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As the United Auto Workers’ strike comes to a successful end, The New York Times noted that the developments “could also prove to be a significant political victory” for President Joe Biden, who made no effort to hide his support for striking workers.
The article quoted Steve Smith, an AFL-CIO spokesperson, who said, “The impact of Biden’s public support can’t be overstated.” He added that there’s “a lot of upside here” for the Democratic incumbent.
A variety of observers have drawn similar conclusions. David Axelrod, a veteran of Barack Obama’s White House, noted that Biden “took a gamble when he joined striking UAW workers in Detroit, a historical departure from traditional presidential practice. The risk was that the strike would drag on, jeopardizing the economy, and the workers would end up on the short end. But they won — and so did he.”
I can appreciate why some might be skeptical of this. After all, the president wasn’t directly involved in the talks themselves — there were no White House representatives at the negotiating table — so it’s not as if Biden can claim too much credit for the outcome.
But as The New Republic’s Michael Tomasky explained well, the president helped create the political conditions that made the final deal possible.
[M]ost of the credit clearly goes to [UAW president Shawn Fain] and his team. But the automakers also had the president of the United States walking the picket line and declaring himself more unambiguously on the side of the workers than any president has done in my lifetime. Biden’s public display of allegiance to their union was surely reinforced by private signals the administration sent out to both sides. ... Biden’s timely show of support was just about the only one I can think of where a sitting president so openly sided with labor in such a dispute.
This becomes all the more important when contrasted with the Democratic incumbent’s likely GOP rival.
It was 17 days ago when Donald Trump released a video message by way of his social media platform that insisted, “The United Autoworkers are being sold down the tubes by their so-called ‘leadership.’” Four days later, the former president published a follow-up message, telling UAW workers that “they are not being told the truth by their union ‘heads.’”
Last week, the Republican even released a video telling UAW workers shouldn’t even pay union their dues, because, as Trump put it, union leaders are “selling you to hell.”
It was days later when UAW leaders, backed by Biden, delivered a historic victory for those workers.