Kamala and Labour Unions: How To Win The Rust Belt & Potentially: The Presidency

Happy belated Labor Day, America! The Vice President and Democratic Party Presidential Nominee Kamala Harris as she travelled to Detroit during this holiday, affectionately named "the Motor City" to speak to union members - supported by union leaders with the most notable being one Shawn Fain - the leader of the United Automobile Workers (UAW), one of the most - if not the most - influential union in the rust belt.

Meanwhile, Tim Walz, her running mate was down in Milwaukee doing the exact same thing, speaking about labor unions and elevating their importance. This is the start of the ticket's Rust Belt/Midwest campaign blitz which will feature union stalwarts like President Biden, the most pro-union president in our lifetime, Governor Josh Shapiro, the popular governor of Pennsylvania who is a strong supporter of unions and Governor Gretchen Whitmer, the Governor who signed a bill to repeal the right-to-work law in Michigan, the first state in 58 years to do so.

Harris/Walz pro-union messaging

Harris has the record of supporting President Biden's walking of the picket line with UAW workers where he said the same words that we heard from Vice-President Harris in Detroit," The unions built the middle class and the middle class built America. When unions are strong, America is strong." If you think Kamala understands unions, Walz knows it better. As a former member of two teachers' unions, he knows how important unions are to America's success. In his rally in Milwaukee, he was quick to tout that Republicans attacked him for "being in the pocket of organized labor" - to which he responded with, "I am the damn pocket," to cheers from the audience.

Last Week, he was greeted with applause from the firefighters' unions where he laid out what a pro-union, Harris/ Walz administration would do for them. Cheers were frequently heard around the room made by firefighters. One day later, Trump's running mate, JD "I definitely f*cked a couch" Vance was appropriately booed by the same audience after his attempted appeal to the same group.

Electoral Calculus

In 2016, Donald Trump won the Presidency by carrying the Rust Belt states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania by very small margins: 0.77%, 0.23%, and 0.72% respectively.

"There are 2.7 million union members in the battleground states," wrote Julie Chavez Rodriguez, the Harris-Walz campaign manager, in an Aug. 8 memo shared with CBS News. "That means something when roughly 45,000 votes in key states decided the election four years ago."

It is no secret that the blue-collar vote has long been abandoned by Democrats, but this ticket and the ticket before this one certainly have changed the narrative. In the same article, CBS News notes that President Biden won the union vote by 17 points (57% to 40%) en-route to winning the presidency. Whether Kamala can win the labor vote by the margins that Biden got remains to be seen. But one thing is for sure, she's fighting hard for every union members vote.

When we fight, we win!