Eric Levitz at Vox takes a look at the continuing loss of working class white voters and the analysis shows that unions haven’t turned out to be the great fix everyone thought they would be:
The rightward drift of America’s working class disconcerted progressives, who generated a variety of ideas for reversing it. But one of their primary prescriptions could be summarized in a single word: unions.
After all, the erosion of Democrats’ working-class support had coincided with the collapse of organized labor in the United States. There were many reasons to think the latter had caused the former.
Thus, to prevent Democrats’ working-class support from diminishing further, the thinking went, the party needed to deliver for existing trade unions, whose demands Bill Clinton and Barack Obama had sometimes defied. Meanwhile, to lay the seeds for a broader realignment of working-class voters, Democrats needed to make it easier for workers to organize by reforming federal labor laws.
The Biden administration appears to have embraced this analysis. In his presidency’s first major piece of legislation, Biden bailed out the Teamsters’ pension funds, effectively transferring $36 billion to 350,000 of the union’s members. The president also appointed a staunchly pro-union federal labor board, encouraged union organizing at Amazon, walked a picket line with the United Auto Workers, and aligned Democratic trade and education policy with the AFL-CIO’s preferences. And although he failed to enact major changes to federal labor regulations, that was not for want of trying. In the estimation of labor historian Erik Loomis, Biden has been the most pro-union president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
But the political return on Democrats’ investment in organized labor has been disappointing.
Last month, the Teamsters declined to make a presidential endorsement, after an internal survey found 60 percent of its membership backed Trump over Kamala Harris. In early October, the International Association of Fire Fighters also announced that they would not be making a presidential endorsement, despite backing Biden four years earlier.
These high-profile snubs — both driven by rank-and-file opposition to the Democratic nominee — may reflect a broader political trend. According to a report from the Center for American Progress, between 2012 and 2016, the Democratic presidential nominee’s share of union voters fell from 66 to 53 percent. Four years ago, Biden erased roughly half of that gap, claiming 60 percent of the union vote.
But contemporary polling indicates that Democrats have lost ground with unionized voters since then. In fact, according to an aggregation from CNN’s Harry Enten, Kamala Harris is on track to perform even worse with union households than Hillary Clinton did in 2016.
Apparently progrssives are blaming Harris for not being as pro labor as Biden. However, Biden’s numbers with labor are just as bad as hers so it’s not that. And Biden has been the most staunch supporter of labor since FDR.
The question is why these unions are rejecting the politicians who are helping them materially. According to Levitz, Democrats have always believed that unions made their membership more liberal through education and experience but according to studies that isn’t actually true. Unions mostly stay away from partisan politics because their memberships are as divided as everyone else. So, while there is some political benefit to supporting the labor movement, nobody should expect it to be the answer to the loss of the white working class (and apparently quite a few members of Black and Latino working class as well.)
Levitz concludes:
For now, education polarization does not look all that calamitous for the Democratic Party. The share of voters with college degrees is growing over time. In part because she is winning a historically large share of college graduates, Harris is currently competitive with Trump in enough states to win an Electoral College majority, according to Nate Silver’s polling averages. But in order to win comfortable Senate majorities and prevent figures like Donald Trump from remaining competitive in national elections, Democrats will need to improve their standing with working-class voters. Delivering for unions may be necessary for achieving that goal. But if the past four years are any guide, it will not be sufficient.
Soooooo, short of doing what the Democrats tried for decades — moving right by adopting slightly less draconian right wing views on culture — what will work? Because trying to “moderate” on abortion certainly didn’t and neither will any the anti-immigrant, racist or hateful anti-LGBTQ culture war battles. If it isn’t economics, job security, building the middle class, which is exactly what Democratic policies deliver and becoming MAGA lite on culture war issues doesn’t work (and is morally repugnant) I’m not sure what’s left.