This is union households. This is democratic margin in presidential elections. 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. [00:00:15] 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, ten points off the mark of Joe Biden, who, of course, won four years ago, was sort of that union guy. Union Joe Wright won it by 19 points. [00:00:32] She's ten points off his mark and the worst in a generation. It's not looking good for Democrats when it comes to the working class vote. And to be sure, Trump is pulling in a shocking level of support from union [00:00:50] members, which puts him on track for the best performance of a GOP candidate among workers in literally decades. Now making matters worse for Kamala Harris, Trump seems to have successfully lured in workers in the trades. [00:01:06] This is something we've talked about in previous weeks, and I want to make sure everyone remembers the workers in the trades. They were typically loyal Democratic voters, but that's not the case anymore. [00:01:22] Look at this margin. This to me. Oh, boy. Does this tell you about the state of our politics now versus back in the early 1990s? Margin among vocational and trade school grads and pre-election polling. Bill Clinton was leading that vote over George H.W. Bush by seven points. Look at where Donald Trump is today over Kamala Harris, a 31 point advantage. [00:01:43] When I think people think of the working class, they think of people who use their hands. And we know that Donald Trump has been going after that vote, and he is in a very, very strong position, more so, perhaps, than any other block. The folks who go to trade school, vocational school that has moved from being a core Democratic group to now being a core group of Donald Trump's massive [00:02:02] amount of support among the working class. So Harry Enten says there that Trump has been going after their vote. And some of you who are knowledgeable about what Trump did with unions and the National Labor Relations Board under his watch and his term, [00:02:19] are probably pulling your hair out. And I can understand why. I mean, his policies were not very friendly to workers. I mean, one of the stories that always stands out to me is the former Google employee, James Damore, who got fired from Google after he put out a document explaining why he thinks women [00:02:38] or why Google is having a difficult time attracting female coders to the company. Now, he took his case to the National Labor Relations Board under Donald Trump. And remember, Donald Trump and the, you know, conservative Republicans [00:02:54] really rallied around James Damore. They defended him. I actually defended him as well because I read the entirety of his document, and I think he's honestly, I think he, in his mind, thought he was trying to help the company figure out ways or strategies to bring in more women, but he did it in a knuckleheaded way. [00:03:12] And rather than have a conversation about him, they fired him. I didn't agree with that. I thought they should have had the conversation instead. Nonetheless, he goes to the NLRB. He's thinking, Does Trump's administration all the Republicans have rallied around me. They support me. They think it was wrong, a gross injustice that I got fired and the NLRB was, [00:03:33] full to the rim of anti-labor people who were appointed by Trump. And they basically told him, skedaddle. Okay, skedaddle. We're not going to help you out with your case. So I hear you guys, when you pull your hair out about stories like this, right? But at the same time, remember, there is a difference [00:03:50] between politics and policy, okay? And oftentimes when it comes to the electoral process and winning elections, Politics matters. Maybe more than policy. I hate to admit it, but it seems to be true. So when Donald Trump visited East Palestine, Ohio, after that Norfolk [00:04:10] Southern train derailed and caused a toxic situation for that local community. You know, Trump visits and he buys McDonald's for the first responders. You know, the firefighters and all of that. And I gave him credit for it. I thought it was smart politics. [00:04:27] And it's that kind of stuff that I think ends up working to his favor among working class Americans. And I'm going to get into more of the explanation or analysis for why I think, you know, Democrats are losing the working class vote. But another sign of this was also a story that we reported about [00:04:45] the Teamsters union, because, remember, the Teamsters union decided we're going to sit this election out and we're not going to endorse either candidate, which is unusual for them to do. But while Sean O'Brien, the head of the Teamsters union, [00:05:00] said the reason why they're making this decision is because they went to both parties and neither party would give them the concessions they wanted. In reality, I actually think it has more to do with the members of the Teamsters union and where their feelings are on this election. [00:05:17] So if you look at the electronic poll that was conducted, it showed that of the Teamsters members, 59.6% support Trump, only 34% support Harris. And when you look at the poll that was conducted over the phone, [00:05:33] the numbers are very similar. 58% supported Trump, 31% supported Harris. And, as Dustin Guastalla, who's a writer at Jacobin, points out, this finding would be consistent with the fact that some 56% of non-college educated [00:05:50] voters overall support Trump, according to the Times Siena poll from September 8th. Okay, so let's break it down. What is happening. I think that there's a number of different factors. As I mentioned, as much as you might be a policy wonk and as informed as you might [00:06:07] be on the different policies that were implemented or pursued by both parties, you kind of have to put that aside and think about the optics and the and the politics of the two candidates. Right. And so right now, I do think that a lot of people in the country are [00:06:23] still getting to know Kamala Harris, which is why it is shortsighted to avoid doing as many interviews as you possibly can. There needs to be more specificity in regard to how Kamala Harris plans to help ordinary working Americans. I think that she has fallen short on that in her campaigning so far. [00:06:40] You know, she's put out some vague policies that sound good, but there needs to be, I think, more attention paid to ordinary Americans. She's kind of shifted in recent weeks to a more moderate, pro-business message. And I don't know if there's some sort of testing going on behind the scenes [00:06:58] that shows that that's going to actually help her in the race, but it does come at a cost. It comes at a cost where workers are like, all right, well, I'm going to go for the guy who's engaging in the politics. That signals to me that he cares about me more, even if his policies behind the scenes aren't so great for workers. [00:07:14] Right. And so let's get to the details on that. Yes. Biden's NLRB much friendlier to to workers. He also, Biden worked behind the scenes to get paid time off for the rail workers who were going to go on strike before he intervened. [00:07:32] So he got a lot of heat for intervening, and we gave him a lot of heat for that. But Biden did then go behind the scenes to secure what the rail workers were going to strike for, and that was the paid time off. And Biden's Federal Trade Commission has been great. But Biden's pro-union efforts obviously were drowned out by something [00:07:51] that isn't quite fair to pin on him. And that's inflation. Right now, inflation was caused by multiple Factors and inflation like increased the cost of living to a point where even if you're a union worker and you've got a few concessions [00:08:08] because of Biden's involvement, you're still paying a lot more for the same essential items that you paid for. Under Trump, when it was a lot cheaper under Trump, well, then you're going to think of Trump as a better leader, right? Even if it doesn't make any sense. [00:08:24] You're going to think of him as a better leader who kept inflation low. Cost of living was low. Things were better. That's the kind of mindset that I think has kind of set in inflation, whether Biden likes it or not, whether the Democrats like it or not really ends up getting blamed on the person in charge at the time inflation happens. [00:08:42] And that's Biden and the Democrats, unfortunately. And Biden's pro-union efforts fell short when it came to things like the pro act like The New Republic published a piece like Just Furious, about where workers are on this election because they're like, [00:08:59] why are you guys stupid? Don't you know the Democrats are way better? But guys, I don't think that that approach is going to win, okay? By attacking the workers or attacking the voters, it's not a smart strategy. You're not going to win people over that way. [00:09:15] You have to kind of understand where they're coming from. And when The New Republic cited the pro act, I mean, the writer was like, yeah, I mean, Democrats, they're in favor of the pro act and Republicans aren't. Okay, but no one cares about the Democrats legislative wish list. [00:09:32] Ordinary people are not like, you know, they haven't passed any legislation. But I'd like to look at legislation they wished they could pass. They didn't pass the Pro act. So you can't give Democrats credit for legislation that they failed to pass. You get what I'm saying? [00:09:48] Like the signaling might mean a lot to affluent people who work in media, but the signaling doesn't mean, Jack to ordinary workers who might want to organize their workplace but don't have the protection of the Pro act because let's keep it real. [00:10:04] They didn't really fight for it when they had the opportunity in the first two years of Biden's term. Of course, he had a majorities in both the House and a slim majority in the Senate. I will admit that. But, they were so unwilling to do something about the Senate's legislative [00:10:20] filibuster that they were unable to pass any of these pro-labor bills that they, you know, purportedly care so much about and want to pass. And look, unfortunately for the Democratic Party, Biden was, [00:10:36] a bit of a bump in the road when it comes to this ongoing trend in the party. And we got to keep it real. Okay, so this is a huge problem. I didn't even know that this was set in 2016, but it gives you a sense of where [00:10:51] Democratic leadership's head is at. Okay. So in July of 2016. Chuck Schumer said this during a Washington Post forum. They were noticing that Democrats were bleeding support among union members [00:11:08] and working class Americans. And so Schumer was asked about it during this Washington Post forum. Again, this is in July of 2016. Here's what he said. The electorate is moving in a more democratic direction when middle class incomes decline. [00:11:26] People tend to move in a more progressive direction. Yeah. Look, the senator maybe should have considered that the middle class incomes were declining under the leadership of a Democratic president [00:11:41] for the last eight years. Who do you think the middle class is going to blame for their incomes shrinking, for income inequality increasing? Are they going to blame Republicans who aren't in charge, or are they going to blame the Democrats who are in charge? [00:11:56] So like that thinking was so unbelievably dumb. But if you. Thought that was a terrible statement, it gets worse. For every blue collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia. [00:12:13] And you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin. How did that work out for you, Schumer? This was in 2016, before the 2016 presidential election, in which, of course, Donald Trump won. [00:12:31] And since then, Democrats have continued to bleed support among union members and working class Americans. And that is devastating, because Democrats used to be the party of FDR. They used to be thought of as the party that looked out for working class Americans. [00:12:46] And look, if they want to tout what their legislative wish list is, they need to improve on their messaging and they need to deliver. It is going to hurt them. If each time people trust them, get out the vote, canvass for them and get [00:13:04] them elected, they turn around and they fail to fight for the policies that they claim that they wanted to champion. Once they get elected or reelected, they have to deliver. There's going to be consequences electorally in the future if they don't deliver. So I think that is also what's happening here. [00:13:21] I've spoken to a few Teamsters who happen to be friends of mine, and I was curious, you know, where their head was at on this issue. And there are a lot of Teamsters who are concerned about losing jobs to immigrants. So, look, that messaging has apparently also been effective. [00:13:39] And I think that's part of the reason why Democrats have taken a more, I guess, moderate approach to immigration compared to what we were hearing in 2016. But the final thing I'll say is I found this excerpt in, Stella's Is [00:13:55] reporting really, really interesting because I agree and he wasn't specific, but I'll get specific on his behalf. Okay. He wrote, it is no secret that the Democratic Party's image, interests and value system are far closer to that of upper middle [00:14:10] class liberals than they are to that of the average working class person on cultural issues, too. It is the case that many workers feel deeply alienated from the liberal perspective. So he again is vague there. [00:14:26] But, you know, he's basically talking about certain culture war narratives or certain things that the Democratic Party like, leans into and kind of front loads in their in their campaigns and through the electoral process, you know, rather than having a hyper focused, [00:14:42] principled message on materially improving the lives of everyone, which I think would be a valuable message that would obviously appeal to people, you know, they get kind of caught up in these like small edge case type things, and they do a lot of nagging. [00:14:59] They do a lot of scolding, and that turns a lot of voters off. And, I was actually shocked to find out that my late friend Michael Brooks's sister had disclosed something about Michael that I knew, but I just didn't feel comfortable talking about it publicly. [00:15:15] I mean, he's gone here. He's gone now. He isn't here to speak for himself, but he wrote a book that I highly recommend you guys all read. It's called Against the Web A Cosmopolitan Answer to the New Right. And in it, of course, he talks about the right, but he also talks about [00:15:31] some of the shortcomings of the left, namely in the area of like the culture wars and all of that. And so here's what Licia said that Michael had talked to her about in their very last conversation. Michael was so done with identity politics and cancel culture, [00:15:48] he just really wanted to focus on integrity and basic needs for people and all the other noise like Diversification of the ruling class or whatever. Everyone's obsessed with the virtue signaling. He was just like, it's just going to be co-opted by capitalism [00:16:06] and used against other people and, you know, vilify people and make it easier to extract labor from them. Yeah. I mean, there's definitely, some elaboration of that in his book. But the point here isn't to say, oh, we need to exclude people. [00:16:25] The point here is to say, no, we need to be more forgiving, accepting, tolerant and welcoming to people. Because when you engage in the vilifying, when you engage in the finger pointing, when you make your party seem like you're not allowed to have a different thought, [00:16:45] or else you're going to be, you know, labeled a heretic or something like that, like all of that stuff is not appealing to people. So it doesn't surprise me that, you know, Dustin Guastalla mentioned that in his analysis for why Democrats are losing some working class support. [00:17:00] But honestly, I think all of that pales in comparison to the lack of policy wins when it comes to materially improving workers lives in this country. I think if Democrats were able to accomplish some of their policy goals, [00:17:16] like paid family leave, for instance, well, then they can point to something real and substantive and universal that benefits people. And right now, they can't do that. Biden didn't fight for his own agenda. He was willing to separate the physical infrastructure from the social [00:17:31] infrastructure in the Build Back Better plan, and he knew it was going to happen. He knew that Republicans and corporate Democrats wanted that to happen so they could vote in favor of the physical infrastructure bill, which, of course, ends up giving all sorts of federal government grants [00:17:47] to private companies, while also squashing the social infrastructure bill that would have provided paid family leave financial assistance to Americans who need to take time off work in order to take care of their ailing parents, that kind of stuff. [00:18:02] These are serious issues that need to be dealt with in the country, and I think people are kind of sick about hearing from Democrats who claim they want to fix these issues, run on fixing these, these issues, and then get elected and immediately heal. [00:18:17] So these actions have consequences. That's my take on it. Curious what you all think. Share your comments in the comment section or send in your comments if you're watching us live. We're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back. Thanks for watching The Young Turks really appreciate it. Another way to show support is through YouTube memberships. [00:18:34] You'll get to interact with us more. There's live chat emojis, badges. You've got emojis of me Anna John Jr. So those are super fun. But you also get playback of our exclusive member only shows and specials right after they air. [00:18:50] So all of that, all you got to do is click that join button right underneath the video. Thank you.