After Democrats lost the working class, union leaders say it's time to 'reconstruct the Democratic Party'
President Joe Biden proudly called himself the most pro-labor president in American history, but working-class voters moved further than ever from their traditional home in the Democratic Party in this year’s election, leading some to rethink their approach to winning working-class voters.
President Joe Biden proudly called himself the most pro-labor president in American history, but working-class voters moved further than ever from their traditional home in the Democratic Party in this year’s election, leading some to rethink their approach to winning working-class voters.
While unions say their extensive organizing efforts helped Democrats largely hold the line with their members — Vice President Kamala Harris’ support among union households this year was slightly down from Biden’s in 2020, according to NBC News exit polling — the party’s erosion among working-class voters more generally is alarming.
“I don’t think the party has fully embraced, and hasn’t for decades, really, working-class people,” said Brent Booker, the general president of the Laborers’ International Union of North America. “We have to deconstruct and reconstruct the Democratic Party if they’re going to be the party of working people.”
Union membership has cratered over the past 50 years, so union leaders say there is only so much they can do in a world where 9 in 10 workers are not unionized and larger trends are cleaving workers from the Democratic Party.
“We can’t communicate with every nonunion laborer. We can only communicate with a portion of our members,” said Booker, who thinks Democrats could have performed better with a fierier populist message on the economy and a cooler one on cultural issues that make some of his members feel like Democrats are out-of-touch elitists. “A lot of our members own guns. A lot of our members hunt.”
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