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From LeverNews.com — Lever Time is the flagship podcast from the investigative news outlet The Lever. Hosted by award-winning journalist, Oscar-nominated writer, and Bernie Sanders' 2020 speechwriter David Sirota, Lever Time features exclusive reporting from The Lever’s newsroom, high-profile guest interviews, and expert analysis from the sharpest minds in media and politics.
Arjun Singh 0:04
Arjun from the levers. Reader supported newsroom, this is lever time. I'm Arjun Singh, Power to the people. For a long time, that was a mantra common in the Democratic Party. Since World War Two, Democrats have aligned themselves with labor unions and had strong support from a multicultural base of working class voters on the other side were Republicans, the party of big business tax cuts and corporate America. But today, polling shows Donald Trump making historic inroads with Union voters and working class voters and party lines seem to be changing. Where income was once the biggest indicator of how an American would vote today, it's a college diploma. This has led to a strange scenario. The Republican Party, led by a billionaire reality television star, is starting to become home to working class Americans. Meanwhile, Democrats, despite pushing pro worker policies and being on a whole, friendlier to labor, have seen their support from union members, and now working class voters start to shrink. Now that's not to say that everything is flipped. Working class voters, by and large, are still supportive of the Democrats, and so are union voters, but this trend has raised a vital question, are we in the midst of a political realignment? What's happened in American culture and politics that would see working class voters find themselves comfortable within a party whose members were once synonymous with the Country Club today on lever time, we're going to try and unpack that question, is there a political realignment really happening? Are Republicans on track to become the party of the working class, and if so, what happened in American history that's led to This shift You
Sean O'Brien 3:47
and I want to be clear, at the end of the day, the teams are not interested. If you have a D, R or an i next to your name, we want to know one thing, what are you doing to help American workers?
Arjun Singh 4:04
In July, Sean O'Brien was on stage at the Republican National Committee. O'Brien's a tall and broad shouldered figure. He speaks with a thick Boston accent, and for his entire working career, he's been a member of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, one of the largest labor unions in the country, and since 2022
Sean O'Brien 4:23
he's been their president. Here's another fact against gigantic multinational corporation, an individual worker has zero power. It's only when Americans band together in democratic unions that we win real improvements on wages, benefits and working conditions.
Arjun Singh 4:42
The teamsters represent more than a million workers in dozens of industries throughout the nation. So it's not surprising that O'Brien would use his time to rail against corporate America. The strange thing was watching Donald Trump and his vice presidential candidate JD Vance look back at O'Brien from the crowd. Smiling, in some cases, even clapping, especially when O'Brien praised Vance himself. Teachers and
Sean O'Brien 5:05
the GOP may not agree on many issues, but a growing group has shown the courage to sit down and consider points of view that aren't funded by big money. Think tanks, senators, like JD Vance, Roger Marshall
Arjun Singh 5:28
O'Brien wasn't there to endorse Donald Trump. Instead, the Teamsters, a union which is usually supported the Democratic ticket, asked both parties if they could speak at their convention. The Republicans said yes, and the Democrats didn't. And then, in a historic decision, the teamsters decided not to endorse anyone. So this is an opportunity for both parties, Democrats to re establish their commitment. Look back and say, something must be broken. Instead of looking to blame the leaders or the members, they should look at the in the mayor and say, how do we fix this? We were the working people party at one time, and it's an opportunity for Republicans who claim they want to be the work in people's party. It's an opportunity for them to prove it. That was a pretty big deal since 1996 the teamsters have always endorsed the Democratic ticket in presidential elections, and that goes broadly for American labor overall for decades, really going as far back as the 1940s labor unions and the American working class have been a foundational part of the democratic constituency. From the 1960s up until relatively recently, Democrats found regular political success in Midwestern states like Michigan and Illinois and Wisconsin, thanks to support from blue collar workers who are likely to work in manufacturing and be part of a labor union. There's also teachers unions, which have played a critical role in electing Democrats from states like Pennsylvania, Ohio and Minnesota, and in states that are heavily Democratic, places like California and Massachusetts, unions have a huge role to play in local politics. But now things are starting to change.
CNN Anchor 7:03
It ain't what it used to be. You know, you go back to 1992 Bill Clinton won that union vote by 30 points. Hillary Clinton only won it by 12 points back in 2016 that was the lowest mark for a Democrat since 1984 Mondale versus Reagan. But look at where Kamala Harris is today. She's only leading by nine points. That would be the worst democratic performance in a generation, 10 points off the mark of Joe Biden.
Arjun Singh 7:26
That's also coinciding with another trend, the stratification of the two political parties based on whether or not someone has a four year college degree. For more than a decade, voters without a college degree, particularly white voters, have been flocking to the Republican Party. Meanwhile, Democrats are more likely to count someone with a four year degree as part of their base. And here's where things start to really fall apart. More people today hold college degrees than before, and roughly four in 10 people with a college degree are working in a field that doesn't require one a decade after graduating college, take manufacturing. 40% of workers now hold a bachelor's degree. Food service jobs like bartenders and chefs, they're likely to be held by people with a college degree, even if just for a short period of time. And that's why this trend of working class and union support changing has been a particularly thorny issue for anyone trying to unpack it. So let's start with a little bit of history.
Anchor 8:23
At the White House in Washington, DC, our union willingly signed its pledge of cooperation with the President's Committee on equal employment opportunity, because the chemical workers believe every worker deserves a decent break. We were one of the first unions to set up a civil rights committee.
Lyndon B. Johnson' 8:44
President Mitchell, I congratulate you and the members of the International Chemical Workers Union in signing this pledge, this plan for progress. You are reaffirming a practice of long standing of the chemical Workers Union that there can be no such thing as rights just for a few
Arjun Singh 9:10
what you just heard was President Lyndon Baines Johnson back in the 1960s and he was standing with the head of the International Chemical Workers Union since the FDR era, organized labor stood with Democratic candidates like Johnson and worked together on promoting issues like Social Security, expanded health care access and also civil rights. In this era, the 1960s political parties were more drawn on the lines of class. To be glib about it, the Democrats were the party of unions and workers, and the Republicans the party of big business. That meant it wasn't uncommon for Democrats to do well with working class voters, especially white voters in Deep South states like Tennessee or Alabama. But things started to change when Democrats and most labor unions pushed hard for racial equality all of
Union Rep 9:55
our history. IUI has fought for equal opportunity. Community and with great success against discrimination for all of our members, regardless of skin color or the language they spoke.
Arjun Singh 10:11
The civil rights movement also inspired a backlash, especially in southern states, places that had been strongholds of democratic working class populism, and after LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 you had populist Democrats in the south, people who were inspired by FDR New Deal, revolting against the party. One of them was George Wallace, the governor of Alabama, a Democrat. Wallace considered himself a populist New Dealer, but he was more than willing to buck his party to preserve Jim Crow segregation.
George Wallace 10:41
I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever.
Arjun Singh 10:55
Civil rights also coincided with a general change in social values. The Women's Liberation Movement had emerged, and it was challenging gender roles. Soon, American families began to find themselves fighting over things like race, gender equality and what it meant to be an American. And that's where Richard Nixon came in, promising to put an end to the protest and do a lot of people restore the old racial hierarchy.
Richard Nixon 11:21
It is time for an honest look at the problem of order in the United States, dissent is a necessary ingredient of change, but in a system of government that provides for peaceful change, there is no cause that justifies resort to violence. Let us recognize that the first civil right of every American is to be free from domestic violence. This
Arjun Singh 11:44
idea that America was now in a struggle between those trying to preserve the past and those calling for change was commonplace on TV, and you hear it in sitcoms like all in the family, where the main character, a blue collar white man named Archie Bunker, frequently railed against environmentalism, women's liberation and civil rights. Well, it ain't gonna accept communism.
Archie Bunker 12:05
Buddy who's talking about communism? I'm talking about civil rights. That's communism.
Speaker 1 12:12
You know something your thinking is really Neanderthal. Listen,
Archie Bunker 12:15
you're gonna talk to me, talk American or clam up.
Arjun Singh 12:19
Though fictional bunker is a good representation of this political realignment. As a New York dock worker. Bunker was in a union, but he frequently bemoaned the Democratic party he saw as too progressive and one that catered too heavily to ethnic minorities, especially black people. And that is where Ronald Reagan comes in. Now
Ronald Reagan 12:38
let me say one thing I know in this place and speaking to this audience, I would have to be addressing not just fellow Republicans, but Democrats and independents as well. And I and I hope that's true, because, number one, we can't change the course we're on without you. You are welcome. We need your help and support in a crusade to change the direction of this country.
Henry Olsen 13:03
The best way to put it is that Ronald Reagan is to the Republican Party what Moses is to the Jewish people. He brought them out of bondage and into the promised land. By the end of Ronald Reagan's presidency, he has transformed the tax code. He has changed defense policy, and from a political standpoint, he has eliminated the double digit partisan identification edge that Democrats had held for 50 years. That when he was elected, Democrats had a 20 plus partisan identification edge by the time he left, it was down to the single digits, and that's where it stayed pretty much for the last 40 years, wavering between a couple points and as high as eight or nine points.
Arjun Singh 13:46
Henry Olson is the author of the working class Republican Ronald Reagan and the return of blue collar conservatism. I turn to Henry because at the heart of understanding the dynamic between blue collar voters and the political parties is Ronald Reagan.
Henry Olsen 13:58
Ronald Reagan was an outsider. This is a guy who was 53 years old when he made the political speech on national television in 1964 that catapulted him from out of work actor into political superstar. He was always friendly with people in the boardrooms. He did not oppose them, per se, but his base of support was working in middle class America. It was not the big business types. Even in 1980 the big business types preferred somebody like John Connally, the big talking Texan who loved them, or more moderate person like George H W Bush. They were not behind Reagan. Reagan's support was among working class voters, union voters, middle class Americans. Now,
Arjun Singh 14:46
if you're a regular listener of lever time, I know what you're thinking. Reagan, the same Ronald Reagan whose administration allowed Walmart to grow into a colossus so big it decimated Mom and Pop grocery stores, the man who. Said that big business was too tightly taxed and regulated and proceeded to let them loose, the same guy who decided to fire striking air traffic controllers and decertify their union instead of negotiating with them. Yes, that Ronald Reagan, the man who did all of those things, I'll add, he also happened to once be an actor who was in a movie with a chimpanzee. It's fairly
Ronald Reagan 15:20
simple. A lot of people think they're born better than others. I'm trying to prove it's the way you're raised that counts. But even a monkey brought up in the right surroundings can learn the meaning of decency and honesty.
Arjun Singh 15:31
But to bring it full circle, Ronald Reagan also managed to land the endorsement of the Teamsters. I myself found that perplexing, because Reagan hardly ran as an enemy of the business interests, if anything, he was their ally. So what was it about Reagan that spoke to a labor union? He
Henry Olsen 15:48
was strongly supportive of capitalism, and he was strongly supportive of markets. So to the extent that big business was aligned with that, he was aligned with them, and to the degree that they were not aligned with that. He was not with them. He was not a big business Republican. And on his tax cuts, which supply siders have taken to be an indication of their own policy, Reagan, in his memoir, said he was not a supply side and he was not focused on bringing the top rate down, which is what they were focused on. He was focused on bringing all rates down. What
Arjun Singh 16:25
Henry is saying here is that, in his view, Reagan personally wanted to simplify the tax code, but not just for the wealthiest. He believed that Reagan wanted to cut taxes for all Americans
Ronald Reagan 16:36
by lowering everyone's tax rates all the way up the income scale. Each of us will have a greater incentive to climb higher, to excel, to help America grow. The power of these incentives would send one simple, straightforward message to an entire nation, America, go for it. In
Henry Olsen 16:53
research for my book, The Working Class Republican he said the same thing in the 1960s when he was on what he called the mashed potato circuit, talking about conservative ideas, as he did in the White House. He was somebody who never focused on bringing the top rate down, helping those who have already succeeded, but he was focused on bringing everybody's rates down and helping those who could succeed. And
Arjun Singh 17:16
while that may explain Reagan's personal appeal, he also tapped into the political realignment the country had been going through since the 60s. Reagan's popularity is certainly unique in American history. But one thing that's evident is that in both of his 1980 and 1984 campaigns, Reagan clearly managed to reach former Democratic voters. This group known as the Reagan Democrats, took on a mythic stature in American politics near the end of the century. So how did he do it? Well, he tapped into the frustration of people like Archie Bunker, white middle class voters who, yes, probably belonged to a union and didn't have a college degree, but who were starting to grow resentful that Democrats were leaving them behind. That was also the opinion of a pollster named Stan Greenberg who conducted a legendary study of voters in Maycomb County, Michigan. In 1980 64% of may come voters supported Reagan, almost the exact same amount who supported JFK 20 years earlier, when he drilled into that more, Greenberg found that a lot of these working class voters were attracted to Reagan's optimism and desire to return America to one they knew in the past, something that was succinctly embodied in Reagan's 1980 campaign slogan, only
Ad 18:30
one man has the proven experience we need. Ronald Reagan for president, let's make America great again.
Arjun Singh 18:42
But that was Reagan, the candidate. Though Reagan spoke highly of the American worker, his administration really empowered the American corporation, but
Ronald Reagan 18:49
our economic system based on individual freedom, private initiative and free trade, has produced more human progress than any other in history. It's in all our interest to preserve it, protect it and strengthen it. We're reminding our trading partners that preserving individual freedom and restoring prosperity also requires free and fair trade in the marketplace.
Arjun Singh 19:12
In his first campaign, Reagan promoted the idea of free trade, that goods should be bought and sold between countries without any kind of taxes imposed on them, the net result, he and others argued would be cheaper products for American consumers and bigger profits for American businesses who could build their products in countries at a lower rate. Our peaceful
Ronald Reagan 19:31
trading partners are not our enemies. They are our allies. We should beware of the demagogues who are ready to declare a trade war against our friends, weakening our economy on national security and the entire free world, all while cynically waving the American flag. The expansion of the international economy is not a foreign invasion, it is an American triumph.
Arjun Singh 19:55
So as President Reagan would kick off the process that would lead to the creation of the world. Trade Organization, and, more notoriously, a free trade agreement known as the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA. NAFTA was negotiated by Reagan's former vice president, who would go on to become president right after him, a man named George H W Bush. And NAFTA got rid of most tariffs and taxes on imported goods and exported goods between the US, Canada and Mexico, but it was incredibly divisive because of a fear that it would hurt American factory workers.
Bernie Sanders 20:26
One of the reasons that our standard of living is declining is that major American corporations, like General Motors, General Electric and many others have thrown hundreds of 1000s of American workers out on the street as they run to Mexico and to Asia to hire desperate workers there and pay them starvation wages. And
Arjun Singh 20:49
in 1992 when Bush was up for re election, Bush even had a Republican primary opponent named Pat Buchanan, who specifically railed against now, I don't think
Pat Buchanan 20:58
it's the vision the American people need to get the economy moving again, and it's certainly not the long term strategy to make America first again in manufacturing industry, business the way we once were.
Arjun Singh 21:09
But despite the controversy, NAFTA was eventually signed into law in 1993 this time by a Democratic president named Bill Clinton, who had beat bush in the 1992 election. And it should be noted that he happened to beat bush with support from the working class voters who had backed Reagan in 1980 and 84
Bill Clinton 21:27
we have the opportunity to remake the world for this new era. Our national security we now know will be determined as much by our ability to pull down foreign trade barriers. Nafta's
Arjun Singh 21:39
legacy is mixed. Proponents of American manufacturing have faulted it for hollowing out America's manufacturing sector, but it's also true that the same sector had been in decline since the 1970s in part due to things like automation. But American manufacturing took a steep dive after 1994 and that particularly hit states in the Midwest and the workers who live there. And the 1990s also saw the country change, both economically and demographically. But in the midst of all this change, were white working class voters, many of whom viscerally felt the loss of manufacturing jobs. You
Donald Trump 22:13
go anywhere you want Secretary Clinton, and you will see devastation where manufacturing is down 3040, sometimes 50% NAFTA is the worst trade deal maybe ever signed anywhere, but certainly ever signed in this country.
Arjun Singh 22:26
When Donald Trump ran for president in 2016 his fervent hatred of NAFTA, along with a questionable promise to bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States, was a COVID call to the working class voters in the new millennium politics went through another realignment, income had long been a dividing line between the two parties, and public opinion tended to match that. Democrats had a broad base of support amongst middle and low income voters, many of whom were working class, while Republican voters tended to be wealthier. But by the time Barack Obama was running for president, the most stark divide became the diploma divide, with college degree holders migrating towards Democrats and those without aligning with Republicans, and this was something Trump readily exploited in criticizing NAFTA. Trump was also exploiting a cultural divide over education, framing 2016 as a choice between highly educated elites and everyone else
Donald Trump 23:19
I have visited the laid off factory workers and the communities crushed by our horrible and unfair trade deals. These are the forgotten men and women of our country, and they are forgotten, but they're not going to be forgotten law.
Donald Trump 23:47
These are people who work hard but no longer have a voice. I am your voice.
Arjun Singh 24:01
That message especially resonated with white working class voters who didn't hold a college degree, many of whom hailed from the same places as the Reagan Democrats in the 80s and in the last eight years, the diploma divide has appeared to become even stronger, leading more working class voters towards the Republican Party. Trump's overall record, however, leaned more traditionally Republican, although he renegotiated NAFTA and imposed terrorists to protect some domestic jobs, his signature policy was a broad tax cut for the wealthiest Americans. But culturally, Trump was speaking the language of populism. So after the break, we're going to look at how this is playing out in this year's election, we'll be right back. You.
Kim Kelly 25:04
So there's been a lot of discussion around this, and a lot of it, I do have a pretty big problem with because a lot of the framing that we come across is, oh, the working class is turning towards Trump, or union voters are turning towards the Republican Party, and that framing itself just kind of, that framing just doesn't reflect the actual makeup or any real understanding of who the working class is and who union voters are.
Arjun Singh 25:37
Kim Kelly is a reporter who covers labor, and she's the author of the book fight like hell, the Untold History of American labor. Kim's been on the ground at picket lines inside union halls and closely documenting the labor movement. So naturally, she was the first person I wanted to talk to when it came to understanding what's going on with Union politics these days. Being
Kim Kelly 25:57
in a union is one part of a person's, you know, political trajectory, or their political expression, or maybe it's not. This is the thing, when I think about this, something like my dad. My dad's been in a union since he was 18, construction worker, Jersey guy, terrible politics. But he always pays union dues, always goes to meetings. He goes on strike when necessary, and it's just part of who he is, because that's part of his job. He doesn't think there's anything weird about having, you know, a union card and a photo of Ronald Reagan in March childhood home. Like people are complicated and union members are complicated.
Arjun Singh 26:39
When Joe Biden became the president. He proudly proclaimed himself the most pro labor president in American history, and in recent history, that might be true, Biden's boosted funding for the National Labor Relations Board in an effort to support new unions. He invited the head of a local Amazon warehouse workers union to the White House and then released a video in support of striking Amazon. One.
Joe Biden 27:00
So let me be really clear, it's not up to me to decide whether anyone should join a union. But let me be even more clear, it's not up to an employer to decide that either the choice to join a union is up to the workers, full stop, full stop, as
Arjun Singh 27:20
President, Biden's handling of strikes earned praise, most recently, from the International Longshoreman's union, who credited the administration for working in good faith to prevent a major strike. But it should also be noted that he intervened and forcibly stopped rail workers from striking in 2022 a move that supporters of the administration say was intended to prevent widespread economic fallout, but which angered a lot of union workers. So it's for these reasons that the chattering media class have been confused as to why Kamala Harris is seeing slipping support from union members to Kim though part of the problem is that it's the way that we talk about and perceive who is a union
Kim Kelly 27:58
worker. Unions aren't you know this universally progressive entity, unions are made up of people, of regular workers, who contain multitudes. You know, they're incredibly racist, horrible, bigoted union members out there, a lot of them are in police unions. And then there are super radical, very progressive, Lefty people in labor unions and kind of everything in between. There's not one type of union voter. And I think when people, kind of outside the labor world talk about union members, unions, et cetera, they have a image of a very specific type of person. They have the white guy in a hard hat who likes to drink beers and swear and doesn't understand trans people. And sure, there are a lot of those guys in the movement, because there are a lot of those guys in those jobs, and that's fine. They're part of labor just as much as me and anyone else. But that's not the full picture, if you break down the actual sort of status of the working class and who makes up union members in this country, the person who is the most likely to be part of a labor union in this country is a black woman who works in healthcare or the service industry. That's who the typical union worker is, and that is not quite as politically convenient as the idea of, you know, Big Joe with his hard hat, because that requires you to add in the understanding that, okay, this, this worker is a woman. So we have to think about issues that might concern women. She's a black person. We need to think about issues around race and around racial justice and around all of the insane layers of oppression that this person has to deal with on the job and off, like there are so many different considerations that go into what a union voter is, or at least that should go into that that it's so frustrating to. See it sort of painted in this incredibly myopic, reductive brush. And really the same thing goes for the idea of the working class voter, because the framing that we see is so flawed and also out of date and kind of out of touch, because what we generally see used is okay, like a person with without a college degree, like that's working class, and sure that's one way to be working class in this election,
Arjun Singh 30:27
blue collar is again equated with people working in the factory cities of the Midwest. Just last week, Harris hit up a UAW local in Michigan, and the Washington Post said it was part of her effort to court blue collar workers. Yet she also has an idea to expand Medicare to home health workers, and that's not described as a working class policy, even though home health workers are a major part of today's working class. And that might explain why people like Donald Trump and JD Vance will talk at length about the need to protect steel or auto worker jobs, yet you rarely hear them talk about the conditions faced by Amazon workers or Uber drivers to them, it sometimes feels like that doesn't fit in squarely with the image they have in their head of who makes up working class, blue collar voters, predatory
Kim Kelly 31:13
Republican politicians want to capitalize on that, because they want those votes and They want that cache too. I really think, especially the most pathetic ones like Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio and Josh Hawley and JD Vance, they so desperately want to be something they're not. They want to be the tough guy, this idealized sort of American masculinity, like I work with my hands, or a cowboy, all of this toxic masculinity stuff that they they push and they benefit from, they suffer from it too. And I think they see people like auto workers on the picket line, or longshoremen, or really, anybody who has the gust to stand up to their boss. And I think it gives them a real great like essential crisis. And they need to try and bolster their own self esteem and bolster their own credentials with normal people, with working people, by trying to cozy up to the their approved version of what a worker is and what a union leader is. Some
Arjun Singh 32:18
conservatives, though, don't see it as just politicking. Take Abigail ball. She's the executive director of the American compass, a conservative think tank that advocates for a more worker centric approach to Republican policy.
Abigail Ball 32:30
I think there's been a turn in recent years. I think you can really date this basically to around 2015 when Trump kind of came on the scene and was willing to kind of question some of this stuff, and he was willing to say, hey, the emperor doesn't have any clothes on. This doesn't make any sense. We're being sold down the river this. This is not right. He, I think, kind of opened up that conversation really nicely, and now people are willing to say, especially on, I think the right that free trade is not everything, and what we should be aiming for is something more like balanced trade.
Arjun Singh 33:08
More than Trump. Ball has found Trump's running mate, JD Vance, to be an indicator of a potential shift within the Republican Party, one that's more populist and sides with workers against corporate and political elites. President
JD Vance 33:20
Trump's vision is so simple and yet so powerful. We're done, ladies and gentlemen, catering to Wall Street, we'll commit to the working man
Abigail Ball 33:33
conservatives should really be thinking about, you know, how do we support workers as workers, and how do we approach business as something that can, you know, certainly lift a lot of people up and create a lot of growth and create a lot of prosperity for the country. But it shouldn't be simply growth for growth's sake. It should be growth for the sake of workers, for communities, for their families to ensure that they can actually live the really good lives that we've promised them. And I yeah, I think that you're seeing this a lot with some of the newer senators on the rich center, people like Senator Hawley, Senator Vance, Senator Rubio, people like this, who are actually willing to go out there on issues of labor policy, are willing to embrace organized labor quite explicitly. Are willing to say, you know, just because a corporation wants X, Y, Z policy, that doesn't necessarily mean that the Republicans should be in support of it.
Arjun Singh 34:37
Vance has shown a willingness to back some sort of effort to clamp down on corporate excesses, especially when it comes to combating monopolistic behavior. He co sponsored legislation to bring down the price of insulin, and he's even backed a minimum wage increase. But Vance's support for American workers is usually invoked when it aligns easily with the pro corporate platform of the Republican Party. For example. In supporting striking UAW workers in 2023 Vance seemed to talk a little bit more about that. He was trying to fight electric vehicles than workers rights, and then he's hinted at deregulating health insurance companies in a way that would likely make it more expensive for chronically ill people to be covered. So putting aside cultural factors and political messaging, I turned back to Kim one last time to get her sense as someone who's been up close with the labor movement, warts and all, when push comes to shove, which party did she think has been a better ally to work this isn't sexy,
Kim Kelly 35:32
but it is true that it actually does matter quite a lot who works at and leads these regulatory agencies and government agencies that we don't necessarily hear about all the time because they're just kind of off in the background getting shit done. So even one little example I can give you, the MSHA, the Mine Safety and Health Administration, is part of it's under the DOL department of labor under Trump, the person he installed to head up that agency was a former coal tycoon who actively worked to slash regulations and to block the implementation of safety rules and generally tried to make it as business friendly as possible to the other co barons out there under Biden, the new head of an Chris Williamson, who has made it a centerpiece of his tenure at the agency to push through this life saving regulatory rule around silica exposure to tackle the black lung crisis in Appalachia like And that is just one small example of the difference, I will say, purely from the perspective of someone who cares about organized labor and cares about workers rights and safety and would prefer the union movement to continue here in the States, the Biden administration has been like light years ahead of anything that happened during the Trump regime, specifically, because it's just they're opposites, right? It's literally opposite sides of the coin. And when the rhetoric around him being the most pro union president comes out, and it's it's really just an indictment on how bad our president have been on labor that it is actually true, like he is in modern times, the most pro union president, because the bar is so fucking low. There's a reason why so many workers and union members feel abandoned by Democrats, and that's completely valid. But whether we're talking about the National Labor Relations Board that and today I mentioned before, that helps run union elections and enforce labor law, the people there that have gotten their jobs during the Biden era and been appointed by Biden, they are doing incredible work because they're pro union, pro labor. Under Trump, the people on that board were business people. They didn't care about workers. They actively wanted to sabotage unions. And one of the scariest things about it was like you could have an incredibly important regulation or safety rule right on the cusp of being implemented, and then if someone else gets elected a few months later, it's gone, and that's hundreds or 1000s of workers lives that could be impacted. And even if someone who has zero faith in the electoral system hates both major parties, caveat, caveat, caveat, learning about that and just seeing the way it played out and the way it impacted workers and like people that I know, people down in West Virginia, people in Alabama, it really just emphasized like it is impactful.
Arjun Singh 38:56
I want to end by returning to what happened with the teamsters after the union formally declined to endorse more than 20 local teamsters unions opted to endorse Harris on their own compared to the past, Harris and Democrats do appear to be losing support from unions and working class voters, though, overall, she's still leading with union workers, and the same is true for non white voters without a college degree. And this is all happening in a totally different era than the ones that I've just been talking about in reporting this piece, I talked to more than a dozen people. I talked to people who worked in building trades and in restaurants, people who were working class and were in a union and weren't in a union. I sat down with someone who's been covering politics since the 1970s and talked to pollsters. Most of them had thoughts on why there might be a working class shift happening in this country, but maybe more telling was fewer confident enough to go on record, what was clear to all of them is that there is a political transformation happening. American labor seems to be invigorated and a sense of populism is embedded within both parties. And that's meant the old playbook of politics might just be useless. Now. Muddying all of this up is that our politics is increasingly focused on a small sliver of voters and archetypes that professional political operatives have determined will make or break an election. Take this fight over tariffs and whether to impose them to protect certain industries, something that's billed as a pro working class policy, and it's true that tariffs on things like aluminum and steel have saved some jobs, but just for a fraction of the working class. Consider this, there are 10s of millions more working class healthcare workers in the US than steel workers or aluminum workers. Yet politicians rarely pay lip service to them. The same goes for gig economy workers, Uber drivers and DoorDash drivers. But one thing I think is certain, there is a clear growing discontent with both political parties, forcing both to change their posture. I Arjun,
Arjun Singh 41:10
thanks for listening to another episode of lever time. This episode was produced by me Arjun Singh, with help from Chris Walker and editing support from Joel Warner and Lucy Dean Stockton. Our theme music was composed by Nick Campbell. We'll be back next week with another episode of lever. Time you