Most union households are for the Democrats as they are for the social-democrats abroad. But union density in the US is smaller and has been declining steadily. That would explain the lesser weight of the unions in the DP than in the social democratic parties, although this gap can be exaggerated. Women and minorities are the other pillars on which the DP is built.
The Democratic Party is not the same thing as a social democratic party. It is a bourgeois party with no organic connections to the trade union movement, nor any committment to socialism even on a verbal basis. In Canada, the closest thing to the Democrats is the Liberal Party upon whose behalf Pierre Trudeau ruled Canada with the same kind of sleazy charm as Bill Clinton a few years later. We need something like the NDP in the USA, with warts and all. The DP is not that party. The DP was started by slaveowner Andy Jackson in the early 1800s and represented the big bourgeoisie for its entire history. For a brief time, starting with FDR and ending with LBJ, it made concessions to trade unionists because they threatened to break with the party. Now that the rust belt has gutted the social, political and economic power of the trade unions and now that the USSR no longer exists as a possible threat to capitalist hegemony, both capitalist parties feel freer to return to their roots. In the case of the DP, it means returning to Woodrow Wilson. For the RP, it means returning to Herbert Hoover.
I'm not surprised so many white male workers have crossed to the Republicans in the past three decades, in reaction to the rise of the black, women's, anti(Vietnam)war, and gay movements.
If the trade union movement paid less attention to the aristocracy of labor and more to the people who worked at Walmart, etc., it would not have to worry about such defections. A cashier at Walmart could care less about Queer Eye For the Straight Guy.
Finally, I think there is some validity to the criticism that the Democrats have failed to sufficiently differentiate themselves from the Republicans, but I don't think this is the primary reason for the political division in the US working class. I think the underlying social and economic developments alluded to above have been more decisive, and the Democratic leadership has been adapting to rather than leading the corresponding shift to the right of white male workers.
Continuing adaptation will lead to the utter destruction of the trade unions, such as they are.
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