The base of Democratic support is dissolving beneath their feet as blue-collar workers challenge union bosses in a bid to keep their jobs, a dissident leader has warned.
Brian Pannebecker of Auto Workers for Trump 2024 said Kamala Harris will pay a high price for free trade policies that have decimated America’s industrial centers for decades.
“Democrats have been sending our jobs to Mexico and China for over 40 years, so this process just came to a head with Donald Trump, and he speaks our language,” he said. fox business.
“He knows what we want to hear, that he is going to protect our industry before it completely disappears and that we are going to vote for him in large numbers.”
“I’m saying 65 to 70 percent of UAW members are pulling the lever for Donald J. Trump.”
Brian Pannebecker of Auto Workers for Trump 2024 predicted that more than two-thirds of UAW members could vote for the Republican candidate.
Donald Trump has jumped nearly even with the vice president in a recent poll of Michigan union members.
Democratic leaders were infuriated when the Teamsters Union withdrew its endorsement and General Chairman Sean O’Brien spoke from the platform at the Republican convention in July.
The union said it could not endorse Harris because “extensive surveys of its members showed neither majority support for Vice President Harris nor universal support among members for President Trump.”
The International Association of Firefighters also denied the endorsement it offered to Joe Biden after taking “unprecedented steps to listen to our members’ views on the candidates and policy issues that matter most to them.”
The Teamsters are the only one of the top 10 unions to retain its endorsement from Democrats, but Pannebecker said members were increasingly at odds with their leaders.
“The mainstream media is a little late to the game,” he noted.
“This has been going on since the 1980s. Ronald Reagan and the Reagan Revolution gave Macomb County, where I’m from, the political nickname “home of the Reagan Democrats.”
‘And that’s when everyone in the UAW jumped up and voted for Ronald Reagan, and he won in a landslide. So this has been going on for 40 years.”
The UAW released a poll this week suggesting its members in the seven battleground states support Harris by a 22 percent margin over her Republican rival.
Joe Biden worked hard to court the union under the leadership of its leftist leader Shawn Fain, becoming the first president to picket during his dispute with three major American automakers.
Joe Biden became the first president to picket while courting the union vote
But Kamala Harris has seen union support decline since she became the candidate.
Teamsters President Sean O’Brien sparked Democratic fury by speaking from the platform at the Republican convention in July.
He was campaigning again in Pittsburgh on Saturday night at a meeting of the Laborers International Union of North America.
But Trump has also been courting the union vote, speaking to workers at an auto components company in Detroit last month.
“I will not, under any circumstances, allow the American automobile industry to die,” he vowed. ‘I want it to prosper.
“Get your union leaders to support me and I’ll take care of the rest.”
A Marketing Resource Group poll of union members in Michigan earlier this month found Trump trailing his rival by just one point, up 11 points from April.
Many union voters “are receptive to Trump’s positions on policies like building electric vehicles, which some believe costs American autoworkers jobs,” Costas Panagopoulos, a political science professor at Northeastern University, told Newsweek.
“Even his rhetoric and views on trade and tariffs have convinced them that they would boost American manufacturing and create American jobs.”
Michigan union autoworker James Benson Jr explained why the Democratic narrative backfired on his colleagues.
‘I was a Democrat my entire life, I voted for Obama in both terms. And you know what? “All I saw was more losses and more jobs overseas,” he told Fox & Friends.
‘During the Trump administration, nothing but record growth and sales.
‘At this point, false optics no longer work. It cannot be said that the economy is doing very well. It’s just in your head. You are not suffering.’ No, we are suffering.
“It’s frustrating for us because we hear all those things about, ‘Everyone wants electric vehicles.’
‘Well, it’s not like that. Sales are abysmal.”
