Washington masquerades as Hollywood

Struggling workers challenging employers from coast-to-coast inspired dueling acts of theater from presidential candidates. Who showed solidarity with autoworkers on strike? Neither Biden nor Trump.

From Hollywood to Detroit, workers across the country have organized and taken action to demand fair wages and benefits long denied by their employers. Their strikes and union organizing drives, targeting businesses from Starbucks and Amazon to Universal and Paramount Studios, have predictably attracted interest from political parties and candidates.

President Biden joined a UAW picket line this week, prompting writers and editors to breathlessly declare him the first sitting U.S. president to show such supposed solidarity with labor—even though he has repeatedly denied labor’s most urgent demands.

Trump also visited an auto plant this week, while managing to avoid any union members. Even though his policies in office relentlessly favored employers over workers, he relied on support from workers disaffected with Democrats to win the White House in 2020.

Around the world, petty despots have often bribed their subjects into accepting their authority. That’s been the case in every petrostate supported by the Pentagon, particularly Saudi Arabia. The political strategy embraced at points by both [Sen. Josh] Hawley and Trump reflects that proposed bargain coming home to roost.

Given the role of the auto industry in the Midwest—and the pivotal role of Midwestern states like Michigan and Ohio in recent presidential elections—the stakes are higher than they might appear from afar.

That’s one reason it’s so important to look beyond the corporate political parties & candidates that are vying to co-opt labor, in order to discern which of the voices contending for the White House has shown true solidarity.

The contrast between the candidates’ events is important to observe, as is the complicity of journalists characterizing either Biden or Trump as pro-labor—despite documented public policy records revealing a shamelessly shared commitment to capital rather than working people.

When I challenged a leading corporate Democrat myself, I had to painfully observe the gullibility of writers and journalists who create cults of personality surrounding government officials, rather than holding them accountable.

It’s almost as if news reporters have jumped in to try to fill the shoes of Hollywood writers & actors who are returning to work after an agreement negotiated this week ended a five-month strike.

Corporate Democrats embrace political theater rather than solidarity

Biden’s visit to a picket line is theater from a president in political crisis looking for any straw he can grasp. Imagining him to be “a pro-worker president” requires ignoring an unfortunate history with far too many examples. Ultimately, undermining worker rights and enabling an upward transfer of wealth to the rich is an agenda that both Biden and Trump have long shared.

Biden’s decisions marginalizing workers have taken many shapes.