[xen2xen1]

My father worked for a union bridge building company for 33 years. He was very pro union. He retired after 33 years from a massive heart attack, which was alarmingly common for people with his job description. He was still very pro union, as his employer left him with little medical debt after an extremely expensive heart transplant. However, I destincty recall his throwing a magazine across the room published by his union when he vehemently disagreed with the political stance they took. The stance was very liberal, he was very conservative. It's very easy to say it's all about race, but when the blue collar workers don't feel at all represented by their union what do you expect to happen? He didn't feel represented in any way by the national union even when we literally said he'd never work a day non union in his life. The unions lost support at the ground level and never got it back.

[drc500free]

I think that the Dems decided that their other planks (largely racial/identity/cultural) were more important than their labor planks. Simultaneously, union workers decided that their other political beliefs were more important than their labor-related ones. It's hard to pick apart which happened first, if either could be said to happen first, because each magnified the other in a feedback cycle.

The political realignment was rather sudden, and the upshot was that the party that previously represented labor didn't particularly care about "labor vs management" anymore. They cared about equality within the labor force, which is a totally different thing.