Joe Biden has long portrayed himself as a supporter of the labor movement, but now one of the leading unions that has played a crucial role in helping Democrats win elections may be switching sides.
Throughout his term, Biden has portrayed himself as a member of the labor movement, putting on a “blue collar” face the new leftism that has come to take over the party, with its focus on open borders, “green” energy, protesting Israel and prioritizing abortion.
For the first time in years, the Teamsters gave a maximum donation to the Republican Party just weeks after Donald Trump met with union leaders.
The old New Deal coalition may be in complete collapse as liberals have replaced working people with wealthy college grads who don’t want to pay their student loans.
The union sent out the contribution — the maximum allowed from the union’s political action committee — to the RNC the same day former president Donald Trump met with Teamsters’ leadership for the second time in January, writes The Washington Post.
The Teamsters also sent $135,000 to the Democratic National Committee last December plus a $15,000 donation in March.
An RNC official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the matter candidly, said that the RNC has not received a check nor heard from the Teamsters about a check coming.
The gift to the RNC, which is facing fundraising woes, magnifies tensions for unions that have benefited from Biden policies making it easier for workers to unionize and subsidizing projects to create union jobs, even as Trump remains popular among a lot of rank-and-file union members, especially in battleground states such as Michigan and Pennsylvania.
Team Trump believes that the former president can make inroads with unions and union workers. The Associated Press noted last month that “Trump participated in a roundtable with the union’s executive board, its president and members as he works to win over the blue-collar workers who helped fuel his 2016 victory and who are expected to play a major role in November, particularly in critical Midwestern swing states like Wisconsin and Michigan.
Speaking to reporters after what he called ‘a very productive meeting,’ Trump acknowledged the union typically backs Democrats, but said of a possible endorsement, ‘Stranger things have happened.’
‘Usually a Republican wouldn’t get that endorsement,’ he said. ‘But in my case it’s different because I’ve employed thousands of Teamsters and I thought we should come over and pay our respects.’
‘As you know, a big part of the voting bloc votes for me.'”
During a recent rally in Michigan, Trump again played to his union base and pointed to how the over 7 million undocumented migrants that have crossed the border during Biden’s term could undermine union jobs, going so far as calling it the “biggest threat” to the labor movement, reported The Detroit News.
“Trump’s remarks at a rally inside a crowded airport hangar in Oakland County — his first campaign stop in the state of the 2024 election year — pointed to the increased role the issue of immigration could play in the presidential campaign.
‘The biggest threat to your union is millions of people coming across the border,” Trump said at one point, after mentioning both the United Auto Workers and the Teamsters. ‘You’re not going to have your jobs anymore.’
The Republican presidential candidate argued migrant workers would take jobs away from people who currently hold them in the U.S because migrants ‘are going to work for nothing.'”
In 2016, union households played a major role in Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton. According to a recent report by Bloomberg, while Biden has gotten support from union leaders in 2024, Donald Trump has been winning over the workers they allegedly represent, winning the bulk of small donations from those who work for highly unionized workplaces, including American Airlines Group Inc. and United Parcel Service Inc.
He also has “far more donors than Biden from people who report working for largely blue-collar workplaces, such as Walmart Inc. and Federal Express Corp,” the report said.
CNN recently explained that a poll of “the six closest swing states that Biden won in 2020: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Biden and Trump were tied at 47% among union members when asked who they’d vote for in 2024. When these swing state voters were asked how they voted in 2020, Biden won the group by an 8-point margin.
The union vote is especially important in Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania. Somewhere between 14% and 15% of employees in these three states are represented by unions. (Between 12% and 13% of employees in these states are themselves union members.)
The latest polling may be a surprise given that union workers are generally thought of as a strong Democratic group. It shouldn’t be.
Biden won union workers – who reside primarily in blue states – by 22 points, according to the 2020 Cooperative Election Study survey by Harvard University. Compare that with Bill Clinton’s performance in 1992, when he won the national popular vote by a similar margin to Biden 28 years later. But Clinton won union members by 31 points, according to an American National Election Studies survey.”
Maybe the Teamsters will be the first union in the country to listen to their membership for a change.
This article originally appeared on New Conservative Post. Used with Permission.
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