As the presidential campaigns ramp up ahead of the November 5th election, this election cycle has gone from relatively bland to one of the most interesting in recent memory. Multiple historic events have contributed to the hysteria, from the attempted assassination of Donald Trump to Joe Biden stepping down to Vice President Kamala Harris’s late start becoming the Democratic nominee. While the Democrats are more confident in Harris’s ability to win the upcoming election they still have hurdles to overcome before the election on November 5th. According to Reuters, 100,000 people in Michigan went to the polls to vote uncommitted in protest, with hundreds of thousands of votes possibly up in the air across the country, hurting the party’s prospects. The Democratic Party campaign has many issues left to face like the Uncommitted Movement and labor organizing if they want to win the electoral college votes.
Another new and curious dynamic during this election cycle is the increased union activity, which comes off the back of one of the biggest upsurges in labor activity in an almost 50-year slump. The jokingly Hot Labor summer of 2023 in which, more than 450,000 workers went on strike, including Shawn Fain, the president of the United Auto Workers. Fain, who recently spoke at the DNC in favor of Vice President Kamala Harris, made the decision to launch a strike in September of 2023 that was successful in achieving its goals. This marks a notable change in attitude toward labor unions. Gallup reports that 70-71% of the public views unions positively, the highest figures since 1965. This, along with Kamala Harris choosing Tim Walz, who strongly supports labor unions, as her vice president nominee gives the Democrats a steady pro-labor stance this year. Walz is known for expanding labor rights in his home state of Minnesota and was quoted saying “Republicans…said, ‘Tim is in the pocket of organized labor.’ I said, that’s a damn lie — I am the pocket” this quote sums up the Democrats approach to labor this year which is a rather large departure from previous party policy.
Despite this, the president of the Teamsters (one of the biggest Unions in the United States), Sean O’Brien, spoke at the RNC becoming the first Teamsters’ president to do so. Despite not officially endorsing someone, this move was criticized by many Union Members. O’Brien claimed that he had asked for an invitation to speak at the DNC but did not receive a response which rubbed some the wrong way. They claimed that the rejection of a major labor leader’s request to speak could smear the good optics the Democrats had toward labor.
This election season’s development has been interesting, and will most likely continue to be full of surprises. A growing labor movement, the possibility of a regional war in the Middle East, and a growing Uncommited Pro-Palestinian movement means the Democrats still have multiple issues to address before voting starts. With possibly close to a million votes up in the air, the pressure is on. Will the Democrats shrink or make the bold moves needed to secure a win on November 5th?
