How Obama Hurts Clinton (and Helps Sanders) With Unions

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-08-10/how-obama-hurts-clinton-and-helps-sanders-with-unions

Aug 10, 2015 4:00 AM CDT

Disgruntled with the current president, some union members are looking for a new approach.

By Josh Eidelson (Has a DU connection)

In 2008, Steve Abbott fell for Barack Obama. “Hope and change—I believed that hook, line and sinker,” says Abbott, whose Iowa caucus site was switched from a library to a gym because of an influx of Obama supporters. Seven years later, Abbott, who leads the Iowa state council of the Communications Workers of America, is warring against the president, trying to stymie an Obama trade deal he believes will devastate organized labor. This summer, when Hillary Clinton wouldn’t take up that cause, he decided to back Bernie Sanders. After Obama, he says, “The lack of a commitment is a red flag.”

“People feel betrayed by President Obama,” agrees Mark Cooper, the president of the South Central Iowa Federation of Labor. “I think that’s why Bernie’s getting the traction he has.”

For a swathe of local union activists and national labor leaders, the Obama experience casts a queasy shadow over the 2016 race. The president, whom organized labor went all out to elect and re-elect, has done big things that unions wanted—like overhauling healthcare and financial regulation, assisting reeling auto giants, and moving to expand the reach of overtime. At least as important, union leaders believe his veto pen has been a bulwark, stopping congressional Republicans from doing nationally what Scott Walker did in Wisconsin. But Obama’s proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership pact, which unions contend endangers jobs, wages, and regulations, is only the latest in a series of bitter disappointments for organized labor, from the labor law reform the president showed little interest in fighting for, to the union-sought Obamacare changes he rebuffed, to safety regulations that were scrapped or languished, to his stances on energy, education reform, and Social Security.

“I don’t think people want a third term of Obama, which is what the Hillary candidacy represents.”

RoseAnn DeMoro, executive director National Nurses United

“I don’t think people want a third term of Obama, which is what the Hillary candidacy represents,” says National Nurses United executive director RoseAnn DeMoro, whose union is hosting a “Brunch With Bernie” Monday afternoon. Union leaders who embrace Clinton without getting commitments on issues like trade, argues DeMoro, are repeating the same mistakes made with Obama. “Why would she have to change anything," she asks, "because she’s saying nothing, and they’re saying, ‘Go Hillary!’”

FULL story at link.