Vice President Joe Biden traveled to Pittsburgh Monday to address a strongly union crowd at the Allegheny County Labor Day Parade. In doing so, Biden also traveled through time, decades into the past to an era when organized labor ruled the Democratic Party and shaped the careers of politicians like the young Joe Biden.
“The only reason I’m standing here is back in 1972, I was a 29-year-old kid, and Richard Nixon ended up winning my state by about 70 percent of the vote,” the vice president told the crowd, reminiscing about his first run for Senate in neighboring Delaware. “I couldn’t get help anywhere. And I was working like the devil, and there was a big old boy named Emory Woodard, he was about six-foot-six, about 260 pounds. He represented the steelworkers at what used to be called Worth Steel in Claymont, where I moved from Scranton, to Claymont, Delaware.”
“And he took me up to see a guy named Huey Carcella, who was the regional director in Philadelphia. And [Emory] said to Huey, ‘We’re backing this boy.’ And Huey said, ‘Like hell we are.’ So [Emory] said, ‘If you’re not, you don’t have me,’ and turns around. Huey Carcella came out here to Pittsburgh and spoke to your international president, and the next thing you know I was endorsed. And at that time I was losing in the most recent poll, 57 to 19. But I won. I won because of the steelworkers.”
Indeed he did. But 1972 was a long time ago, a time when bosses named Huey and big old boys named Emory had the clout to deliver the votes to turn an election around for an unknown candidate. In 1972, union membership was still near its peak nationwide, with about 24 percent of all U.S. workers belonging to unions. Now, it’s around 11 percent — and what union energy remains is mostly within the still-growing ranks of government-worker unions, not with shrinking old organizations like the steelworkers. Just 6.6 percent of the private-sector workforce is unionized.
Biden’s speech was basically an extended eulogy for union power. “Nationally, labor’s been clobbered,” he said. “What’s happened has been devastating … I’m hot, I’m mad, I’m angry.”
“What happened?” Biden asked. “What happened?’
There was really no need for Biden to explain to a labor audience in Pittsburgh what has happened over the last 40 years. That wasn’t the point. The point of Biden’s appearance — at just the moment he is deciding whether to run for president — was to tell the unions: I’m with you. I’m your guy.
“You’re the only ones who have the power to keep the barbarians from the gate,” Biden told the crowd, even though his remarks made clear the barbarians had crashed through long ago.
Loyalty? Not many other politicians running for national office would begin their remarks, as Biden did, by saying, “My name’s Joe Biden and I work for Leo Gerard.” Gerard, standing a few feet away, is president of the United Steelworkers, and Biden is still showing respect for the union bosses who pulled the levers that sent the young senator to Washington.
AFL-CIO chief Richard Trumka was also on stage Monday, and he had warm words for Biden. “He’s a friend, he’s a brother, he’s a great champion of working men and working women,” Trumka said of Biden.
Trumka is reportedly going slow with any decision to endorse in the Democratic race. The AFL-CIO almost never throws its support to a candidate before Iowa and New Hampshire, anyway, and Trumka doesn’t seem eager to lose whatever leverage he might have by casting his lot early with Hillary Clinton.
The endorsement is still valuable. Though declining, unions can still come up with a lot of money and manpower for a campaign. But there’s no evidence labor’s decline will end anytime soon, and Biden’s promise that it would seemed based on hope and sentiment more than anything.
The real message of Biden’s speech was to remind union members that he goes back with them a long way, and that he won’t forget what organized labor has done for him. To that end, the vice president offered a classically Bidenesque mangled aphorism that somehow still managed to get the point across. “We have an expression where I grew up — you go home with them that brung you to the dance,” Biden said. “And you all brung me to the dance.”
Yes, they did. A very long time ago.
