If I read one more hand-wringing headline quoting bed-wetting Democrats about how Joe Biden had better show up on one of the UAW picket lines or he's somehow going to cede the union labor vote to Donald Trump, because Trump is going to go make a speech in Detroit next week instead of attending the second Republican debate, I think I'm going to kick something.
MSNBC's Chris Hayes did a good reminding everyone that this is nothing more than a stunt by Trump, who loves to pretend he cares about the working class and supports unions when his record while he was in office proves the opposite.
HAYES: So, Donald Trump has made his counter-programming planned for next week's second Republican debate. He's gonna head to Detroit, where he's going to deliver a speech in front of hundreds of auto workers, who, of course, remain on strike from the nation's three biggest manufacturers.
It is a notable play for the front runner of the Republican nomination because for the better part of the last century, the Republican party has been the party of the bosses. It's the party of management over labor. It's a core, core part of that identity a central Republican belief. For decades, decades, it has been the case, if you Republican president, you will get a federal government that is much more hostile to organized labor.
And crucially, and this is important, this was also true under the last Republican president, a guy by the name of Donald Trump.
Donald Trump appointed anti-labor members to the National Labor Relations Board. He chose Eugene Scalia, son of conservative Supreme Court Justices, Antonin Scalia, and a longtime corporate lawyer, to lead the Department of Labor. He elevated anti-worker judges to the federal courts, who consistently have been ruling against labor in their approaches on the bench.
As Hayes further discussed, Trump and the rest of his party have a big problem, given the fact that support for unions has grown and is now up to around 70 percent, and 75 percent of Americans say they side with the auto workers who are on strike.
You've got candidates like Nikki Haley and Tim Scott who are just openly hostile to union workers, but Trump is trying to pretend that he supports them, and playing the same game as Fox "news" and others like Pence, who are trying to blame the strike on electric vehicles, rather than pay inequity and greedy fat cats at the top.
Hayes asked whether our political press will focus on the fact that Trump actually had a very terrible record when it comes to support for unions, or working people in general for that matter, compared to Biden, who has "filled the National Labor Relations Board with some of the most pro-labor appointees in memory," or whether they're just going to focus on the "optics."
I'd say from the headlines and a good deal of the articles I've read so far, sadly, it's the latter. They could care less about either man's record for the most part and quote unnamed sources who are fretting that Biden isn't out there walking a picket line, never mind the security nightmare that would mean for Secret Service, or the disruptions it would create for the strikers.
Why they think some photo op, that they would find some excuse to attack later, has a thing to do with his record or anything meaningful is beyond me. And someone let me know when we'll see the same questions asked about Trump. He's never going to show up on a picket line either, but for different reasons, like the fact that he actually hates unions and has done his best to harm those of us who either have been or are union members.
