Philadelphia
It’s hard out there for a union leader wedded to the Democratic party. As was apparent here at the Wells Fargo Arena, it’s not easy to make the case that Trump—a construction magnate, of all things—is congenitally anti-infrastructure spending. It also doesn’t help that Trump has repeatedly bemoaned the state of America’s bridges, airports, and roads.
Still, a group of union bosses gave it the old college try here. They championed the fact that Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton wants to build “roads and bridges.” Left unsaid, of course, was how that differs from Donald Trump, who if anything, has spent more time than Hillary calling for beefed up infrastructure investment. But the union bosses acted as if Trump were, say, Rand Paul, and that it went without saying that the Republican standard bearer was against roads and bridges. (When they deigned to mention specifics, they were aimed at Trump’s vice presidential pick, Indiana governor Mike Pence, who has taken aim at laws that force the government to pay unnaturally high wages for public works projects.)
But the attack on Trump shows that Democrats still don’t know how to deal with their opponent. They’re running the standard anti-Republican playbook; it’s as if the script were written a few years ago, when they assumed that Marco Rubio would be the nominee. So now that they find themselves in the odd position of attacking a construction boss for being….anti-construction.
