Staff Reports
Kamala Harris is having quite the week, and not in a good way. The Vice President has once again shown she’s about as popular among union voters as a flat tire on a road trip. First, she failed to score the endorsement of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, a union boasting a whopping 300,000 members who were quick to throw their support behind Joe Biden during the last election. Now, nearly 60 percent of those Teamsters are reportedly ready to pull the lever for Donald Trump this time around. The ink wasn’t even dry on Harris’ campaign strategy when it became clear that union support in this election year might as well be a unicorn—nonexistent and mythical.
In a truly spectacular miscalculation, Harris even chose a firehouse as the location for her rally, assuming she’d score the backing of the International Association of Fire Fighters, another hefty union with 300,000 members under its umbrella. But much to her team’s bewilderment, the IAFF decided to sit this one out, leaving Harris with nothing but a consolation prize from a local Michigan chapter that also chose to reject her. The irony couldn’t be thicker if you dipped it in a doughnut shop’s glaze; the Michigan firefighters, who were supposed to rally behind her, came to the same conclusion as the IAFF—she’s just not it.
Kamala loses another union endorsement, this one in the battleground state of Michigan pic.twitter.com/LvCL23IIX9
— Paul A. Szypula 🇺🇸 (@Bubblebathgirl) October 15, 2024
After nearly two weeks of back-and-forth discussions, the Michigan firefighters’ union ultimately aligned itself with the IAFF’s decision, proving that they are not interested in splitting off on their own to support Harris. Their president was oddly polite yet firm in making it clear that, despite believing Harris was the right candidate to support labor issues, there was little interest in giving her a free pass to the White House. Instead, they dutifully followed orders from the national body like good soldiers, leaving Harris staring down a tough road with no reinforcements in sight.
Harris’s campaign team, clearly misjudging the landscape, has been left scratching their heads. Internal chatter suggests some campaign officials felt they had been misled during discussions about endorsements. Keeping a close watch on how swing-state unions would fare proved to be an exercise in futility. All eyes are on the rank-and-file union members—those formidable industrial workers who seem to be migrating away from the Democratic Party faster than a cat fleeing a dog. They are firmly entrenched in the Republican camp, leaving Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, in a precarious position as they attempt to win these crucial hearts and minds.
As the campaign presses onward, the bad news keeps rolling in. Harris is looking like a major underperformer when it comes to union and working-class voters. Even members of the United Auto Workers are ready to cast their votes for Trump, despite their higher-ups endorsing Biden and now Harris. This dramatic political shift has many on the left scratching their heads, trying to understand why the working class is so disenchanted with their party’s vice presidential candidate. While Harris struggles to articulate a solid economic message or set herself apart from Biden, Trump is zooming by on his campaign trail, nailing down rallies and hammering away at Kamala’s shortcomings. Time is certainly running out for the self-proclaimed “progressive” to turn this ship around.
