'Undecided' working people? Really?

Mere weeks before Election Day, the presidential race seems close, and some people say they remain undecided.

Really.

Labor has rallied behind Harris/Walz, who remind Americans they support unions – and they even pledged to push for passage of the Richard L. Trumka Protecting the Right to Organize Act (the PRO Act), which would reform and modernize federal labor law. (Since the bill would also need Congressional approval, that underscores how important down-ballot contests are, too.)

Meanwhile, Republicans Donald Trump, J.D. Vance and today’s Trump-family-dominated GOP have tried to persuade voters that they back working people, too – despite their anti-worker, anti-union past.

Even before Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party, the GOP has warred with workers for decades, opposing the 1930s’ breakthrough National Labor Relations Act, weakening that foundation in Taft-Hartley and other measures, and especially since the Reagan-era breaking of the air traffic controllers union in 1981.

Republican politicians vote against raising the minimum wage but back Right-To-Work laws; support racist, sexist, and anti-voter legislation but oppose maintaining or strengthening child-labor protections; install anti-labor judges and National Labor Relations Board members but try to de-fund government agencies set up to enforce labor laws, safety and health rules, etc.

Most GOP politicians care far less about working people than they do about their business patrons and keeping their cushy jobs while Trump insists they bow to his whims.

Republicans’ latest attempt to persuade union members the GOP has spent decades systematically disenfranchising comes from Trump running mate Vance, the first-term Senator from Ohio. The author, Marine, Ivy League attorney and venture capitalist puts on his working-class past like ladies apply makeup. But it’s understandable why people think it’s “weird” to hear his insulting comments about women, false claims about legal Haitian immigrants, and yarns about his family. (Dude: Let them live their lives.)

“In my view, Vance’s support for workers hinges almost entirely on white Christian nationalism,” writes journalist Kim Kelly, who’s written for Esquire, Teen Vogue and The New Republic.

“He does not want to uplift the U.S. working class in all its vibrant, multiracial, multigender beauty; he wants (white, male, Christian) workers to earn better wages so that their (white, female, Christian) spouses can stay home and raise more (white, Christian) children.”

Not unlike too many spineless Republicans, Vance is a fear mongerer who rejects unity and solidarity by using divisive exaggerations and lies about crime, immigration, prices and so on to appeal to some workers while avoiding policies that actually support everyday Americans.

Regular working people, unionized or not, Kelly wrote, “are 45% Black, Latino and other workers of color; women workers make up half of the overall total, and 8% of workers are disabled, according to Census data from the 2021 American Community Survey (ACS). This doesn’t leave enough room for simplified hate, though, so MAGA Republicans are looking for the next set of suckers to draw into their poisonous embrace.

“The Republicans are trying to make fools of us by pandering to outdated and incorrect stereotypes about who union members are and what the working class is, hoping to turn us against one another by harping on perceived differences — the same way union-busters and grimy bosses have done since the beginning of wage labor. But it won’t work. There are no neutral positions here — and we know which side they’re on.”

In fact, even when Democratic leaders too often take for granted labor and other parts of its base, differences between 21^st century Republicans and Democrats are stark, and Trump so untethered, that an increasing number of unexpected support has emerged to back Kamala Harris.

When Harris’s campaign has been endorsed by a wide range of voices – Taylor Swift and Bruce Springsteen, ex-Republican hawk and VP Dick Cheney and long-time Peoria Congressman Ray LaHood – the widening of support shouldn’t be surprising. Coming together this month were Harris and former Wyoming Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney at a joint appearance in Wisconsin.

Cheney couldn’t restrain her contempt for Trump, commenting, “He is petty, he is vindictive, and he is cruel, and Donald Trump is not fit to lead this good and great nation.”

She asked voters to “reject the depraved cruelty of Donald Trump.”

There’s also a growing split between traditional Republican supporters and Trump. New York Times Magazine writer Jonathan Mahler wrote, “Most C.E.O.s are not wild about a second Trump term. They had a rocky ride the first time around — though they did get the tax cuts and deregulation they wanted — and they are pretty sure he will bring instability, which is generally bad for business.”

Almost 90 current and former business leaders signed a letter endorsing Harris, and they included James Murdoch from the family owning the Wall Street Journal and Fox, plus entrepreneurs Mark Cuban and Magic Johnson, plus former Treasury Secretaries Michael Blumenthal, Robert Rubin and Larry Summers.

Goldman Sachs warns that the broader economy would get the biggest boost if Democrats win the White House and Congress. Even if Harris wins but Congress is divided, the economy under her administration would mean a 2.1% growth in GDP, an average jobless rate of 4% and inflation of 2.4%, according to Moody’s Analytics – compared to a Trump victory working with a GOP Congress predicted to have lower GDP growth, and higher unemployment and inflation.

JPMorganChase CEO Jamie Dimon – who this month said Trump’s claim that he’d endorsed the Republican was a lie – weeks earlier in a Washington Post commentary called for a return to sanity, advocating for “smarter policies that provide protection, progress and prosperity to all,” including fixing the failure to create equal opportunity for all, expanding the economy by encouraging investments, sharing the wealth, addressing our national debt, maintaining the world’s strongest military, taking control of our borders, strengthening the social safety nets, and renewing national pride by unabashedly teaching civics and American exceptionalism without papering over our mistakes.

“Put country and constitution first,” Dimon said.

His remark foreshadowed Liz Cheney’s remark alongside Harris that this election is about “country over party.”

A new campaign, Business Leaders for Harris, has made the case for the Democratic nominee, saying, “For a stronger economy, we choose Kamala Harris.” (See https://www.bizforharris.org/.)

 “Politics make strange bedfellows,” but never so important as when a strange, weird ticket threatens Americans’ many freedom. Besides “Republicans for Harris,” whose website says “over 100,000 people have joined this campaign within a campaign” (Newsweek- Sept. 5), consider a few other Harris endorsements:

* In a Sept. 18 letter published by the New York Times, 111 former staffers, all Republicans who served in the Reagan, G.H.W. Bush, G.W. Bush and/or Trump administrations or members of Congress, announced they back Harris. They wrote: “Of course, we have plenty of honest, ideological disagreements with Vice President Harris and Gov. Walz. That’s to be expected. The alternative, however, is simply untenable”;

* On Sunday, Sept. 22, a letter released by 741 former national security officials – bipartisan senior leaders—endorsed Harris for president, calling Trump “impulsive and ill-informed” (CNBC News); and

* On Sept. 24, 405 economists endorsed Harris (CNBC).

 

Sometimes, for the good of the nation – in the privacy of the voting booth – people must hold their noses and cast ballots for a candidate about whom they’re not enthused. As conservative columnist Mona Charen wrote, “In 1800, Alexander Hamilton faced a similar dilemma. The Electoral College had tied between Thomas Jefferson (Hamilton’s political opposite) and Aaron Burr, a man of no principles. The House of Representatives had to choose, Hamilton lobbied his Federalist friends to vote for Jefferson, explaining that: ‘Mr. Jefferson, though too revolutionary in his n options, is yet a lover of liberty and will be desirous of something like orderly government – Mr. Burr loves nothing but himself – thinks of nothing but his own aggrandizement – and will be content with nothing short of permanent power … in his own hands’.”

The question Nov. 5: Will one-time Trump supporters in organized labor – more than 40% of whom backed him in 2016 and 2020 – weigh the threats to unions and the working class that Trump poses, and join with others who value the country and the constitution?