‘Union Joe’ could be losing ground with another core voting bloc

By Terresa Monroe-Hamilton | Originally posted on bizpacreview.com

President Biden’s mantra of “union-strong” appears to have lost its steel grip on unions and workers as that voting bloc is reportedly shifting to former President Trump and Democrats are panicking over it.

“Democratic lawmakers in battleground states are worried that their long-running support from union voters may be the latest casualty of a political realignment that’s threatening President Biden’s re-election,” Axios reported.

Trump has been aggressively courting unions in his latest presidential bid, which appears to be paying off. Rather than helping and strengthening the unions, Biden’s green policies and radical regulations have hurt workers and they are fed up with it. While a number of union leaders are still carrying water for Democrats, some of them as well as unionized workers are gravitating to Trump who is vowing to save their jobs. Meanwhile, the Left is making concrete moves that will cost the livelihoods of millions which is becoming more and more evident to union workers.

“In February, the Teamsters made its first major donation to the RNC since 2004 after its president, Sean O’Brien, met with former President Trump the previous month. O’Brien has since requested speaking slots at both the Republican and Democratic conventions,” Axios noted concerning one of the largest unions in the nation.

Adding to the panic on the Left, the United Auto Workers waited until January to endorse Biden. The endorsement was from the union leaders but many members reportedly do not support the president. The hesitation in support was because of Biden’s electric vehicle agenda. It’s a twofer loss for Biden. Not only is the EV craze fading away to a great extent, it was a wake-up call to union workers that although Biden professes to buy “union-first,” his actions say something else entirely.

The Biden administration has enacted policies meant to strengthen unions and buy their votes such as weaponizing the IRS in favor of them, “The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Treasury Department finalized prevailing wage and apprenticeship requirements for certain incentives contained in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), a massive climate bill that President Joe Biden signed into law in August 2022. While the administration characterizes the rules as a win for blue-collar workers, they will more likely give a significant advantage to labor unions — typically stalwart supporters of the Democratic Party — and drive up costs of IRA-backed projects that are already increasing, according to infrastructure policy experts and industry stakeholders.”

“If the Biden administration’s goal is to undermine taxpayer investments in the construction of critical clean energy infrastructure funded by the Inflation Reduction Act, this final rule is a wild success,” Ben Brubeck, who is the vice president of regulatory, labor, and state affairs for the Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC), said in a statement. “This bold weaponization of the IRS and end-run around Congress in an attempt to steer clean energy construction contracts to unionized labor and contractors — key election-year donors — by incentivizing private developers to require inflationary and exclusionary project labor agreements should be extremely concerning for taxpayers and clean energy advocates.”

Biden, who claims he’s the “most pro-union president in history,” has also made a show of taking part in a UAW picket line last September. But it would seem his overtures are more and more not fooling the unions or their members. He definitely has a union problem.

“We need to be concerned,” Rep. Dan Kildee (D-MI) contended. “We can’t just assume people are going to figure it out for themselves. We’ve got to tell the story.”

Even more panic-inducing for Democrats is the sentiment from one House Democrat who spoke with Axios, saying union voters are swinging to Trump, “Every Democrat knows that this is going to happen.”

“Biden did significantly better with union voters in 2020 than Hillary Clinton in 2016 — but NBC polling in February found him ahead by nine percentage points with voters in union households, compared to a 16-point lead in NBC’s 2020 exit polling,” the media outlet wrote.

“A March Quinnipiac poll of Michigan voters also showed Biden with a 9-point edge over Trump with voters in union households — down from a 25-point lead in ABC News’ 2020 exit polling,” Axios added.