OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Just days after United Auto Workers union President Shawn Fain said the organization was formally endorsing President Joe Biden’s reelection, he dropped a bombshell during a live Fox News interview about the preferred candidate for most members.
He appeared to suggest it will be Donald Trump.
After Fain fielded some questions about the slumping sales of electric vehicles and how that could affect the union labor force moving forward, host Neil Cavuto noted that in past decades, sizeable numbers of UAW members supported President Ronald Reagan and his successor, President George H. W. Bush, as well as other Republican presidents through the years.
Cavuto then went on to point out that many UAW members were supportive of Trump in 2016 and 2020 and remain supportive of him now before asking Fain how he felt about that.
“Look, it’s democracy in action,” the UAW boss began. “Let me be clear about this: A great majority of our members will not vote for President Biden. Yeah, some will, but that’s the reality of this. The majority of our members are gonna vote their paychecks. They’re gonna vote for an economy that works for them.”
🚨Massive UAW labor union boss TURNS on Biden LIVE on Fox News, forced to admit a majority of workers will be voting TRUMP:
"A great majority of our members will not vote for President Biden…the majority of our members are going to vote their paychecks." pic.twitter.com/ydKJWZB6Wv
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) January 25, 2024
While Fain did not say that the “great majority” would be voting for Trump, that was the impression he gave since Cavuto had just mentioned past UAW rank-and-file support for previous Republican presidents.
Over the past few decades, political scientists and other experts have noted a shift in voting demographics between Democrats and Republicans, with the latter gaining much more support from the American working class, which had, for the better part of the 20th century, gone overwhelmingly for Democrats.
“The same pattern of Republican domination of the working-class vote appears to be developing as we move toward 2024,” notes the Liberal Patriot. “The latest poll for which an overall college/noncollege split is available is the March Harvard/Harris poll. That poll, in which Trump has a small lead over Biden in a hypothetical 2024 matchup, has Trump carrying the working-class vote by 10 points.
“In a DeSantis-Biden matchup, DeSantis has a similar lead over Biden and an identical 10-point advantage among working-class voters. (There is a slightly more recent Quinnipiac poll that also includes these 2024 matchups, but the public materials only provide a white college/noncollege split). Earlier polls from this year—where data are available—replicate this pattern of Trump and DeSantis leading Biden among working-class voters,” the site noted further.
“Why doesn’t this bother Democrats more? After all, they are America’s party of the left and were historically America’s party of the working class. I think part of the reason is that the largest part of the working class, the white working class, is now viewed quite negatively throughout much of the party. They can be put, as Hillary Clinton unforgettably phrased it, in a ‘basket of deplorables’—’racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic’—and therefore justly ignored by right-thinking Democrats,” the site noted further.
Earlier this month, Vice President Harris responded to several polls that showed Trump leading Biden in both hypothetical presidential matchups and battleground states, admitting that the president is in political trouble.
“We’re going to have to earn our re-elect, there’s no doubt about it,” Harris said when asked about several recent 2024 polls showing Biden trailing Trump in several battleground states.
“It is absolutely right in a democracy with free and fair elections that the candidates, the people who want to continue in leadership, have to make their case and have to make it effectively. That means communicating in such a way that the message is received about our accomplishments and what we care about,” she added.
“I have a great sense of duty and responsibility to do as much as I can, to be where the people are, and to not only speak with them but listen to them and let them know what we’ve accomplished,” Harris said.
