President Joe Biden has spent most of the past few months acting as if the biggest re-election priority was shoring up support from the intersectional Left-wing base of the Democratic Party. But this week, he's taking a break from efforts to try to appease Hamas sympathizers who have been bashing him for giving too much support to Israel since the Oct. 7 massacres and focusing on a far more important problem: the working-class voters who are abandoning the Democrats for former President Donald Trump.
But while he's likely to get a warm reception when he meets with the leaders of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the man who likes to tout himself as "the most pro-labor president in U.S. history" knows that there is one reason the powerful union may hesitate to endorse him: the opinions of their members.
As is the case with all unions, the people who run the Teamsters largely agree with Biden and the Democrats on most issues. It's not just that they fear Republican support for "right-to-work" laws that make it harder for unions to maintain a stranglehold on industrial workforces and to use that to collect dues from employees that give them political muscle and power. The leadership also agrees with Democrats about spending, taxes and, most importantly, not shutting down the country's southern border through which anywhere from 7 to 10 million illegal immigrants have entered the country since Biden took office.
But while some unions—like those that represent municipal and state—can count on members being in sympathy with the leadership's positions on open borders as well as the woke catechism of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) that is an unshakeable orthodoxy of the political Left, the Teamsters are aware that their members can't be counted on to fall in line behind Biden and the Democrats.
That's why the Teamsters made their first significant donation to the GOP since 2004 earlier this year when they sent a check for $45,000 to the Republican National Committee. The odds may be against the Teamsters going so far as to endorse Trump over Biden. But those leading the union need to think long and hard about whether to devote the considerable resources and manpower at their disposal to a push to help the Democrats this year is either politically wise or a move that will cause them problems with their members.
Union bosses are not unaware of the sea change in American politics that has been taking place in the last several years.
The Democrats, once the party of the working class and zealous in defense of its interests, have long since abandoned them. Today, they represent the interests of the credentialed elites and the poor and are more interested in heeding Wall Street hedge fund managers' pleas for trade deals that send manufacturing jobs abroad while importing more cheap labor from immigrants—whether legal or illegal—to keep the cost of doing business low. Their adherence to the woke playbook about prioritizing race over everything else has led them to think that it is fair that working class people should pay off the student loans of those with college degrees and making more money than they ever will, something that amounts to a massive regressive transfer of income from blue collar Americans to the professional laptop class.
So it's little wonder that once the Republicans nominated Trump, a man who sought to defend their interests by opposing open borders, bad trade deals, and woke racism, the GOP has shifted from being a Chamber of Commerce party to one driven by the interests of working-class voters.
That's why instead of pandering to the pro-Hamas mayor of Dearborn, Michigan, America's jihad capital, Biden should have been worrying more about the votes of auto workers in Michigan. It is the workers' sympathy for Trump, despite their union bosses' endorsement of the incumbent, and not angry Arab-Americans and Muslims, who have created the situation in which Biden trails Trump in the crucial battleground state.
Trump may not ever win back college educated voters who used to be more likely to back Republicans. But the polls showing Trump leading among Hispanics and making unprecedented inroads among Black voters demonstrates that his return to the White House is being made possible by a shift among working class voters of every race. While the Teamsters' bosses may find it impossible to shake off their allegiance to a party that no longer cares about workers, their members aren't so blind to what is in their best interests.
Biden can pretend that his party hasn't changed and turned its back on the working class. But Trump has every reason to believe that Teamster members, like so many other Americans who have been shortchanged by the Democrats' contempt for blue collar workers, aren't going to listen to union leaders who are more interested in helping Left-wing political allies than in defending their jobs and their values.
If the Teamsters' leadership is listening to its rank and file, they'll endorse Trump, or at least stay out of a presidential election in which the success of Democrats will mean more misery for union members.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS (Jewish News Syndicate) and a senior contributor to The Federalist. Follow him: @jonathans_tobin.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
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