child labor: Cross-country evidence.” Journal of International Economics 68: 115-140. You do not have to agree with the economic establishment. But one can reasonably believe that unions' stance on trade is harmful to poor nations without being, say, Wal-Mart.
To its eternal disgrace, the Needletrades Union, for instance, opposed the African Textiles trade bill to save American textile workers. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C02E3DE1530F937A15757C0A9669C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all
But the likely effect on American jobs was dwarfed by the benefit to the poorest continent in the world. The union would have been better advised to lobby for transition relief, job re-training, higher UI -- anything but opposition to a measure that could literally save human lives by providing work for a desperate set of nations.
Unions tend to dismiss all such arguments by claiming that they are merely a smokescreen for the National Association of Manufacturers' desire for cheap labor. But these sneers are unmerited. As Paul Krugman (that notorious ultra-conservative and Republican lover of unregulated capitalism) notes, trade really does help poor nations lift themselves out of poverty. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990DE7DB1030F931A15757C0A9679C8B63.
Stopping such trade arguably imposes a terrible harm on the people of those nations. I do not bring up Krugman's controversial piece for its truth: Reasonable people can disagree with Krugman despite his liberal bona fides and economic credentials. But reasonable people cannot believe that only a capitalist who cared only about profit would oppose the unions' position on trade.
(2) Slater correctly compares unions to Big Pharma in one his remarks, noting that "[i]n trade agreements, unions urge (thus far unsuccessfully) that something approaching the same consideration be given to labor rights as to, say, intellectual property rights." That's a perfect analogy: Just as Big Pharma risks depriving the under-developed world of vital drugs by insisting on enforcing their patents abroad, so too, unions deprive under-developed nations of desperately needed work by insisting that exports from such nations be cut off to save American jobs.
Maybe the benefits to the American worker are worth the price to poverty-stricken nations. But, please, let's not pretend that there is not a price being paid.
Posted by: Rick Hills | Mar 24, 2008 5:31:23 PM
Rick,
I'm curious, where are you getting this? I can't say have heard of any Republicans who would support Obama but for the role of unions in the Obama campaign.
Posted by: Orin Kerr | Mar 24, 2008 10:29:59 PM
In answer to Orrin -- I am speculating. I don't have any idea what any actual Republican thinks of Obama in particular: I'm a law prof, not a pollster.
But the sort of Republicans that I identify in my original post are secular-minded and cosmopolitan: They would not be deterred from supporting Obama because of his positions on the Culture War issues -- abortion, criminal sentencing, welfare reform, etc. They might be fiscally conservative, but the Republicans under Bush have hardly shown themselves to be fiscally stringent, so fiscal views would not likely deter an Obama vote.
So what's the practical sticking point? I suggest that attitude towards unions might be the critical issue. But I could be wrong: It could only be a coincidence that subnational Republican leaders identified as moderates (e.g., Bloomberg, Riordan, Schwarzenegger) have had hallmark trouble with unions -- especially transit, prison, and teacher unions. Indeed, so far as I can tell, this is how liberal Republican mayors and governor-wannabees achieve brand identification, differentiating themselves from Democrats: They talk tough on public employee unions. (Consider, for instance, Giuliani's bashing teachers' unions or William Weld's attacking Spitzer on the latter's failure to condemn the'05 transit strike).
There could be some other significant issue differentiating moderate Republicans from liberal Democrats. I doubt it, but what do I know?
So you tell me: Aside from Obama's very definite need for union support and expressed suspicion towards current and pending trade agreements,why would a pro-gay equality, pro-affirmative action, pro-choice, anti-war, environmentalist, pro-immigration Republican hesitate before throwing in his lot with Obama?
Posted by: Rick Hills | Mar 24, 2008 11:34:51 PM
The New England specific part of the analysis is certainly wrong if only because New England unions were very pro-Hillary, so Obama has zero association with them. In general, its interesting to see that while Obama has union sympathies--for example, he said he would walk picket lines as President--he has an antagonistic relationship with union fat cats. I think this is absolutely fantastic. Not only is the biggest problem the average person has with unions their occasionally corrupt leadership, but this gives him the freedom to ignore the traditional Democratic tiptoeing around unions that stand in the way of needed reforms like the teachers' union. Just as Obama is opposed by some of the old rank and file black leadership because they fear that he will cut them out of the equation due to his ability to interact directly with their followers, so too may fat cat union leaders find that Obama is able to directly help union members while trimming fat from the relationship. It will be a good time to be an American and a good time to be a union member, but a poor time to be a union boss.
Posted by: Bart | Mar 25, 2008 12:07:39 PM
Rick:
We could go back and forth on the good that unions do versus the bad in terms of trade (I'm not entirely convinced by your position, and for the record, Krugman seems to have had a change in heart in part over the past decade on such issues, but I'll grant it's a complicated issue). However, I don't think that's the point.
My question is to you is this: do you think "liberal Republicans" are skeptical of unions because, in their opinion, unions are bad for poor folks in developing countries? Personally, I doubt it. I think "liberal Republicans" are, at least often, folks who identify economically with U.S. business interests and therefore (correctly or not) see unions as opposed to those interests. They are "liberal" in that they may be skeptical or even scornful of the "relgious right." But they are can be equally scornful of what you and I might even agree are some good things unions do, in terms of improving wages, hours, and conditions for working class folks.
Posted by: Joseph Slater | Mar 25, 2008 3:05:35 PM
Bart: Having worked with and studied unions for decades, I would say that the differences between union leaders and union members are too often exaggerated. While I don't want to drift too far off topic in this thread, one example: I would bet that most average, ordinary grade school teachers don't believe that the teachers' unions which represent them are major impediments to needed reform.
Posted by: Joseph Slater | Mar 25, 2008 3:32:38 PM
Joseph,
I have not studied unions for decades, but I did study them for a time as an undergraduate and graduate student with one of the best labor scholars in the country, Robert Zieger. As far as I'm concerned, the union movement went off the rails when Walter Reuther died in that plane crash. The Walter Reuthers are making a comeback today but there are still plenty of George Meanys around. And find me one John Lewis and I'll give you a cigar.
One example of the detach between union members and their leadership can be found in this letter:
http://thepage.time.com/letter-to-afscme-president-mcentee/
I stood outside a polling place with members of the National Letter Carriers Union, who were generally pro-Edwards and pro-Obama personally, but carrying Hillary signs because their union voted for her. They were good people and very pleasant. Then later in the day, some of their Washington office came to play. Entitled and sneering, they were terrified by the prospect of an independent Democrat.
In general, I think that this country should have stronger unions. But let's not ignore the problems of good governance that plague many unions as well.
Posted by: Bart | Mar 25, 2008 5:58:52 PM
Rick writes: "In answer to Orrin -- I am speculating. I don't have any idea what any actual Republican thinks of Obama in particular: I'm a law prof, not a pollster."
I see.
Rick writes: "So you tell me: Aside from Obama's very definite need for union support and expressed suspicion towards current and pending trade agreements,why would a pro-gay equality, pro-affirmative action, pro-choice, anti-war, environmentalist, pro-immigration Republican hesitate before throwing in his lot with Obama?"
Well. there are lots of reasons. Just to pick a few to get things rolling, such a person might generally favor market solutions and see Obama as a market interventionist, far beyond the question of unions or trade agreements. Such a person might favor low taxes and think Obama will raise them to pay for the social programs he appears to favor. Such a person might be against policymaking by the judiciary, and might think Obama's stated judicial role model of Earl Warren would help roll back the clock of the judiciary back to the 1960s.
More broadly, I think your post misunderstands the category of Republicans that you attempt to describe. So, for example, you write, "They might be fiscally conservative, but the Republicans under Bush have hardly shown themselves to be fiscally stringent, so fiscal views would not likely deter an Obama vote." This doesn't make sense, I think. Many Republicans are absolutely livid at Bush for being so fiscally irresponsible; I'm not sure why Bush's irresponsibility means that "the Republicans" all share Bush's views or have somehow lost interest in fiscal responsibility. Given these sorts of reasons, I suspect most of the Republicans you describe will be happy to vote for John McCain, and that the issue of unions isn't on their radar screen.
Posted by: Orin Kerr | Mar 25, 2008 6:28:14 PM
All of these responses remind me of something that I often forget – viz, that most law profs have much clearer and, therefore, more intense feelings about contemporary events than I do. My initial post had much more to do with long-term (i.e., century and a half) trends in the political parties: Believe it or not, I am more interested in Root, TR, Lodge, and the persistence of a certain Puritan-elitist strain in Republican thought (Gilded Age historians like Kleppner, McCormick, Keller, and Silbey tend to call this a “Pietist” tendency) than I am in Obama’s odds of winning some county in Ohio.
But my tendency to get lost in the past has led to a few misunderstandings. For instance…
(1) Several people thought that my reference to “New England-New York Republicanism” referred to people living in N.E. and N.Y. today. My fault for being ambiguous: I was referring to a style of thought that was born in the Northeast, epitomized in Federalists and Whigs like Adams (younger and older), Hamilton, Timothy Pickering, and Daniel Webster – a style (or, in Daniel Elazar’s phrase, a “political culture”) that migrated across the nation in a longitudinal band stretching from Brookline to San Francisco. Elazar calls this a “moralistic” political culture, a term that ought not to be confused with Bible Belt morality but refers to the belief that public service and government are intensely moral enterprises to be controlled by a moral elite – a sort of political version of the Calvinist Elect – who have their heart and mind in the right (meaning, nowadays, Left) place. I guess that the derogatory term for “moralistic” culture would be “politically correct” culture.
This sort of disdainful attitude towards populist politics was a central theme of Republicanism since 1856: Yankee reformers who regarded politics as a matter of a passionate matter of moral Right and Wrong and not a matter of the Will of the People, who would sing “Onward Christian Soldiers!” at TR’s Bull Moose nomination, who hated mass parties and the patronage and machines that created such politics – these “Pietist” reformers held important positions in the leadership of the GOP until the 1950s. (Bill Nelson has documented this strain of politics in his book on the rise of American bureaucracy). And these guys tended to dislike southern agrarians, Tammany Hall, Catholics and other “liturgical” fellow travelers like German Lutherans, and, yes, trade unionists.
My point was that these Pietist sorts are still around, and they still live in much the same counties as they did in 1900 -- scattered by the great Yankee diaspora that moved people across the northern U.S. after the Erie Canal through the Gold Rush. I call them “Republicrats,” because (a) they were driven out of the Republican Party between Goldwater’s nomination in 1964 and the Reagan-Ford fight in ’76 but (b)they often could not stomach New Deal Democrats because those Democrats were too “ethnic,” too populist, too, well, democratic. Think John Lindsay – a guy full of noblesse oblige but who loathed the Italian-American Sanitation Workers Union of DeLury.
(2) In response to all those folks who said that that these Republicrat voters don’t matter because Obama will win New England without ‘em – these Republicrats also live in Michigan (Washtenaw County) and Ohio (the old Western Reserve) where they landed 150 years ago, dropped off by the Erie Canal. I call ‘em “New England-NY Republicans” because that is where they were born, not where they currently live.
(3) In response to Joseph Slater – I agree with everything that you’ve written, in the main. I’ve no desire to bash unions: As I noted in an earlier post on administrative law and federalism, I’m more populist than pietist, and I dislike the elitism of Republicrats. I’ll go with Gotbaum and District Council 37 over Lindsay any day of the week.
But I want to give the devil his due – and the Republicrat case against trade restrictions is not simply a matter of class interest. One does not need to endorse Krugman’s article to believe that such arguments can be made in good faith. There are plenty of people -- Barney Frank, for instance -– who vote in favor of, say, the Free Trade Agreement with Peru but also vote in favor of H.R.3920 (the Trade and Globalization Act of 2007), a bill to provide transition assistance to displaced workers who lose their jobs because of free trade. (I know of a lot of moderate Republicans -– including one former member of Bush I’s cabinet – who endorse Frank’s grand compromise on trade, which involves (a) lots of assistance to workers and (b) lots of free trade. Frank is my kind of congressperson, by the way).
And, as a ACLU cooperating attorney who has spent some time suing the Michigan Department of Correction, I can say from personal experience that the Michigan Corrections Officers Union has exercised its power in ways pernicious to civil liberties. Glad to give you the details off-line.
(4) In response to Orrin Kerr -- Maybe you are right about what influences Republicrats’ decisions. I tend to see unionism as looming larger than you do. Unlike objections to abortion or welfare or a host of other issues, objections to public employee unions, in particular, are one anti-Democratic position that Republicrats frequently embrace without feeling like they have lost their liberal credentials. (For instance, my guess is that Bloomberg did not lose many Greenwich Village liberal votes because he denounced the MTA. Nor did Lindsay lose such votes by denouncing DeLury’s sanitation workers in the 1960s).
But pace to all of you: I simply care much less about 2008 than about 1908. Lost in the past, I am happy to concede to you pundits all of your predictions about the future.
Posted by: Rick Hills | Mar 26, 2008 7:44:41 AM
Rick,
I trust you've read Albion's Seed by David Hackett Fischer? It's a great history of the different English groups that settled America, and the group you're describing is 1 of the 4 groups. The westward march at the same laterals -- through Ohio/Michigan out to Seattle and San Francisco -- is part of the story. Good stuff.
Posted by: Albion's fan | Mar 31, 2008 3:14:35 PM
