Democrats must use Labor Day to honor workers and win over union voters

Labor Day is the best opportunity for Americans to honor the valuable contributions that workers have made to the creation of our great and prosperous nation. Veterans, whom Donald Trump repeatedly disrespects, will have their chance for remembrance the week after Election Day on Nov. 11. 

The labor holiday marks the beginning of the end of a hard-fought campaign. In the battleground states that will decide the outcome of the long and arduous contest, political ads will dominate the televised professional and college football games that fill the autumnal airways.

Democrats came out of their national convention in Chicago loaded for bear. Now they must keep the momentum. The best way for Democrats to keep the ball rolling toward the end zone is to win over and activate union voters.

The occasion is especially important for Democratic candidates who celebrate the day to recognize their allies in organized labor. Democrats owe much to them. Every cycle, unions contribute millions of votes and dollars to the party’s efforts.  

Democrats appreciate union support. The newly minted Democratic vice presidential nominee, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D), a former high school teacher and member of the National Education Association, has already spoken to the International Association of Fire Fighters. 

In the 2020 presidential race, the national Election Day exit poll revealed that union members and their families constituted a fifth of the national electorate. A clear majority of voters in these union households supported President Biden. He owed his popular-vote win to those voters, since he and Trump were closely matched with voters from non-union families.  

The time is ripe for a strong alliance between Democrats and labor groups. A new national Gallup Poll demonstrates that unions are riding high in public esteem. Seven in ten Americans have favorable opinions of labor. Back in 2009, only half of the public had a positive opinion of them. Only one in four people currently disapprove of unions, the lowest level of hostility toward unions since 1967.

Democrats must fully embrace their union friends, especially in the key electoral combat zones, to win in 2024. Americans are now acutely aware of the benefits like health care, job security and good pay that unions provide their members in these troubled and turbulent economic times. 

Labor Day is a day of appreciation of hard-working union families and means lots of hard work for Democrats. 

Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will make their first joint campaign appearance since she became the presidential nominee in Pittsburgh on Labor Day., in the closely contested battleground of Pennsylvania.

It’s easy to understand the priority that Democrats place on the state. A Trump win in the Keystone State would almost certainly doom the vice president’s chances of winning a national electoral vote majority and the White House. The state is also home to endangered Democratic Sen. Bob Casey Jr. (D), whose reelection might hold the key to protecting a fragile Democratic Senate majority. 

Biden, a native Pennsylvanian, won the state in 2020 by the skin of his teeth, because he failed to win over union members. They had embraced Trump’s strong advocacy for high tariffs on the import of steel and other products.

Trump won a wafer-thin majority of the votes of the union families there in 2020. This stands in stark contrast with Biden’s performance with union voters in the other closely contested states, such as Michigan and Wisconsin.

We’ll know lots more about the outcome of campaign 2024 when we see the returns from Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. Surveys for The Hill indicate the presidential contests are as tight as a tick on a hound dog in all three states, all of which also have closely contested Senate races.

These three states constitute the Big Blue Wall which will make or break Democratic fortunes nationally. The firm foundation of that wall is the union vote. 

Brad Bannon is a Democratic pollster and CEO of Bannon Communications Research, which polls for labor unions and Democrats. He hosts the popular progressive podcast on power, politics and policy, Deadline D.C. with Brad Bannon.