Rift Between Labor and Environmentalists Threatens Democratic Turnout Plan.

[elleng]

'Two of the Democratic Party’s most loyal constituencies, labor and environmentalists, are clashing over an effort to raise tens of millions of dollars for an ambitious voter turnout operation aimed at defeating Donald J. Trump in the November election.

The rift developed after some in the labor movement, whose cash flow has dwindled and whose political clout has been increasingly imperiled, announced a partnership last week with a wealthy environmentalist, Tom Steyer, to help bankroll a new fund dedicated to electing Democrats.

That joint initiative enraged members of the nation’s biggest construction unions, already on edge about the rising influence of climate-change activists. The building-trades unions view Mr. Steyer’s environmental agenda as a threat to the jobs that can be created through infrastructure projects like new gas pipelines.

The dispute, laid bare in a pair of blistering letters sent on Monday to Richard L. Trumka, president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., underscored the tensions between the two pillars of the Democratic coalition.'>>>

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/17/us/politics/democratic-turnout.html?

[underthematrix]

1. I call bullshit. Democrats are unified in ONE GOAL

and that is to defeat the GOP presumptive nominee aka NAZI Trump

[elleng]

2. Seems you haven't been following what's been happening under your nose,

here at DU, and it's surely no stretch to recognize possible rifts between what have in the past been Democratic 'constituencies.'

[underthematrix]

3. LOL! DU has many many Republican trolls

but the truth is DEMOCRATS and INDIES are not going to let a NAZI in the White House

[elleng]

4. This matter is LOL-worthy, in your opinion?

[underthematrix]

5. Yep. Otherwise I would get mad or cry.

I recognize what's going on but so many people don't see it.

[Katashi_itto]

8. Ummm yeah....

[Sherman A1]

6. This is just one of the rifts within

the Democratic Party. There are many of them at this point and I am not sure that it will be resolved before November.

[Starry Messenger]

7. Meh. Building trades are often at odds with the rest of the unions.

Not really anything new.

[Brickbat]

9. Same as it ever was. We've got it here on local issues, as well.

[Adrahil]

10. Labor HAS to understand what will happen to their jobs if the Environment keeps deteriorating...

we need long-term vision. And they need to understand that they can actually benefit from being a PART of that vision.

[pampango]

11. "The schism comes as Mr. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, is running a

populist campaign that could appeal to some union members, castigating free trade agreements and illegal immigrants while vowing not to cut entitlement spending."

Some of the building-trade unions have already gotten behind Mrs. Clinton, but some labor holdouts remain: The Teamsters, for example, have yet to endorse a candidate. And among rank-and-file workers, Mr. Trump could well outperform Mrs. Clinton with the unions that signed on to the letter, a heavily working-class and white male demographic.

Nowhere was this more evident than during the tense debate over the Keystone XL oil pipeline, in which President Obama and Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic presidential nominee, ultimately came down on the side of the environmentalists by opposing a project that some of the so-called hard-hat unions fervently wanted.

But Mr. Steyer has opposed oil and gas projects like the Keystone pipeline, and the construction unions assailed the A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s willingness to make common cause with him as an abandonment of their members and the federation’s principles.

Every Democrat is never going to agree 100% of the time on every issue. I expect that 99% of Democrats are environmentalists and pro-union. That there occasions when there is disagreement between the two is no reason for us not to acknowledge this, work it out and remain united in the larger goals of the party.