WAYNE, Mich. – How often have millions in America urged friends to “have a good weekend?” The answer, of course, is that almost everyone delivers and receives that greeting once every seven days.
For the first time in history, this week, a candidate for the U.S. presidency reminded people that many things we take for granted, including weekends themselves, are among the things none of us would have were it not for unions. The enormous crowd at the UAW union hall, where she delivered that message, went wild with applause. Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for the highest office in the land, had won them to her side against the criminal ex-president, Donald Trump.
In the first-time-ever launch of a presidential campaign in a union hall, Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic ticket for the White House, made history.
Harris bounded onto the stage at UAW Local 900’s hall in Wayne, Mich., on August 8, coming off a rousing, roaring reception from tens of thousands of people at Detroit’s airport the day before.
Her speech was strongly pitched to the achievements of organized labor over the years. Looking directly at the cameras and talking to “the viewers out there,” Harris reminded the nation that unions brought to all workers the eight-hour day, the five-day work week, the weekend, “and vacation time.”
She also listed the priorities she plans to achieve should she win the White House, with organized labor’s help: Expansion of child care, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, the Freedom to Vote Act, and preserving the Affordable Care Act, among them.
And, strongly, she declared support for a national right to abortion—a right, she reminded the crowd, that Trump’s three Supreme Court justices helped end two years ago.
“We want to recognize that all people have freedom and liberty to make choices…and not have their government tell them what to do,” Harris declared, a phrase she repeated later. When Congress passes a national abortion rights bill, “I’ll sign it,” she declared.
And Harris made the connection between a national sense of community and collective bargaining. “We’re not falling for those folks who are trying to divide us, trying to separate us, trying to pull us apart,” Harris vowed.
That Harris opened her drive in Michigan and then in the union hall is politically important. Michigan is a key swing state in this fall’s election, which will climax on November 5, and Local 900 is the prototypical local full of working-class members.
Democrats have been having a hard time with many in that group, especially its white members, for decades. Harris’s opponent this year, the criminal ex-president Donald Trump, is high on the list of GOP foes who have worked to divide workers.
Her retort to the negative campaigning of Donald Trump: “The true identity of a leader is not based on who you beat down, but on who you lift up.
“There’s some perversion in our country that’s happened the last several years, where there’s a suggestion that somehow strength is about making people feel small, feel alone,” Harris explained. She didn’t need to say who’s circulating that suggestion.
“But isn’t that the opposite of what we know? Unions know how to be strong: It’s about the collective,” especially collective bargaining.
“It’s about understanding that one should never be made to fight alone. That we are all in this together,” Harris said, with a very serious look on her face.
That’s also why, Harris added, “I’ve fought my entire career for unions and labor. Because I understand the concept, the noble concept, behind collective bargaining. And we have it here. It is about fairness. It is about fairness,” she repeated for emphasis. She added justice to the mix as well.
“It’s about saying ‘Hey, in a negotiation, don’t we all believe the outcome should be fair, right?’”
But if one person faces off against “a big company, how’s that outcome gonna be fair? We want fairness and dignity for all.”
“Our campaign is about ‘We trust the people. We see the people. We know the people.”
One other big criticism
Walz added one other big criticism of Trump’s record: His sorry performance combatting the coronavirus pandemic. The U.S. suffered more than a million deaths, combined, over the years of its height, during Trump’s term and Biden’s first year, before anti-pandemic measures took effect.
“This is preaching to the choir, but the choir has to sing,” the Minnesota governor and VP hopeful said in urging the UAW to campaign for the ticket. “We know, we know who built America—the middle class. And you know who built the middle class? Unions built the middle class.
“But you know who doesn’t believe that? Donald Trump. He sees the world entirely differently…This guy doesn’t know the first thing about unity or service. He’s too busy serving himself. Again and again and again, he put himself above us.
“He weakened our country to strengthen his own hand. He mocks our laws. He sows chaos and division…He froze in the face of Covid,” the official name for the virus. “And our neighbors died because of it. And by doing nothing about Covid, he drove the economy into the ground.
“And I want to be very clear about this because there’s a lot of lies up there,” he said of Trump’s claims. “Violent crime was up when Donald Trump was president. Without even counting his crimes, it was still up, it was still up.”
While Harris spoke in Wayne, Trump hosted a meandering press conference at his Mar-a-Lago, Fla., mansion. He had spent the whole week there, stewing over how to recalibrate his presidential bid now that Harris, and not her boss, President Joe Biden, is his foe this year.
Trump emerged on August 9 for a rally in Montana, a state he carried easily in the prior presidential election. Trump plans to urge its voters to oust Democratic Sen. Jon Tester in favor of the victor in the upcoming Republican primary, thus helping to end the Democrats’ slim U.S. Senate majority.
Tester is considered the most vulnerable Democrat running this year, given Montana’s deep-red tilt. But it’s also a state where personal contact is key. Trump backed Tester’s foe six years ago. Tester won.
Polls show Harris has completely erased Trump’s lead nationally, and now has small leads in key swing states such as Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, and Pennsylvania. Both Harris and Trump will be in another key swing state, Georgia, on Sunday.
Trump’s rant at the Mar-a-Lago press conference was to lie about Harris’s race, repeat the lie that he beat Biden four years ago, insist Harris is “dumb,” and declared his crowds are bigger than the throng for Dr. Martin Luther King’s famed “I have a dream” speech. Trump did concede, however, that Harris has momentum now in the race.
Harris wound up her speech, which followed Walz’s speech and a long introduction from UAW President Shawn Fain, by urging the unionists to “hard work” on the campaign trail.
But “we know hard work is fun,” Harris said with a smile, “when it is good work.”
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