[driftless2]

The guys/friends I knew who worked in factories and were union members were socially worlds apart from your college-type, liberal/leftist jerkwads. Their social views pretty much reflected your basic conservative positions. It mostly came down to they were in closed union shops. Everybody who was not in management belonged to the union. That put the automatically at odds with management who they associated with Republicans. And of course, most of them grew up in Democrat homes with their parents constantly telling them how evil Republicans were. Like my parents.

But it usually came down to money. Most union members thought they were worth more than they actually were. And they thought management was always cheating them out of what they thought were their rightful wage increases. But socially, the great majority were/are law and order types many of whom served in the military.

[Baynative]

"That put the automatically at odds with management who they associated with Republicans."

I don't know if its an example of history repeating itself or just parallel universes; but, I see your observation as similar to my experience in college (68-72).

People talked about freedom; free speech, free thought and freedom from government. A social revolution was taking place and people were rebelling against the government (among other things) and because Nixon was in the White House democrat party recruitment had a field day on every campus in the nation. Many people who were anti-war accepted a lot of the garbage that came with voting democrat even though it was counter to their values.

A lot of us realized that the democrat party was not about freedom and drifted away at different points in our lives. But, the party managed to hang on to a lot of people with fringe issues like marijuana.