PHILADELPHIA — Pennsylvania Democrats are exasperated with Vice President Kamala Harris‘s problems appealing to blue-collar union workers, with the lack of support undermining her electoral prospects in the Keystone State on Tuesday.
Former President Donald Trump and Tesla, SpaceX, and X billionaire businessman Elon Musk have been crisscrossing Pennsylvania, the commonwealth that could decide next week’s election, and other battleground states, both of whom have mixed records regarding unions but also enormous appeal among the crucial voting bloc.
At the same time, for example, Harris was unable to secure the endorsements of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the first time that the union had not publicly backed a candidate since 1996, and the International Association of Fire Fighters a few weeks later.
Meg Young, 58, a retired Bryn Mawr engineer, who was at President Joe Biden‘s Friday union event in Philadelphia — his first public appearance since referring to Trump’s supporters as “garbage” —complained Trump has “said the most heinous things.”
“That’s still not changing their minds,” Young told the Washington Examiner. “I don’t know what else she could say.”
Suggesting sexism, Young contended that she does not understand why union voters connect with Trump or Musk because they don’t “represent them.”
“[Trump] doesn’t even pay them,” she said. “It defies logic. It’s almost like they want to aspire to be like him, so they feel like standing around him it will help them be like him.”
Last month, on the other side of the commonwealth in Butler, during a rally marking Trump’s return to the small town where he almost lost his life in July, Kelly Kiefer, 52, argued that “a lot of American people are waking up and it’s hitting them in the pocketbook.”
“I honestly believe the blue-collar worker, which would always fall in line with their union rep, are now coming over for what’s best for them and their family, and that’s Trump,” the Bethel Park state government employee told the Washington Examiner. “That’s where they’re gonna go. That’s why I believe Pennsylvania will be won by Trump.”
After the Butler rally, Colette Moffitt, 68, recalled how she “never really liked” Trump until he became president, but now she is in “awe” of him after “the torture they’ve put him through.”
“I think people are fed up,” the Allison Park homemaker told the Washington Examiner. “I think people see through the lies of Kamala Harris.”
Bethanie Greenholt, 56, similarly was not sure about Trump before he became president and agreed “a lot of Democrats are upset” at Biden and Harris.
“They come to my door,” the Oakdale small project manager told the Washington Examiner. “I’ve got Trump signs. Last time, I had 20 Trump signs. They come up the door and tell me their stories.”
That sentiment has Democrats Kevin and Denise Olexa, both Acme Markets employees from Northeast Philadelphia, concerned before the Nov. 5 election, particularly because of conservative media coverage of Harris.
“It’s too close,” Denise Olexa, 40, told the Washington Examiner at Friday’s Biden event. “I think it’s just the way she comes off. I don’t think it’s more of her. She needs to come off a little stronger, showing she’s more for unions, that she’s more for the middle class.”
To that end, Trump has an average 0.4 percentage point lead over Harris in Pennsylvania, which is essentially no lead at all, according to RealClearPolitics‘s aggregation of head-to-head polling. Of the 65 polls conducted since Biden suspended his campaign included in the data, 17 have Harris and Trump tied, even a USA Today-Suffolk University poll published on Friday.
Although other dynamics were at play in 2016, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton lost the blue wall states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin to Trump, in part, because of her lack of union support, exacerbated by her endorsement of free trade and broader unlikeability. While Clinton won union households over Trump, 51% to 46%, her 5 percentage point edge was not as large as Biden’s 16-point advantage four years later.
That is partly why Biden, despite the president’s unpopularity and penchant for political mistakes, traveled to Philadelphia on Friday to underscore his and Harris’s work for unions, including the American Rescue Plan’s Butch Lewis Emergency Pension Relief Act, which protected the pensions of 1.2 million union workers.
Harris, herself, on Friday announced in Wisconsin that she would remove unnecessary college degree requirements for federal jobs through executive action if she wins the election in four days.
“A college degree is not the only measure of the skills and the experience of the qualified worker,” she said in Janesville. “One of the things I’m doing on Day 1, because I can do it by executive order, is I will eliminate unnecessary degree requirements for federal jobs and I will challenge the private sector to do the same.”
Democrats have been performing worse among blue-collar union workers “than they have historically,” per Middlebury College political science professor Bertram Johnson.
“Harris, and Democrats generally, will try to make up for those weaknesses by building ever-larger majorities among college-educated voters and others with whom Democrats have been performing better recently,” Johnson told the Washington Examiner. “How these two groups compare to each other is a numbers problem that we’ll get the answer to as election results roll in.”
Brookings Institution’s former vice president and director of governance studies Darrell West added Democrats were performing well with women as well.
“Where women are more numerous in the electorate, that is a net plus for her,” West told the Washington Examiner. “But she doesn’t want Trump’s margins with white men to be too big so that it prevents her from winning in crucial swing states.”
Meanwhile, Pennsylvania AFL-CIO president Angela Ferrito expressed optimism, citing state and local unions that have endorsed Harris even if their national counterparts have not.
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“I was at the carpenters union hall, I think, the day after Trump and Elon Musk had a conversation, and Trump said, ‘You’re a great cutter. You’re a great cutter. Way to cut those people that wanted to strike,’” Ferritos told reporters during a press conference. “The way that the Trump years went has not been forgotten by people.”
“There’s a lot of money being spent, but when it comes down to it, the voters in Pennsylvania remember that Trump promised all of these things in 2016, and they didn’t come to fruition,” she said.