Amid the raging controversies over illegal migrants, hurricane recovery, a cost-of-living crisis and reproductive rights, an endorsement decision by a labor union might barely register.
But the Teamsters’ refusal to back Kamala Harris and the Democrats could prove one of the more telling moments of the 2024 race so far.
Representing truckers, railroad workers, brewers, and other blue-collar trades, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters is the largest labor union in America – and one of the most masculine. With rare exceptions, they have always supported the Democrats, the so-called party of the working man.
Not this year, however. ‘I’ll be honest with you,’ Teamsters’ president Sean O’Brien said in an interview Tuesday. ‘I’m a Democrat, but they have f****ed us over for the last 40 years.’
The reason the teamsters withheld their endorsement of Harris isn’t hard to find: today, some 60 percent of Teamsters favor Republican nominee Donald Trump, according to a union survey of its members.
In contrast, when President Joe Biden was still the Democratic nominee he earned a healthy plurality among Teamsters: 44 percent to Trump’s 36.
The Teamsters’ refusal to endorse Kamala Harris and the Democrats could prove one of the more telling moments of the presidential race so far. (Above) Harris in Chandler, Arizona on October 10, 2024
Last week, the influential International Association of Fire Fighters – another male-dominated union that backed Biden – joined the Teamsters in saying they wouldn’t endorse anyone this election cycle.
Which begs the question: What is now driving working-class men away from the Democrats?
For all his faults, ‘Amtrak Joe’ spent much of his long political career cultivating ties in rust-belt states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin – election battlegrounds crucial to winning the White House.
The same cannot be said for Harris, who cut her teeth as a district attorney and attorney general in the liberal la-la land of California. Despite growing up in the leafy suburbs of Berkeley near San Francisco, she has tried to bolster her plebeian credentials by touting her experience – mysteriously unverifiable – of working in McDonald’s as a college student.
But America’s working-class men don’t seem impressed – and that should serve not so much an alarm bell for the Democrats as a klaxon. For if a significant number of union voters abandon Harris in November, she may lose.
In the 2020 election, Biden carried union households by 16 points in his victory over Trump, while Hillary Clinton bested Trump by only five points among union voters in 2016 – and, of course, she lost.
Now, a September Fox News poll has shown that Kamala is in Hillary-territory. In their survey, Harris narrowly won union voters by six points – 53 percent to 47 percent.
And it’s not only working-class men who appear to be turning their backs on the Democrats.
‘I’ll be honest with you,’ Teamsters’ president Sean O’Brien told a popular podcast host on Tuesday. ‘I’m a Democrat , but they have f****ed us over for the last 40 years.’
An October New York Times poll revealed that Harris is 11 points underwater with male voters overall. She is even performing relatively badly with black and Hispanic men, who might have been expected to support her overwhelmingly.
No less a figure than Barack Obama stepped up at a Harris campaign field office in Pittsburgh on Thursday to scold his fellow black men over their lack of enthusiasm for the Democratic nominee. ‘You’re coming up with all kinds of reasons and excuses,’ he said. ‘It makes me think that, well, you just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president.’
‘I’m sorry, gentlemen, I’ve noticed this, especially with some men who seem to think Trump’s behavior of bullying and putting people down is a sign of strength,’ Obama said at a Harris campaign rally later that day. ‘And I am here to tell you that is not what real strength is. It never has been.’
It may be true that some men just don’t want to see the first woman president in American history. But, perhaps, the bigger problem here is with Harris herself. Her staunchly feminist campaign seems almost designed to turn men off.
At the summer convention in Chicago, Harris and the Democrats focused attention on her stay-at-home husband, divorcee Doug Emhoff, the ‘Second Gentleman’ who likes to take credit for being a ‘wife guy’ who ‘reshaped the perception of masculinity’. (No matter that DailyMail.com recently reported that Emhoff allegedly impregnated the family nanny, struck a former girlfriend hard enough to make her spin round and was known as a ‘misogynist’ by former law colleagues.)
Harris’s running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who was hailed by late-night host Jimmy Kimmel this week as ‘America’s sweetheart,’ has also tried to project tenderness over toughness.
This August in Chicago, Harris and the Democrats focused attention on her stay-at-home husband, divorcee Doug Emhoff, the ‘Second Gentleman’ who like to take credit for being a ‘wife guy’ who ‘reshaped the perception of masculinity’.
Harris’s running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who was hailed by late-night host Jimmy Kimmel this week as ‘America’s sweetheart,’ has also tried to project tenderness over toughness.
‘Surround yourself with smart women and listen to them, and you’ll do just fine,’ he told a crowd at one DNC event.
Meanwhile, the Republicans’ July get-together in Milwaukee featured a muscle-bound endorsement from superannuated wrestler Hulk Hogan, a speech by Ultimate Fighting Championship President Dana White and a performance by country-rap-rocker Kid Rock.
Plus, there were countless tributes to Trump for his courageous ‘fight, fight, fight!’ response after being shot through the ear by a would-be assassin’s bullet in Pennsylvania just days before.
Trump, undoubtedly appeals to old-fashioned virtues such as strength and courage and his promise to ‘Make America Great Again’. He channels a nostalgic and traditionally masculine sensibility.
Democrats, on the other hand, enjoy mocking Trump’s male bravado, preferring to place their trust in, for example, the high-profile endorsement of pop-megastar Taylor Swift and – presumably – her vast army of young female supporters.
In July, 90,000 people registered to participate in a ‘White Dudes For Harris’ Zoom call, which featured a half dozen wealthy liberal Hollywood actors like Jeff Bridges, who called on white men to ‘surrender to [their] higher thoughts.’
It’s fair to assume this sort of talk does not go down well with lunchpail workers in places like Michigan and Wisconsin.
This week, news site Politico interviewed three dozen black Democratic Detroiters, including community activists, clergy and elected officials, in the wake of a last-ditch Harris campaign push to bolster lagging enthusiasm among black men.
They warned that ‘messaging targeting black men is not being prioritized’, and the appeals that do go out often ‘come off as condescending’.
Indeed, America’s political left, in general, speaks less and less to the diminishing number of men in blue-collar jobs and rural communities and more to suburban, affluent and socially liberal women.
No less a figure than Barack Obama stepped up at Harris campaign field office in Pittsburgh on Thursday to scold black men over their lack of enthusiasm for the Democratic nominee.
For all his faults, ‘Amtrak Joe’ spent much of his long political career cultivating ties in rust-belt states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin – election battlegrounds that will be crucial to winning the White House. (Above) Biden addresses striking United Auto Workers in Belleville, Michigan on September 26, 2023
James Carville, legendary Democratic strategist for former President Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign, understands this point.
‘A suspicion of mine is that there are too many preachy females [in Democratic leadership positions]…,’ he told the New York Times in March.
‘”Don’t drink beer, don’t watch football, don’t eat hamburgers, this is not good for you.” The message is too feminine: “Everything you’re doing is destroying the planet. You’ve got to eat your peas,”‘ he continued.
‘I’m like: “Well, 48 percent of the people that vote are males. Do you mind if they have some consideration?”‘
Of course, this gender divide cuts both ways. That same October New York Times poll, which found Harris trailing with men, revealed that Trump is 16-points underwater with female voters.
Many women blame the former president for the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe vs Wade, which ended the federal legal right of women to terminate their pregnancies. And that’s why Harris never stops talking about ‘reproductive freedom.’
Trump’s vice-presidential nominee, JD Vance, hasn’t helped in this regard, enraging feminist sensibilities after clips emerged of him criticizing ‘childless cat ladies’.
And millions of women now seem to agree with Harris when she claims that a vote for Trump-Vance is a vote for misogyny.
But Harris’s campaign overlooks her man problem at their peril – and they seem to know it, as former President Obama’s eleventh-hour plea in Pittsburgh made exceeding clear.
