Biden is truly helping working people. What will it take for more voters to get that?

[Celerity]

https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2023-09-25-working-class-joe/



Tomorrow, Joe Biden will join striking UAW workers on a picket line, the first president ever to do so. I’m told the decision was controversial among Biden advisers—isn’t the president supposed to be a neutral broker?—but it was the right decision. The auto companies, like most of corporate America, are awash in profits, while workers are losing jobs, wages, and economic security. Biden’s entire program aims at righting that imbalance. So why not display that class solidarity in the most vivid fashion possible?

It’s also smart and overdue politics. There are more workers than bosses. Biden is underwater in most polls, especially on the economy. This, despite the fact that inflation has been tamed, the economy is at full employment, and wages on average are up slightly. But for most voters, the basics haven’t changed for the better. The exception to that, however, is unionized workers.

Biden’s several public-investment laws serve as a full-employment act for the building trades, extending into much of the next decade. In Biden’s TV ads, how about a real-life construction worker, and a real-life autoworker, telling what Biden has done for them and why they support him. How about a stressed parent telling how much difference the Child Tax Credit made in their lives, and why a vote for Biden and a Democratic Congress is a vote to restore and extend it.

“Our House, Senate, and state legislative candidates are significantly outperforming Biden and make every branch competitive in 2024,” pollster Stan Greenberg told me. “The polling in the battleground states shows him running significantly better than 2020. Critically, he can run stronger if he stops talking about their accomplishments and makes the election a future choice with the Republicans, on the very same issues he has been speaking about.”

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