President Joe Biden proudly called himself the most pro-labor president in American history, but working-class voters in this year’s election are further than ever from their traditional home in the Democratic Party, prompting some to change their approach to voters to win out of the working class. .
While unions say their extensive organizing efforts have largely helped Democrats hold the line with their members — Vice President Kamala Harris’ support among union households this year was slightly lower than Biden’s in 2020, according to the exit polls from NBC News – the erosion of the party among working-class voters in general is alarming.
“I don’t think the party has fully embraced the working class, and hasn’t for decades,” said Brent Booker, general president of the Laborers’ International Union of North America. “We must deconstruct and reconstruct the Democratic Party if it is to be the party of working people.”
Union membership has declined over the past 50 years, so union leaders say there’s only so much they can do in a world where nine in 10 workers don’t have unions and larger trends are splitting workers from the Democratic Party.
“We can’t communicate with every non-union worker. We can only communicate with a portion of our members,” said Booker, who thinks Democrats could have done better with a more fiery populist message on the economy and a cooler message on cultural issues, leaving some of his members feeling like the Democrats are out of power. -touch elitists. “Many of our members own guns. Many of our members hunt.”
Booker said that when he visited the job sites this year, he heard about inflation, immigration and the demise of the Keystone Pipeline, which would have created jobs for its members but was killed over environmental concerns — all issues that favor the Republican played a game.
Defining the working class is difficult in a post-industrial economy. But whether measured by income or education level, newly elected President Donald Trump won over working-class voters overall, while making strong gains among non-white working-class voters such as Hispanics and Asian Americans.
As recently as 2012, non-college-educated voters split their votes evenly or even slightly in favor of Democrats. This year, they went 2-to-1 for Trump and Harris, according to NBC News exit polls. And while former President Barack Obama won 57% of people making $30,000 to $49,999 in 2012, Trump won that income category this year by 53%-45%.
As educated professionals who used to vote Republican recoil from Trump, Democrats have become wealthier and better educated. But that has further removed the party’s leaders, donors, operatives and other decision-makers from the lives of low- and middle-income workers, some union leaders say.
For example, they say Democrats refused to acknowledge the impact of post-Covid inflation, from which higher-income professionals were more isolated, and instead tried to convince Americans to believe abstract economic measures over their experiences of painful credit card payments. swipes in the supermarket. shop.
“They failed to tackle inflation, saying it wasn’t a big problem or that the pain working people are feeling now isn’t real,” Jimmy Williams, president of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, said at X. “The Democratic Party has still failed to prioritize a strong, working-class message that addresses issues that really matter to workers.”
Unions such as the Laborers and Painters tend to be whiter, more male and more conservative than unions in the service sector. And the labor movement encompasses a wide range of opinions. But there is widespread frustration that Trump outpaced Democrats by positioning himself as a champion of working people, and there is also dissatisfaction that Democrats are not limited to white or male union members.
“The narrative he came up with was almost straight out of the union playbook in terms of focusing on the economy and jobs, bringing back manufacturing jobs, getting tough on China, making sure working families have more money in their hands.” can stop their own country. bag,” said Liz Schuler, president of the AFL-CIO, the massive labor federation that includes 60 unions representing 12 million people.
Schuler said the message from a billionaire who has stiffed workers and fallen far short of creating promised jobs is bogus — “He talks the talk but never delivers” — but she couldn’t deny its power in the election.
Trump addressed his speech directly to rank-and-file members, telling them to ignore union leaders “who defraud their membership of ridiculously high dues” — even as he sometimes advocated that against non-union workers.
And working-class support for Democrats is hardly a new phenomenon. But some in the party say these long-term trends have reached a crisis point.
“If you’re an average working person, do you really think the Democratic Party is going to take to the mats, take on powerful special interests and fight for you? I think the overwhelming answer is no,” Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said on NBC News “Meet the Press.”
Democrats have tried to win back working-class voters with policies designed to help them, especially by supporting unions.
The theory, accepted as truth by the left, is that good policy makes good politics and that people will reward you with their votes if you do things to improve their lives. But the results of that strategy are disappointing.
Biden went all-in for the unions. One of his first actions as president was an $83 billion taxpayer-funded bailout for the Teamsters pension fund. He even launched his second presidential campaign from a Teamsters hall in Pittsburgh, saying, “I make no apologies. I am a trade unionist.”
But the Teamsters couldn’t return the favor. After surveys of their approximately 1.3 million rank-and-file members showed that 60% supported Trump while only 34% supported Harris, Teamsters leaders decided not to endorse anyone.
Most unions still supported Harris, as is typical for a Democratic presidential candidate, but the Teamsters were not the only union to break with this precedent. The International Association of Fire Fighters and the International Longshoremen’s Association, both of which endorsed Biden in 2020, and the United Mine Workers of America all stayed out of the race entirely.
That’s despite the fact that Biden has embraced organized labor’s wish list, from pro-union appointments to the National Labor Relations Board to executive actions to strengthen unions, while potentially creating millions of union jobs through massive spending on infrastructure, clean energy and semiconductors . In fact, Biden was the first president to walk a picket line.
After taking over as the party’s nominee, Harris, a longtime champion of organized labor in the Senate who also walked a picket line, vowed to uphold and expand Biden’s pro-union policies.
But those policies were not enough to overcome larger social forces that have led many working-class voters to doubt Democrats’ commitment to their well-being.
“If there’s one lesson from the last election, and really from the last four years, it’s that providing material benefits to workers isn’t going to help you electorally,” said Will Stancil, a progressive policy analyst with a large social media following . “Which basically destroys the entire left political theory.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
