Big trouble.

The presumptive Democratic nominee's poll ratings are slipping well behind those of Republican George W. Bush, not just nationally but in key states where he should be running strong. It's so bad that Republicans are even talking about trying to make a fight for Wisconsin, a state that has not voted for a Republican for president since 1984.

What's gone wrong for Gore?

The vice president has forgotten where he came from. After using strong support from labor and a decidedly liberal message on a host of issues to dispatch Bill Bradley in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, Gore is suddenly scrambling right.

We understand that politicians, being the creatures they are, tend to fuzz the political margins -- heck, Bush is even meeting with gay Republicans. But Gore is not edging to the center, he's collapsing to the right.

As such, he is abandoning the trade unionists, the environmentalists, the struggling family farmers who have formed the core constituency of the Democratic Party for generations.

Gore is so busily alienating his natural base that the Democrat runs the risk of handing the presidency to the woefully inept governor of Texas. Just last week, George Becker, the president of the United Steelworkers union, announced that, while the union has endorsed Gore, it may not put any energy into electing the Democrat. Similar signals have come from the powerful United Auto Workers and Teamsters unions.

Why the disconnect between the Democrat and unions that historically have been so loyal to the party of Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy that they even backed George McGovern in 1972?

Gore is wrong on the international trade issues that have become life-and-death matters for organized labor. Way wrong. Indeed, he is as wrong as Trent Lott, Tom DeLay and every other bought-and-paid-for Republican you can name. And trade unionists are smart enough to recognize that if Al Gore is wrong on trade before Election Day, he's going to be wrong afterward as well.

The big issue for labor this year is trade with China. Unions that represent American workers recognize that the jobs of those workers are under attack by legislation that would grant China permanent most-favored-nation trading status.

Multinational corporations that want to close factories in the United States and move jobs to sweatshops in China are spending more than $20 million to lobby for the legislation, which would, among other things, eliminate annual reviews by Congress of China's compliance with human rights and environmental standards.

Wall Street and its Republican allies argue that eliminating reviews of China's labor, environmental and human rights record will be good for trade. They even suggest that granting China most-favored-nation status will improve conditions for Chinese workers and political and religious dissidents. What's really remarkable is that they make these claims without giggling, since every credible human rights organization says granting most-favored-nation status will make conditions worse for the Chinese people.

Few issues are so clear as the China vote, which is scheduled for late May. If Congress gives China a blank check, human rights protections will decline, the environment will be damaged, and workers in the United States and China will suffer. If, on the other hand, Congress rejects the pleadings of the multinationals and their lobbyists, America will have made a rare commitment to place human needs above corporate profits.

Al Gore faces a huge test in the next two weeks.

He can either take the side of core Democratic Party constituencies -- working people, farmers, environmentalists, human rights campaigners -- and oppose the blank check for China. Or he can resign himself to being the Michael Dukakis of the 2000 election -- a Democrat who lost because he was not capable of energizing Democrats.

© 2000 The Capital Times

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