Union worker predicts traditionally blue voters will swing to Trump: ‘He’s speaking our language’
Democrats’ base of support is disappearing under their feet as workers defy 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 heavy price for the free trade policies that have decimated America’s industrial heartlands for decades.
“The Democrats have been shipping our jobs to Mexico and China for over 40 years, so this process has just come 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 disappears completely, and we will vote for him in large numbers.
“I say 65 to 70 percent of UAW members will pull 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 GOP candidate
Donald Trump nearly tied with the VP in a recent poll of union members in Michigan
Democratic leaders were outraged when the Teamsters Union withdrew their endorsement and General President Sean O’Brien spoke from the stage at the GOP convention in July.
The union said it could not support Harris because “extensive polling of members showed no majority support for Vice President Harris and no universal support among members for President Trump.”
The International Association of Firefighters also denied her support for Joe Biden after she took “unprecedented steps to hear our members’ views on the candidates and the policy issues most important to them.”
The Teamsters are the only one of the top 10 unions to withhold their support 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 happening since the 1980s. Ronald Reagan and the Reagan Revolution gave Macomb County, where I am from, the political nickname “home of the Reagan Democrats.”
“And that’s when all the UAW members jumped out and voted for Ronald Reagan, and he won by a landslide. So this has been happening for forty years.’
The UAW released polls this week showing its members in the seven battleground states backing Harris by a 22 percent margin over her Republican rival.
Joe Biden has worked hard to court the union led by left-wing leader Shawn Fain, becoming the first president to walk a picket line during the dispute with three major U.S. automakers.
Joe Biden became the first president to walk a picket line as he sought the union vote
But Kamala Harris has seen union support decline since she ran for office
Teamsters President Sean O’Brien drew the ire of Democrats when he spoke from the platform at the GOP convention in July
He campaigned again Saturday evening in Pittsburgh at a meeting of the Laborers’ International Union of North America.
But Trump, too, has courted the union vote when he spoke last month to workers at a Detroit auto parts company.
“Under no circumstances will I allow the American auto industry to go under,” he vowed. ‘I want things to go well.
“Get your union leaders to support me, and I’ll take care of the rest.”
A Marketing Resource Group survey of union members in Michigan earlier this month showed Trump trailing his rival by one point, up 11 points since April.
Many union voters “are receptive to Trump’s positions on policies like building electric vehicles, which some believe will cost jobs in the U.S. auto sector,” Costas Panagopoulos, a professor of political science at Northeastern University, told Newsweek.
“Even his rhetoric and views on trade and tariffs have been convincing that they would boost U.S. manufacturing and create U.S. jobs.”
Michigan auto worker James Benson Jr. explained why being a Democrat backfired on his colleagues.
“I was a lifelong Democrat and voted for Obama both terms. And you know what? All I saw was more losses and more jobs going overseas,” he told Fox & Friends.
“During the Trump administration, there was nothing but growth and record sales.
‘At this point the fake optics no longer work. You can’t tell us that the economy is doing well. It’s just in your head. You don’t hurt’. No, we are in pain.
“It’s frustrating for us because you hear all these things about, ‘Everyone wants electric cars.’
“Well, they don’t. Sales are terrible.”