By BERRY CRAIG
AFT Local 1360
When Ronald Reagan ran for president in 1980, the GOP put out a TV commercial in which a union guy said Reagan was for working stiffs like him.
Unions warned that the far-right-wing Reagan was notoriously anti-union. "A union member voting for Ronald Reagan would be like a chicken voting for Col. Sanders," said a sign in a Paducah union hall.
In his first year in the White House, Reagan busted the PATCO union. He went on to be the most anti-labor president since Republican Herbert Hoover.
Nonetheless, 45 percent of union households voted for The Gipper in 1980, according to a Roper poll. The GOP also flipped 34 seats in the House and a dozen in the Senate. The Democrats held the House but lost the Senate.
Reaganomics--warmed over 1920s Republican "trickle down" economics which caused the Great Depression-- pushed the unemployment rate above 10 percent by the mid-term elections in 1982. Not surprisingly, Reagan was sagging in the polls. The jobless included the union guy. He made a commercial for the Democrats—for free, he said—and apologized for voting for Reagan.
Going on 36 years ago, the Democrats added 26 seats to their House majority. The Republicans pried away only one Senate seat: In Kentucky, Mitch McConnell defeated incumbent Walter D. Huddleston.
Last year, unions warned that Trump was anti-union. He even said on the campaign trail that he preferred "right to work" states to non-RTW states.
Like Reagan, Trump claimed to be the blue collar, lunch bucket candidate. Like Reagan, his rhetoric didn't square with his record.
Reagan and Trump ran on stock Wall Street Republican platforms. Planks supported RTW and favored abolishing the prevailing wage on federal construction projects, urged big tax breaks for the wealthy and called for cutting government regulations designed to protect worker safety and health, consumers and the environment.
A Roper poll revealed that 43 percent of union households voted for Trump. A year into his presidency, Trump’s poll numbers are at an historically low ebb. Buyer’s remorse seems to be rising in union ranks, too.
"A lot of people are regretting they voted for Trump," said Jeff Wiggins, Kentucky State AFL-CIO secretary treasurer. "They wanted something different. Now they've got it, and they don't like it."
Likewise, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka called Trump out. "Broken promises are bad enough,” The New York Times quoted him. "But President Trump has also used his office to actively hurt working people. He has joined with corporations and their political allies to undermine the right of workers to bargain collectively. He has taken money out of our pockets and made our workplace less safe. He has divided our country, abandoned our values and given cover to racism and other forms of bigotry.”
Chuck Jones agrees with Trumka. He's the feisty former president of USW Local 1999 at Carrier Corp. in Indianapolis. Many working people voted for Trump "based on his commitments and his promises to keep jobs here in this country,” Jones told Chris Matthews on his MSNBC show. “I wasn’t one of them, but a lot of our folks were.”
Jones has been going after Trump for months. He doesn't mince words.
“I think everybody ought to respect the president of the United States and the office he holds," The Huffington Post quoted him. "But Donald Trump is a liar and an idiot."
Jones added that the president is "a pure and simple con man ... and I’m sorry people bought into his message. He sold us a bag of s---t, and now we’re stuck with it."
In a November 29 Washington Post op-ed article, Jones wrote that “Beyond Indiana, workers across the country feel like they too are victims of a false Trumpian bargain, in which they were invited to trade their votes to keep their jobs. In fact, according to new research conducted by Good Jobs Nation, more than 91,000 jobs have been sent overseas since Trump was elected, the highest rate of jobs lost to outsourcing in five years.”
Jones brought the same blunt message to the Kentucky State AFL-CIO convention in Lexington a tad under two weeks before he authored the op-ed.
Jones said that all along he doubted Trump's promise to bring outsourced jobs home and to keep other jobs stateside. But he conceded that Trump's pledge "resonated with a lot of working people."
Jones recalled that on the campaign trail, Trump never said, "'I’m going to bring my business back in this country' or ‘I’m going to bring my daughter’s business back in this country'....I thought he was full of s--t at the time, and...times went on to prove without a doubt he is."
Jones reminded Matthews, host of the Hardball show, that Trump “kept on campaigning that if he was president, Carrier wouldn’t be going anywhere...They’ve laid off over 600 here in Indianapolis, another 700 in Huntington, Ind. Then he also said one of our other plants, Rexnord, wouldn’t be going anywhere. It’s closed n in its entirety, moved to Mexico."
Jones said a year into Trump’s presidency, he’s broken a record: “93,000 jobs being outsourced, or left this country, under his watch.”
Jones said it’s taken a while for some people to decide that "Trump’s a liar. He took Bernie Sanders’ message, and he ran with it, and people wanted to believe in something, that things would get better here in this country, and they bought his message...He’s had a year now, and he hasn’t delivered at all to the working-class people one iota.”
In any event, polls suggest the Democrats are cruising to a big win in November, which they hope would presage a Trump defeat in 2020.
Nonetheless, in 1984, Reagan was reelected, and he won 46 percent of union households, according to another Roper poll. The Democrats lost 16 House seats but added 2 Senate seats.
Even so, there are significant differences between how Trump and Reagan won. Reagan piled up a landslide in 1980. Trump triumphed via an electoral college fluke; he lost the popular vote.
At any rate, Trump will probably maintain most of his white nationalist and ultra-conservative base. But it's hard to imagine him winning back the independents and swing voters he's losing in droves.
Recapturing voters like a Carrier employee--a military veteran and a mother who lost her job--would seem like mission impossible for the president. She poignantly tells her story in a video posted on the "I Regret I Voted for Donald Trump 2016" Facebook Page:
"That's right, I did. I voted for Trump. I drove in the pouring rain to vote for Trump. I believed him when he came to Indianapolis and said, 'We're not gonna let Carrier leave.' I was not alone. Hundreds of workers desperately wanted to believe him. I now feel betrayed. I feel angry and I feel forgotten."