Laboring for American workers

Where have all the workers gone? And what can Democrats do about it on Monday?

Had Democrats stuck with the coalition Franklin Roosevelt bequeathed them they would today be winning by wide margins every election from the local schoolhouse to the White House.

That coalition carries forward in the name, “the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party.” Not incidentally, that party controls half of Minnesota's U.S. House seats, both U.S. Senate seats, the lower house of the state legislature and the governorship.

Both parties have watched the cost of presidential and congressional campaign expenses go from $23 million in 1952 ($257 million in 2020 dollars) to $14.4 billion in 2020 – a 56 fold increase.

In response, the Democrats tried to build a national political party with money from the east coast and voters on the left coast. The result? Flyover country became fly away country. When workers asked, “What have you done for us lately?” all they heard was crickets.

By the 2020 election 83 percent of the 3,112 U.S. counties studied were solid Republican. Iowa Democrats’ results were worse: 94 percent of the counties went for Trump. (Democrats picked up the three counties with state universities plus Polk, Linn, and Scott.)

The pay and benefits of union jobs that had enabled workers to enjoy the middle-class rewards of homes, cars, boats and college-educated kids had largely disappeared. When the air traffic controllers went on strike in 1981 President Reagan shut out the union and fired 3,000 members. His message to industry leaders? Union busting is OK.

In the 1950s 35 percent of private sector workers belonged to unions. By 2012, after a half-century of Republicans’ successful efforts at union busting, it had fallen to 6.6 percent.

Union members were not just a source of funds and votes. They also used to do the most significant share of the heavy lifting – door knocking, leaflet distribution, phone calling, and taking voters to the polls.

Today much of that person-to-person campaigning goes undone.

I recall (but can’t find) a Wall Street Journal item in the early 1960s about a firm in California that claimed it could elect anyone to any office with a $100,000 TV-only campaign. With no TV competition they were quite successful. During 2019-2020 political TV, radio and digital advertising reached $8.5 billion.

But today’s TV effectiveness is not what it used to be. And mastery of political use of social media has yet to occur.

Democrats can’t magic wand their party’s problems away.

Meanwhile, what Democrats can do is to seize the ultimate teachable moment each Labor Day offers the party – starting with Monday.

They can organize Labor Day Democratic party celebrations and rallies in communities and neighborhoods around the country. They can emphasize what the party’s elected officials have delivered to working people over the past century. Not today’s candidates’ promises. What Republicans have done to oppose them, further enriching the wealthy while ignoring, or opposing, workers’ interests.

It's no cure-all, but it sure would be a good start.

Nicholas Johnson was a board member, DNC Harriman Communications Center. mailbox@nicholasjohnson.org