Isn’t it too early to say, given the Senate still has to pass it? It should be more of a lock than the House was, just not sure.
aalvare2
joined 2 years ago
I agree with the core of what you’re saying except I disagree that she “doesn’t understand” how slowly politics works. I think her decision to vote for Harris anyway speaks to that kind of understanding, else she’d endorse a third-party candidate/write-in in a poor attempt to speed-run democracy.
Yes, that was my point. I think a lot of liberals get caught up in the electoralism of general elections, and get (maybe even understandably) offended when a group they thought should clearly be on 'their side' decides to make a statement against them, or even simply withhold an endorsement.
Okay, I’ll take “maybe even understandably”.
Sure, meat-and-bones policy is important for advancing working class interests (i'm not sure why you chose 'worker satisfaction', maybe this is further evidence of our ideological differences or maybe this is just me being pedantic, but 'satisfaction' sounds more like corporate HR jargon than the revolutionary language of class consciousness),
Dude. SUPER pedantic.
but endorsements aren't like straw-polls. Unions come from a bloody and cutthroat history of class struggle that have to negotiate with multi-billion dollar industries - an endorsement or even a signal of approval toward competition is just another way to gain leverage. As much as we would all really like to be able to just pick a party/ticket like picking a flavor of ice cream, that's just not what class struggle is, least of all to a labor union.
I guess I’ll more or less repeat myself from earlier: Not endorsing the democrats could be likened to going on strike from some company, but threatening to endorse the GOP would be like choosing to go work for an even more exploitative company in retaliation.
Yes, I still think it is punching left, and I think @[email protected] was mistaken in walking it back.
Okay, fine, you disagree. But the immediate question I asked was “can we agree it was a poorly worded and/or insufficiently brief critique” aka the kind of statement that it’s easy to get lost in pointless pendantry over? Y’know, the kind of pedantry I feel like we’ve been arguing over this whole time?
I think that's a petty and entitled thing to say to a union advocating for its members.
Depends on how you define “advocating for its members”. Signaling support for the political party most of your constituents align with, most definitely for reasons outside workers’ rights, is one definition. Signalling support for the for the party that’ll actually help your constituents? That’s another.
Teamsters is perfectly within their right to withhold their endorsement in service of pushing for labor commitments from democrats
What committments?? This is exactly what I was asking you 2 replies ago, and even before that. And you’ve so far dodged the question. I still don’t understand the actual substantive things you want the Democratic party to do.
Democrats really need support from union households in the swing states where Teamsters is reporting a trump advantage in their membership. They can't afford to be throwing punches at them (even if you think it's not punching left).
You make it sound like she’s punching at all Teamsters, when she’s not. She’s just criticizing their leader.
What drives me crazy is that democrats have been willing to bend to a bunch of conservative issues in order to gain moderate republican support - this one issue that is objectively a leftist issue *and* involves a crucial block of voters in swing states is, what....? too radical?
You’re saying they bend to the right on a lot of things but you also want them to bend to the right…on…what exactly? On workers’ rights??
I honestly don't know anymore. dDmocratic politics have just lost all coherence as a left-wing political party. Maybe this is just a temporary change in messaging, but it really feels like they're abandoning all pretense as a progressive party.
Idk man, I feel like there’s some aspect of your personal political ideology that’s so different from mine (and I’ll assert, from most people) that there’s some core assumption you and I might be obliviously disagreeing on, like “the left is more politically aligned with supporting workers’ rights” or something.
I have a lot I’d like to, but won’t, say about your comment, because it’s very dismissive of my entire reply, in favor of you choosing to dissect my motivations for adding a loosely-related footnote. I will say that most of your comment feels like I could boil it down to “you almost tricked me into taking your questions at face value, but then you said that O’Brien being racist might be sorta relevant, so clearly I have a broader understanding of…something…then you, so you’ll never see that I’m right”. You could clarify if you want, but I don’t really care.
That said, I’ll try to focus on your last couple sentences:
It isn't as simple as 'democrats are more labor friendly' - both parties are dominated by capitalist interests, even if one makes greater attempts to balance it with labor concessions. If labor is to gain any ground in the US, it needs to be party agnostic and be aggressive about negotiating with both parties.
If this is the entire point you’ve been driving at this whole time, then I still disagree with you, but I can respect your opinion. You might be right that we won’t see eye-to-eye, but not because of me probably not having a deeper understanding of “material relations being fundamental to political movements”, or you probably not having a deeper appreciation of “actual meat-and-bones policy being fundamental to the satisfaction of union members, both short-term and long-term”. I think you and I might just have different priorities, and I’m fine leaving it at that.
All that said, I wanna circle back one more time on the actual debate that started this thing, because it wasn’t “what is the direct course of action unions are justified in taking to optimize worker satisfaction”. It was literally something as nebulous as “Did AOC ‘punch left’ by criticizing O’Brien”. OP already admitted he probably just chose the wrong words, which I respect. Can we at the very least agree, whether your personal answer to that question is yes or no, that suggesting AOC is “punching left” is a poorly-worded and/or insufficiently brief critique?
I was literally just saying in another thread that I didn’t know much about O’Brien…well now I do! Thanks stranger!
My premise is that, with respect to supporting a party that will support unions, it’d be ludicrous to expect that support from the GOP, because they’ve been consistently anti-union for over 40 years.
one way to escalate your pressure is to scare them into thinking you might endorse the republican ticket
Yeah, and I’m asserting that it’s stupid to even consider endorsing the republican ticket, given how much worse republicans are for unions. Not endorsing the democrats could be likened to going on strike from some company; threatening to endorse the GOP would be like choosing to go work for an even more exploitative company in retaliation.
And nothing says that republicans necessarilycouldn't offer better support to unions - even if teamsters did endorse Trump, it very well could be because Trump made a material concession to their interest. Nothing says that Teamsters should be interested in anything other than protecting their union's interests, even if that means getting it from the Republicans, if they are "playing ball". (The teamsters are a union for a very conservative group of members; it's not out of the question that Trump might grant some very targeted concessions to that group in order to shore up his base)
Yeah, they could offer better support for unions…they could also offer to lower prescription drug prices and make school lunches free for grade schoolers. They’re not gonna do any of those things, b/c they don’t wanna do any of those things and they haven’t wanted to do any of those things in at least 40 years. I’ll accept cited evidence to the contrary, otherwise we can agree to disagree.
That's why it's crazy that the democrats aren't making an effort to be more pro-union - in most other ways, democrats are the obvious harm-reduction choice. But let's not pretend as if union protections haven't been under constant attack and legal challenges during the Biden administration - there is a lot of room for Harris to offer more in the way of union and labor legislation and support.
What specific issue do you take with the Democratic party’s support for unions? Do you refute my earlier link calling a Biden a good pro-union president, and if so can you provide sourced info to explain why?
There are a lot of reasons why everyone ought to vote for democrats over republicans,
Yeah
but pretending as if there are no material reasons a group with specific labor interests might choose to endorse republicans is itself naieve.
This feels like such a “no u” lol. What reasons does a group with specific labor interests have to endorse a party that’s been overly pro-company since Reagan?
Ideally this should motivate the democrats to offer better policy to their constituents, but seems as if democrats would much rather point fingers and accuse those asking for better policy as being covert opposition.
Again, what policies specifically?
AOC shouldn't be blaming Teamsters for agitating for better labor policy, and doing so absolutely ispunching left, because the thing Teamsters is interested in is a politically-left objective. Not that AOC doesn't have personal reasons for ignoring those broader goals, but that doesn't mean what she's doing isn't punching left.
Look. I don't know very much about Sean O’Brien. I’m not gonna accuse him of secretly being anti-union or any crazy bs like that. But if going to the RNC and not endorsing Harris are moves that benefits Republicans (it does), and if Republicans are worse on unions (they are), then whether he means to or not, he’s hurting union workers. From that lens, AOC questioning his leadership isn’t punching left - she’s either punching a guy who’s actually to her right (for reasons outside workers’ rights) or punching a guy who might as well be.
And one more thing: at the end of the day, she’s critical of the guy, not the mission. She’s not saying “workers shouldn’t have more protections”, she’s saying “I question the leadership of this guy whose job it is to get workers more protections”. And quite frankly I agree with that.
Edit: y’know how I said I don’t know much about Sean O’Brien? Well thanks to another lemmyer, now I do!
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/31/teamsters-racial-discrimination-lawsuit
So yeah, if there’s an ounce of truth to this, it speaks to the nagging feeling I have that he’s the kind of guy who’s a probably secretly a conservative for…other reasons.
Sure, it could be to pressure the GOP to care about unions, or it could be to pressure democrats to commit to more protections.
If that’s the goal, simply withholding endorsement for the democratic nominee would achieve that goal. Speaking at the RNC, without any serious commitment to unions made by the GOP, goes far beyond that goal, and is again, naive.
A really good way to prove that democrats are more union friendly than republicans would be to commit to more union protections. That's a simple narrative to fix, if they were interested.
A really really good way to prove democrats are more union friendly would be to have a president in office with an exceptional pro-union record, and to have earned the endorsement of at least 6 other major unions.
Not to a fucking union, there isn't.
Yes, but the statement you’re replying to was a general statement on leftism. That’s why I follow that up with “Even in this context …”
Literally their only job is collective bargaining, and threatening to withhold support to gain concessions is famouslytheir most useful tool.
That made me chuckle, you have a fair point. But again, withholding support is one thing, and speaking at the RNC with republicans who don’t play ball with workers’ rights is another.
I mean, what’s the play exactly? “Give us even more union protections or I’m gonna help the other guys who definitely don’t give a damn?” What protections specifically? The kinds of protections given to workers by the PRO Act? The thing Republicans try to shoot down over and over again?
I don’t simply understand ‘left’ to mean ‘democrat’, I’m aware that there are people left of democrats.
Being “Left” encompasses more than just solidarity with the working class, but even specifically in this context, being the first acting teamster president to speak at the conference of a party that is historically anti-worker is…at best, naive. It could be seen as a way to pressure the GOP to care about unions, but they don’t care about unions, and speaking at their conference as a union president just gives a stronger surface-level impression to voters that they might.
He was the first acting teamster president to ever speak at the RNC, that’s a huge deal regardless of whether he was also expecting to speak at the DNC. Especially given how anti-union the republican party generally is.
Either it was an appeal to conservative teamsters, or he himself is quietly moderate or conservative.
But if your argument is that he went to the RNC as an appeal to teamsters who support Trump (aka not lefties), and that he is also choosing not to endorse either candidate on behalf of those teamsters, then that isn’t an appeal to further-left-than-democrats politics, it’s an appeal to centrism.
My point then being
Now she’s the one always punching left
Doesn’t really make sense in this context
Punching left at the guy who attended the RNC?
I reject your analogue. There have been no “public statements about private negotiations” with the GOP. We don’t know the GOP to’ve made ANY negotiations.
Don’t like my original analogue? Fine, replace “choosing to” with “threatening to”. The part you’re dancing around is the “more exploitative” part -the part where the side O’Brien is threatening to support isn’t a not-Dem-but-pro-union party, it’s a not-Dem-but-anti-union party. And I suspect he’s playing ball with them IN SPITE OF not having any appreciable consolidations made by republicans in favor of his union. Don’t bother suggesting “we don’t know there weren’t consolidations”, neither of us know. Though there’s plenty of indirect evidence that the modern GOP just doesn’t care - case in point, every party-line PRO Act vote in the past 5 years.
You make it sound like AOC is only frustrated with O’Brien for not endorsing Harris. From my very first comment in this thread: that’s not \all he’s done*.
Your next 4 paragraphs…I’ll get back to those.
Then he should act like it and not help the leopards that’ll eat his face.
I wasn’t saying that was the disagreement, I was saying there’s some core disagreement we probably have, that’s probably flying under both our radars. And no, you haven’t magically identified what that is. I never said “unions shouldn’t target democrats at all with direct action”, I’m saying actions that directly aid another party, where that other party is the modern GOP, are fucking stupid.
Back to those 4 paragraphs…finally, a little actual substance.
And you know what I have to say about it? I have to say that I actually feel even MORE strongly that O’Brien is a bad leader.
You went on about issues that rust belt union members are having. But the Democrats don’t control the rust belt…the GOP does. And they are fucking over their own union constituents. Trump’s last term saw him hire an anti-union Reagan-era lawyer to the NLRB, stacked the courts with anti-union judges, took various other anti-union actions, and neither him nor any Republicans proposed a single page of legislation. They didn’t even support the PRO Act, legislation that helps unions everywhere, rust belt included, and was introduced even before Dems took back the WH (meaning Democrats didn’t stand to look good if it got passed). And the GOP still voted heavily against it, and have done so ever since.
Biden might not be perfect in your eyes, but he immediately fired Trump’s NLRB appointee and the similarly minded deputy replacing them them with a pro-union labor lawyer who took on captive audience meetings, non-compete clauses, and consequential damages. And like I already said, it was DEMOCRATS who’ve been pushing for the PRO Act this whole time…and yes, Harris has campaigned on signing the PRO Act, fyi.
Why aren’t the teamsters…openly mad at the GOP? The party of people who, in your own words, would “accuse [democrats] of being radical socialists” for proposing action that helps working class people? Denying Trump an endorsement doesn’t go far enough - O’Brien either shouldn’t’ve gone to the RNC, or should’ve flipped the bird at everybody there. Don’t just leave an endorsement out of your speech - actually say “I wanna endorse you, but you fuckers are letting us down”. I could see that acknowledging their incompetence to their faces MAYBE moving the needle on the GOP, or at least, it’d be a respectable attempt.
I get you feel like unions need bipartisan support to make a permanent, lasting difference. And y’know what? I think I agree with you on that. But that doesn’t mean I agree that it’s worth giving the modern GOP anything, so much as an RNC speech, now. They should work for it. BY ACTUALLY VOTING ON PRO-UNION POLICIES AND ACTIONS. Then, it makes sense to play both sides. Until then, let them know that they’re not getting an ounce of support.