I’m old enough to remember Reagan’s bromance with the Teamsters who endorsed him twice while he screwed its members into the ground at every opportunity.
Reagan only liked the unions in Poland.
I’m not sure I like the new Trump Wine Label
Trump: Here’ s a shout-out to local 2 in Storey County!
See you soon, girls!
I thought he would be for Police Unions. When he declares martial law he’s going to need secret police to round up protesters or just plain shoot them on sight. Then again he could have the military just shoot the police along with the protesters. I’m just spit ballin’ here.
And the Dems will fail to make this message clear when running against the GOP. What has DT and the party done for the unions? So much for making America great when the pipeline project can use imported steel. So much for making America great when the Secretary of Ed. can’t be bothered to talk to teachers’ unions and is working actively to de-fund their workplaces. So much for making America great when the President’s own businesses routinely fail to pay for the labor that built his empire. There is so much fertile ground here, but the lack of Dem messaging will send many of the unions to the GOP in future elections, if they don’t get off the ground and get on with it.
You can tell this is an AP story from the fact that they reference Mackinac as “center-right”. That’s as in dead center in the rightmost wing of the GOP.
Yes, but the Union Reagan betrayed to most was PATCO, the air traffic controllers union. They voted for him, went on strike thinking he would support them, and were fired and banned from working for the Federal Government ever again. Friends like Reagan and Trump you don’t need enemies.
I found an interesting comparison between past German leadership and brat-the-wurst.
http://pineviewfarm.net/weblog/2017/05/godwins-law-and-the-kaiser-korollary/
In more egalitarian cultures, the push of politics is to the middle, raising up those at the bottom, lowering those at the top. Just after the election Joan Williams wrote that Trump understood that “working class” and “middle class” were synonyms. The middle of the income spectrum is around $68,000 a year, which is what a working class person aspires to. That’s over $5,000 a month, or about double that of what a full-time worker would make earning $15 an hour in a 160-hour month. That really what it takes to get dignity to working-class breadwinners.
Here’s the rub. Without unions, and without university education (70% of white males do not have at least 4-year degrees), you need some unique skill set that will get you pricing power. Indeed, this is the joy of being headhunted for a CEO position, you get to make a salary demand. Not so much on the McDonald’s application form. Simply being in a union gave some sense of pricing power, even if it might only mean a couple percent pay rise over two years, but it was something. Trump’s promise, even if he fails to deliver, is working class respect and a channeling of that snarling hatred of professionals, the delusive simplicity of making the guys one-rung up the social food chain the enemy, rather than the guys at the top.
This is a real problem for Democrats. The evolved model was to have small families, send the kids to university, and stay involved in the community. In fact, that was not the target of most, but simply to make it to the middle, make it to $68,000 a year. Maybe finish high school, but how hard should it be? I must have some pricing power.