The late Speaker Tip O’Neill famously said that “All politics is local.” He was right, and the coming local midterm elections could have a national impact on American industrial workers.
Historically, the Democratic Party of Franklin D. Roosevelt was the undisputed champion of labor unions and the blue-collar workers who rode the conveyor belt up to the middle class. But after the presidencies of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, all that changed. For more than five decades, labor unions and blue-collar workers have gradually lost influence within their own party.
Today, the progressive leadership has shifted sharply away from its working-class base toward the priorities of a new generation of liberal arts degree-holders, who have little interest in or sympathy for the working class. Given that shift in political influence, a progressive victory could reverse the current national strategy to rebuild our defense industrial and manufacturing base. In short, this is not your father’s Democratic Party.
Not surprisingly, union support for Republican candidates has increased, because working-class voters have recognized that Republicans favor the industrial sector and their jobs. This was the case with Presidents Nixon, Reagan, and most notably, President Trump.
The reason Trump was able to capture the winning margin of working-class Democrats in labor states in 2016 was their belief that he would rebuild America’s defense industrial base, its manufacturing sector, and change the unfair labor and trade policies that cost Americans jobs. Also, industrial workers admire strength. They see Trump both as a successful businessman and as a tough John Wayne type who will fight for them.
Building on a strong base of working-class voters, Trump ushered in a national industrial agenda for America. The preservation of his agenda will rest largely on maintaining a legislative majority committed to re-industrialization after the midterm elections. Most importantly, this will depend on union and working-class Democrats understanding that President Trump’s job-creating industrial agenda is what’s really on the ballot.
It will also depend on Republican candidates avoiding frightening working-class voters with threats to repeal legislative protections on the books since the Roosevelt era. Republican candidates hinting at the repeal of the Davis-Bacon Act, the Jones Act, or the passage of a national right-to-work law will lose local elections and all but guarantee a negative outcome for industrial workers.
Industrial workers understand that the progressive leadership of the Democratic Party is not the party of John Kennedy, Scoop Jackson, Warren Magnuson, Hubert Humphrey or Sam Nunn, all of whom understood the relationship between a strong industrial base and America’s national security. Local unions know that, if progressive Democrats win, industrial workers will likely lose their jobs. But they also fear that if anti-union Republicans win, they could lose their union.
We have a president committed to rebuilding America’s industrial base, thus providing opportunities for American workers. Having grown up a in a Democratic union household and seen who benefited from mid-twentieth century industrial opportunities, I am concerned that the president’s industrial agenda will be lost if progressive Democrats are elected. Despite their campaign promises, they are no longer friendly to industrial workers.
And this could be the outcome if pro-industrial Republicans scare workers away with their anti-union rhetoric that threatens the loss of worker protections.
The midterm elections of 2018 will be a referendum on President Trump’s industrial and manufacturing agenda. Republicans must focus on the goal of rebuilding America’s industrial sector, thus restoring the conveyor belt for the next generation of American workers to reach the middle class.
Michael P. Balzano, a former aide to Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan on labor issues, is the executive director of the National Industrial Base Workforce Coalition and author of Building a New Majority.
