> In its period of exile, the Democratic Party has a lot of decisions to make. One of those decisions concerns its relationship with organized labor. Joe Biden and members of his administration—and, indeed, much of the party’s leadership—believed that forming a historically tight partnership with organized labor would help arrest the party’s decline with the working class. They turned out to be wrong. Working-class voters, even the small and shrinking share of them who belong to private-sector unions, continued drifting away, seemingly unimpressed by Union Joe’s long list of policy concessions.
> Having seen their labor strategy collapse, Democrats are weighing two choices. One school of thought, favored on the progressive left, is that if Biden didn’t win back working-class voters, it’s because he wasn’t pro-union enough. For example, a recent newsletter by Dan Pfeiffer, a former Obama-administration official turned podcaster, argues that the path to winning back blue-collar voters requires (among other things) that Democrats “become even more pro-union.” Pfeiffer doesn’t explain why a more ardent alliance with organized labor would succeed for future Democratic candidates when it failed for Biden, or even how exceeding Biden on this score would be possible. The necessity and utility of the maneuver is simply taken as axiomatic.
> A wiser strategy, one that a handful of Democrats have gingerly broached, would be to revert to the party’s traditional, pre-Biden stance toward labor. This approach would recognize that the political cost of trying to satisfy the labor movement’s every demand is rising, and the number of votes that the movement delivers in return for such fealty is shrinking. The experience of the Biden administration, and of some Democratic-run localities, suggests that automatic deference to unions can undermine what ought to be politicians’ top priority right now: lowering the cost of living. Which means it is making the goal of winning back working-class voters harder, not easier.
> …
> The divide revealed by this episode is not about the general merit of unions, or about specific policy questions related to unions, but whether policy specifics need to be taken into account at all. The labor movement and its progressive allies treat support for labor as a binary question. To oppose any discrete union policy is to join the ranks of enemies of labor and therefore the progressive movement itself.
> That might sound like an unfairly broad characterization. But the polemics attacking the abundance agenda as anti-labor are notable for their lack of substantive engagement. They treat even the most indefensible union demands as implicitly sacrosanct. One example is a requirement in New York City that subway trains employ two operators. In a column published first in Common Dreams, republished by In These Times, and republished yet again by Jacobin, Dylan Gyauch-Lewis describes opposition to the two-operator rule as prima facie evidence of abundance liberals’ “skepticism of labor.” She does not bother to argue, or even assert, that this rule has any public-safety (or other) value.
> Running through this line of argument is the idea that unions can do no wrong. Ro Khanna, a progressive representative from California who has praised aspects of the abundance agenda, recently told a meeting of the Teamsters,“The problem is not with the Teamsters. The problem is with the Democratic Party. We can’t expect people to vote if we don’t stand for working-class issues.”
> Recall that the Teamsters declined to endorse Harris in 2024 even after the Biden administration bailed out its pension fund. If that doesn’t count as standing up for working people, Biden must be wondering if he can have the $36 billion back to spend on something else.
> Campaigning and governing both involve trade-offs. Democrats can and should defend the right to organize and support positions held by unions that don’t impose a major drag on the public good. Winning the support of working-class voters requires compromising with their views on social policy, which risks alienating other progressive groups. Making policy decisions sometimes presents a choice between the financial well-being of an interest group, including unions, and the broader public.
> The Biden administration tried to inhabit a reality in which none of these choices existed. They could appeal to social liberals and compensate for their shortcomings with the working class by giving the unions a virtual veto over policy. The formula is so seductive that many Democrats still refuse to notice that it doesn’t actually work.
Eric848448 on
I have an idea! Let’s find someone who looks and talks like these toothless rubes! Then they’ll vote for us!
2 Comments
> In its period of exile, the Democratic Party has a lot of decisions to make. One of those decisions concerns its relationship with organized labor. Joe Biden and members of his administration—and, indeed, much of the party’s leadership—believed that forming a historically tight partnership with organized labor would help arrest the party’s decline with the working class. They turned out to be wrong. Working-class voters, even the small and shrinking share of them who belong to private-sector unions, continued drifting away, seemingly unimpressed by Union Joe’s long list of policy concessions.
> Having seen their labor strategy collapse, Democrats are weighing two choices. One school of thought, favored on the progressive left, is that if Biden didn’t win back working-class voters, it’s because he wasn’t pro-union enough. For example, a recent newsletter by Dan Pfeiffer, a former Obama-administration official turned podcaster, argues that the path to winning back blue-collar voters requires (among other things) that Democrats “become even more pro-union.” Pfeiffer doesn’t explain why a more ardent alliance with organized labor would succeed for future Democratic candidates when it failed for Biden, or even how exceeding Biden on this score would be possible. The necessity and utility of the maneuver is simply taken as axiomatic.
> A wiser strategy, one that a handful of Democrats have gingerly broached, would be to revert to the party’s traditional, pre-Biden stance toward labor. This approach would recognize that the political cost of trying to satisfy the labor movement’s every demand is rising, and the number of votes that the movement delivers in return for such fealty is shrinking. The experience of the Biden administration, and of some Democratic-run localities, suggests that automatic deference to unions can undermine what ought to be politicians’ top priority right now: lowering the cost of living. Which means it is making the goal of winning back working-class voters harder, not easier.
> …
> The divide revealed by this episode is not about the general merit of unions, or about specific policy questions related to unions, but whether policy specifics need to be taken into account at all. The labor movement and its progressive allies treat support for labor as a binary question. To oppose any discrete union policy is to join the ranks of enemies of labor and therefore the progressive movement itself.
> That might sound like an unfairly broad characterization. But the polemics attacking the abundance agenda as anti-labor are notable for their lack of substantive engagement. They treat even the most indefensible union demands as implicitly sacrosanct. One example is a requirement in New York City that subway trains employ two operators. In a column published first in Common Dreams, republished by In These Times, and republished yet again by Jacobin, Dylan Gyauch-Lewis describes opposition to the two-operator rule as prima facie evidence of abundance liberals’ “skepticism of labor.” She does not bother to argue, or even assert, that this rule has any public-safety (or other) value.
> Running through this line of argument is the idea that unions can do no wrong. Ro Khanna, a progressive representative from California who has praised aspects of the abundance agenda, recently told a meeting of the Teamsters,“The problem is not with the Teamsters. The problem is with the Democratic Party. We can’t expect people to vote if we don’t stand for working-class issues.”
> Recall that the Teamsters declined to endorse Harris in 2024 even after the Biden administration bailed out its pension fund. If that doesn’t count as standing up for working people, Biden must be wondering if he can have the $36 billion back to spend on something else.
> Campaigning and governing both involve trade-offs. Democrats can and should defend the right to organize and support positions held by unions that don’t impose a major drag on the public good. Winning the support of working-class voters requires compromising with their views on social policy, which risks alienating other progressive groups. Making policy decisions sometimes presents a choice between the financial well-being of an interest group, including unions, and the broader public.
> The Biden administration tried to inhabit a reality in which none of these choices existed. They could appeal to social liberals and compensate for their shortcomings with the working class by giving the unions a virtual veto over policy. The formula is so seductive that many Democrats still refuse to notice that it doesn’t actually work.
I have an idea! Let’s find someone who looks and talks like these toothless rubes! Then they’ll vote for us!
I call it the Fetterman Method!