The Democrats were focused on short-term gains and left themselves open to this. From New York Magazine:
Democrats Paid a Huge Price for Letting Unions Die
The GOP understands how important labor unions are to the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party, historically, has not. If you want a two-sentence explanation for why the Midwest is turning red (and thus, why Donald Trump is president), you could do worse than that.
With its financial contributions and grassroots organizing, the labor movement helped give Democrats full control of the federal government three times in the last four decades. And all three of those times — under Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama — Democrats failed to pass labor law reforms that would to bolster the union cause. In hindsight, it’s clear that the Democratic Party didn’t merely betray organized labor with these failures, but also, itself.
Between 1978 and 2017, the union membership rate in the United States fell by more than half — from 26 to 10.7 percent. Some of this decline probably couldn’t have been averted — or, at least, not by changes in labor law alone. The combination of resurgent economies in Europe and Japan, the United States’ decidedly non-protectionist trade policies, and technological advances in shipping was bound to do a number on American unions. Global competition thinned profit margins for U.S. firms; cutting labor costs was one of the easiest ways to fatten ’em back up; and breaking unions (through persuasion, intimidation, or relocation) was one of the easiest ways to cut said costs.
Nevertheless, there was lot that Democrats could have done — through labor law reform — to shelter the union movement from these changes, and help it establish a bigger footprint in the service sector.
The article is very slanted towards unions and does not do a good analysis of why they are in decline. They had a reason for being a hundred years ago - very much so. They have failed to change with the times though as the labor markets have shifted. The "great wages" that the unions negotiate come at a very large cost and the pension plans are often unfunded or a company will simply go bankrupt to avoid having to fund them - this debt is in the multi-trillion dollar range.
Great news that the Democratic party can not maintain its base - they need to come to grips with the changes they made in the last 20 years and reverse them. They have become the party of the moonbat. They have listened to every minority activist out there and their Overton Window has lurched too far to the left.
Leave a comment