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The Tale of When the Teamsters Met Ms Harris
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The Tale of When the Teamsters Met Ms Harris

By Jim Taft
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Ooo, great stories are starting to come out of the election, and this one is really, well, something.

I can’t stop kind of grinning about it even though it concerns two people I truly can’t abide – Vice President Kamala Harris and Teamsters Union President Sean O’Brien (SOB for short).

You know POTATUS always has loved to tout his reportedly humble roots – the whole ‘Joe from Scranton’ schtick – and hobnobbing with union workers has been his meat and potatoes move. 

LOOK AT ME, JUST A REGULAR GUY RELATING TO WORKING SCHLUBS

He fashioned himself as organized labor’s champion, and they fell for it, supporting him for decades’ worth of “Union Joe” campaigns.

Biden’s labor report card: Historian gives ‘Union Joe’ a higher grade than any president since FDR

President Joe Biden came into the White House intent on being “the most pro-union president leading the most pro-union administration in American history.” Four years later, he has shown a lot of progress.

Joe Biden has pledged repeatedly to go further than any of his predecessors with his support for U.S. labor rights.

“I intend to be the most pro-union president leading the most pro-union administration in American history,” Biden said at a White House meeting in September 2021 that brought together ordinary workers, labor leaders and government officials.

He has expressed this intention many times, sometimes clarifying his goals.

For example, in 2023 he said in Chicago that his administration was “making it easier to empower workers by making it easier to join a union.”

Based on my research regarding the history of organized labor in America, I would give Biden an A-minus for his record on workers rights. In my view, the man dubbed “Union Joe” has lived up to the claim, with one notable error.

As the 2024 election started heating up, with POTATUS now publicly fading away – his handlers found it impossible to keep the vegetative state hidden any longer, particularly after the disastrous debate performance – Trump sensed an opening in what had always been a damn near impenetrable Democratic labor vote block.

He knew that in spite of whatever labor leaders mouthed, their rank-and-file members were hugely unhappy with the direction of the economy, and becoming restless. There was dissention in the ranks the likes of which had never been seen before. Were union members at the point where they would be willing to break free of leadership’s political diktats?

Back in May, Trump was already nibbling around the edges of Teamsters traditional Democratic loyalty, when he held that wonderful Bronx rally. He spent much of it telling New York construction stories – had to work with lots of unions – and called Teamsters out specifically. I had live-blogged that rally and picked right up on the outreach:

…6:39 Just took a shot at the judge.

“Do we have any Teamsters here?” Oh smart smart smart talking about working with them for the concrete on the rink. And of course tons of hoots from Teamsters in the audience.

6:37 Telling the ice rink anecdote and how they told him to use rubber hose “I like that that’s cheaper” in that Trump accent. Hilarious.

Then Trump took a calculated gamble and invited Teamsters President Sean O’Brien to speak at the Republican National Convention, to the gobsmacked astonishment of the GOP establishment and delight of the nascent, reborn big tent Republican Party. 

The astounding, unprecedented olive branch was a thunderclap that rippled through Teamsters membership like seismic waves after a quake.

Republicans wanted to hear from THEM?

…This is yet another amazing move from Trump. Teamsters has many of their members in the biggest swing states, if Trump can activate them, the election is WON bigly

And when O’Brien accepted and stepped to the podium last July…BOOMITY.

It was a labor-rhetoric-filled barnburner, with no endorsement of Trump at all, BUT.

O’Brien was there and free to say what he had to say, and all million-plus members of his union witnessed it, as well as every other organized labor union in the country.

You know where O’Brien wasn’t?

At the Democratic National Convention.

To use the phrase Axios employed, the DNC ‘ghosted’ the Teamsters boss. And he had to ask them for a chance to address delegates, unlike the GOP invite.

Well…huh.

DNC makes Teamsters president sweat

Teamsters President Sean O’Brien has been ghosted by the Democratic National Convention after his request to speak this week in Chicago.

Why it matters: At least seven leaders of major labor unions were set to take the DNC stage tonight, but O’Brien has become persona non grata in some Democratic circles.

  • “We didn’t get a response to our request for him to speak,” Kara Deniz, a Teamsters spokesperson, told Axios.

The Teamsters boss became the first-ever union president to speak at an RNC last month, delivering fiery remarks before a party that has a track record of opposing labor movements.

  • Rank-and-file Teamsters retirees have been invited to attend the DNC, a sign that O’Brien’s snub is personal, The Bulwark reports.

The snub was ‘personal.’ Tactical error there.

This quick snippet from Batya Ungar Sargon with Megyn Kelly, besides the Trump-O’Brien RNC dynamic, also sheds some light on the UAW membership shifting.

After the snub, the Teamsters finished polling their membership in September and stunned the Democratic world with a non-endorsement. The poll result had Republicans doing joy-filled backflips.

Here we are, post-election, looking forward to a President Trump in less than a month – God willing – and Teamsters president O’Brien has sat down for a chat with Tucker Carlson.

It turns out that the Harris campaign didn’t just snub the union boss for a speaker’s slot at the convention.

The general elitist arrogance that pervaded that entire campaign spilled over into every aspect of dealing with their long-time ally, and one, frankly, that smarter people would have known they desperately needed more than any Beyonce or Liz Cheny on earth.

According to O’Brien, the union was actually doing their legwork on candidates, and they’d asked Harris for interview time, giving her sixteen questions pertinent to the union membership.

Although the Harris campaign had agreed to the format, neither the meeting nor the interrogatories went as planned.

…A union leader revealed that Vice President Kamala Harris stormed out of a meeting on the campaign trail, arrogantly telling him she didn’t need his support because she’d “win with you or without you” — just before her crushing loss to Donald Trump.

…O’Brien said Harris finally agreed to sit with the Teasmstars for a roundtable after President Biden dropped out of the race, just to only answer a quarter of their 16 questions. Other candidates, including Trump, answered them all.

“On the fourth question, one of her operatives or one of her staff slips a note in front of me — ‘This will be the last question.’ And it was 20 minutes earlier than the time it was going to end,” O’Brien told Carlson.

“And her declaration of the way out was, ‘I’m going to win with you or without you,’’ he recalled.

Wowsahs.

That’s a rocky start.

But it got worse. 

Harris waggled a demanding finger in one of O’Brien’s vice president’s faces in a receiving line, with repeated, “You BETTER GET ON BOARD” demands.

When he heard about it the next day, O’Brien was incensed and made a phone call to  Biden’s former Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh.

I mean, this is just astonishing stuff. Par for the course with what we’re learning, but day-yum.

Harris and her over-educated brahmins may have put the Democratic Party so far out in the wilderness they won’t be back for decades…not that that’s a bad thing…by just behaving so badly to working-class people.

At just the depths of the denial I’m seeing in response to this interview, they aren’t capable of coming around any time soon. For example, this Xweet highlights how local Teamsters councils bucked leadership to endorse Harris-Walz independently because O’Brien is, what? Mean?

So frickin’ virtue-signaling what?

Their membership went for Trump overwhelmingly.

I’ve got it in the headlines today, but it’s a great headline from Politico, and this Tucker interview (whole thing here) sure puts paid to the old line “If you’re in a hole, stop digging.”

For all the wealth and education, privilege and power of Democrats, they are clueless about what to do with the shovel in their hand and its relationship to how they found themselves in the Great Pit of Carkoon.

It’s delicious.

I can’t wait to hear more.

No one tell them about the Sarlacc – you’ll spoil everything.



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