by Adam Morse
If you watch the Democrat presidential debates, it’s easy to lose sight of who has the most at stake in the 2020 presidential race: it’s the American worker.
Make no mistake, this election is about the same thing that Donald Trump fought tooth and nail for in 2016: a better deal for those working men and women. American workers have made enormous strides in the first three years of the Trump administration, and they still have five more years of progress to look forward to. The Democrat presidential candidates, however, are fervently dedicated to undoing those hard-won gains and rolling back the clock to a much less prosperous era.
First and foremost, every Democrat in the crowded 2020 field is obsessed with abandoning President Trump’s “trade war” with China, which is the Fake News term they use to describe the counter-tariffs the President has imposed in retaliation for China’s decades of trade cheating. The message they’re sending is not intended for the American worker, but for the Chinese Communist Party elites, whom they wish to reassure that immediate surrender would be at the top of any hypothetical Democratic president’s agenda.
American workers have not suffered from President Trump’s aggressive measures to secure a genuinely fair deal from our primary economic rival. By contrast, our strong and growing economy has created more than six million new jobs, the unemployment rate is at its lowest level since the late-1960s, and workers are enjoying the fastest wage growth in over a decade.
Abandoning President Trump’s counter-tariffs and other methods of pressure against China offers no benefit to the American worker. There is, on the other hand, plenty of reason to believe that surrendering to China now will make things worse for generations to come.
There’s plenty else at stake for workers in the Democratic platform. The average taxpayer here in Minnesota saved more than $1,400 on their 2018 federal incomes taxes thanks to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, while the savings for a typical family of four exceeded $2,300. Democrats such as Senator Elizabeth Warren are being forced to admit that they would take those tax savings away, along with your employer-provided health care.
What do Democrats offer in return? They promise trillions of dollars worth of free stuff without any realistic plan to fund it.
It’s no wonder that even the Democrats’ traditional allies in organized labor are going into this election cycle more half-heartedly than any in generations. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, for example, recently warned the Democrats that they “better come with more than platitudes and a party label” if they expect to win the support of union members in 2020.
American workers have it better under President Trump than ever before in living memory. Mr. Trumka clearly sees the threat this poses to the Democrats in 2020, even if the candidates themselves remain oblivious.
No matter how much the Democrats try to change the conversation, the 2020 presidential election will once again be about the American worker, and that bodes incredibly well for the President’s reelection prospects.
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Adam Morse, Union Representative, United Steelworkers Local 1938
