Ah, that’s fair. That’s a pretty key difference between us, and I’m fine agreeing to disagree.

Thanks for the spirited discussion.

I don’t really know what you’re getting at, but if all you’re saying is “wow, this dude doesn’t hate capitalism”, then…sure? I consider myself a social democrat.

Kind of a weird thing to fixate on. Especially after proclaiming you were done responding.

I’m not engaging with this anymore, you’ve obviously not understood my perspectives here (intentionally or not).

You’re free to choose not to engage any further. But I’d wager to say you haven’t understood my perspective either. At least I’ve tried to make sense of what you’ve said so far, and provide citations to enforce my perspective. I get the sense that you think you have an insight into unions and working class people that I could never fathom, or something like that. Hopefully I’m wrong.

I’m speaking to a very specific material conditions that a particular subset of the electorate is experiencing and liberal policies fail to address, and you’ve dismissed them yet again.

Okay…so you believe that liberal policies can’t address the problems of certain people? That seems bizarre, given what you said a few replies up:

The more socialized benefits available to small town workers, the less pressure there will be to remain employed in a dying industry. That includes childcare, healthcare, housing, food; basically everything they’re afraid to campaign on because republicans will accuse them of being radical socialists.

I figured your main beliefs were in that quote, and that a lot of what you’ve said thus far was just an effort to empathize with conservative-minded workers. Guess you’re a more befuddling guy than I thought.

It’s extremely calloused to ignore the economic hardships experienced by these workers when the industry that supports them and their community is broken into pieces and replaced by another, and I don’t think you’re in the right place to see or acknowledge those.

Buddy, I’m just some guy on the internet, same as you. At the end of the day we don’t really know a thing about each other. At least I’m not assuming you “fail to see” this or “aren’t in the right place to see” that.

Maybe that’s just a function of where we are in the election cycle. A part of the way capitalism works is by holding the means of survival hostage to coerce labor to protect it, and when democrats turn a blind eye to the trap those people are stuck in it solidifies reactionary political perspectives.

Man, I get it, you hate capitalism. That’s okay. IMO economic systems don’t really matter nearly as much as the rules and regulations above those systems. That’s okay, too.

I don’t give a shit what O’Brian’s personal politics are or what Teamsters endorsement or platforming at the RNC means to the democratic campaign. He represents a segment of the population that is experiencing conditions not addressed by current or proposed democratic policies, and he’s using his platform to put pressure on both parties to address them by dangling Teamster’s influence, and I think that’s a fine (good, even) strategy.

I don’t care what it means “to the democratic campaign”, either. I just care that he might help Trump win, because IMO that’s bad for his constituents. Trump doesn’t care about workers, teamsters included, and Harris is the successor to the guy who you can’t deny at least cared enough to give them the largest pension bailout in US history. To me, that’s what’s most practical to care about.

On top of that, the House feels like it really ought to be fixed. The number of representatives has been fixed for almost 100 years, yet the country’s population has more than tripled.

I don’t think legislators of the time expected the population to get so big.

To address your first 3 paragraphs…you’re acting like all I care about is O’Brien’s non endorsement. I guess I’ll spell out the thing I’ve said in every single comment on this thread: Not endorsing democrats = fine. Not endorsing democrats + speaking at the RNC and NOT directly calling them out on their bs = fucking stupid. You keep treating the non-endorsement like it’s in a vacuum. And you can disagree with my math, but if you continue to pretend that this isn’t what I’m saying, then you’re just straw-manning me.

Rust belt unions are less concerned with expanding union protections than they are concerned with their industry going bankrupt. A coal mining union isn’t concerned with having better legal protection for going on strike, they’re concerned that the entire coal industry is getting replaced elsewhere by renewables and wont have anyone to negotiate with.

Yes, it’s understandable that workers feel like they won’t survive if their industry dies…but in the specific case of coal, the solution isn’t to bolster that industry. Much of the solution is to create new jobs in growing industries that coal workers could transfer into, and to set guarantees that those new jobs aren’t exploitative. Democrats have fought, with real action, to do both the former, and the latter (I won’t source the latter again, read any of my pro-union sources).

I already said that the PRO act is an excellent bill, and that dems should be campaigning on it,

Yes, and not only do they campaign on it - they consistently vote in favor of it. But go on.

but that’s simply not why they’re losing union support in the rust belt. Millions of americans are afraid that they’re going to loose their livelihoods to changing economic priorities, and democrats are allergic to taking any action that addresses that fundamental apprehension because they’re terrified of being called socialist.

Yes, I get their fear. And that’s why the liberal solution to those fears is making it easier to switch jobs and to provide better childcare, healthcare, housing, food, unemployment, all on top of pro-worker reform…all LEFT-LEANING policies that the modern GOP will NEVER ENDORSE.

It sounds like you’re just trying to explain what many workers see as the solution. They think the tried-and-true solution is to bolster their industries, instead of all the stuff I just listed. But that’s a conservative solution to the problem.

It sounds like you want the democrats to have liberal policies in general, which is what I want too. But what, in your head, does O’Brien want? If he wants conservative industry-first policies, then AOC isn’t punching left at the guy, end of story. And if he actually wants liberal, boosting-quality-of-life-policies (the kinds of policies I want and you seem to want), then he’s an idiot or a coward, or both, for not getting mad at the modern GOP for spinning all of that negatively as socialism.

Because the democrats haven’t proposed anything that actually addresses their concerns, and they’re frustrated that the things democrats have proposed are targeted in other places of the economy and callously ignores their material interests. They’re convinced that democrats will never solve their problems - but the GOP is promising to preserve their industries by passing tarrifs, removing environmental protections, stopping the growth of renewables and tech that threaten to put them out of business…And those are simple, believable solutions to their problems. You and I understand that those are problematic in a million different ways, but from their perspective everyone else seems to be fucking over everyone else to get their bag, so why not them? Democrats simply don’t have a response to that, especially when they’re insistent on stopping short of breaking with neoliberal economic policy.

You’re not addressing the subtlety that while they feel democrats aren’t proposing good solutions, and while you seem to feel democrats aren’t proposing good solutions…your solutions and their solutions are different. You’ve said you want more of the kinds of solutions they’d call “radical socialism”. (I want those solutions too, but imo Democrats are already working on it, they just have an uphill battle against conservatives.) (And sure, many conservative workers probably just don’t realize that they’d love those solutions, too, but in the meantime they’re duped into supporting the GOP and their worse, pro-some-industries, anti-other-industries solution.) Are you under the impression that the reason O’Brien isn’t capitulating to democrats is they’re not embracing those solutions? Do you think that when O’Brien cozies to the GOP, that he’s secretly trying to get the GOP on board with those solutions? When there’s negative evidence of that?

I’m exhausted by having this same conversion over-and-over again. Moderate democrats have this way of middling their way out of grasping the underlying issues voters are experiencing and instead try to bandaid over huge gaping wounds, then cry bloody murder when voters don’t act as grateful as they think they should. Liberals are never going to understand why they’re losing support if they aren’t able to even conceptualize the concerns of the working class in small-town economies.

If you’re trying to say that pro-worker policy is the bandaid, and widespread policies that provide better childcare, healthcare, housing, food, and unemployment are your solution, then I don’t disagree, other than that pro-worker policy isn’t as much a band-aid at it is part of that solution. But if that’s O’Brien’s solution, then he’s a bad leader for helping the republicans who reject that solution. If that’s not O’Brien’s solution…then attacking his leadership isn’t “punching left”.

How? Maybe it’s more like making a public statement about private negotiations that damages the reputation of the partner company, but ‘going to work for another company’ doesn’t track. They’re threatening to harm the democratic campaign by publicly shaming them, not self-immolating

I reject your analogue. There have been no “public statements about private negotiations” with the GOP. We don’t know the GOP to’ve made ANY negotiations.

Don’t like my original analogue? Fine, replace “choosing to” with “threatening to”. The part you’re dancing around is the “more exploitative” part -the part where the side O’Brien is threatening to support isn’t a not-Dem-but-pro-union party, it’s a not-Dem-but-anti-union party. And I suspect he’s playing ball with them IN SPITE OF not having any appreciable consolidations made by republicans in favor of his union. Don’t bother suggesting “we don’t know there weren’t consolidations”, neither of us know. Though there’s plenty of indirect evidence that the modern GOP just doesn’t care - case in point, every party-line PRO Act vote in the past 5 years.

I already answered this - no, i do not agree, and I especially don’t think it’s ‘pointless pendantry’. AOC is a dem soc, she should know that it’s the job of the union to negotiate via collective bargaining and that democrats are not owed an endorsement.

You make it sound like AOC is only frustrated with O’Brien for not endorsing Harris. From my very first comment in this thread: that’s not \all he’s done*.

Your next 4 paragraphs…I’ll get back to those.

He represents their interests, it’s his literal fucking job

Then he should act like it and not help the leopards that’ll eat his face.

There absolutely is a difference in political ideology, but our disagreement isn’t over whether ‘the left is more aligned with worker’s rights’ or not. We disagree about whether or not direct action ought to be targeted at the democrats at all, and that’s something I don’t think we’ll see eye-to-eye on.

I wasn’t saying that was the disagreement, I was saying there’s some core disagreement we probably have, that’s probably flying under both our radars. And no, you haven’t magically identified what that is. I never said “unions shouldn’t target democrats at all with direct action”, I’m saying actions that directly aid another party, where that other party is the modern GOP, are fucking stupid.

Back to those 4 paragraphs…finally, a little actual substance.

And you know what I have to say about it? I have to say that I actually feel even MORE strongly that O’Brien is a bad leader.

You went on about issues that rust belt union members are having. But the Democrats don’t control the rust belt…the GOP does. And they are fucking over their own union constituents. Trump’s last term saw him hire an anti-union Reagan-era lawyer to the NLRB, stacked the courts with anti-union judges, took various other anti-union actions, and neither him nor any Republicans proposed a single page of legislation. They didn’t even support the PRO Act, legislation that helps unions everywhere, rust belt included, and was introduced even before Dems took back the WH (meaning Democrats didn’t stand to look good if it got passed). And the GOP still voted heavily against it, and have done so ever since.

Biden might not be perfect in your eyes, but he immediately fired Trump’s NLRB appointee and the similarly minded deputy replacing them them with a pro-union labor lawyer who took on captive audience meetings, non-compete clauses, and consequential damages. And like I already said, it was DEMOCRATS who’ve been pushing for the PRO Act this whole time…and yes, Harris has campaigned on signing the PRO Act, fyi.

Why aren’t the teamsters…openly mad at the GOP? The party of people who, in your own words, would “accuse [democrats] of being radical socialists” for proposing action that helps working class people? Denying Trump an endorsement doesn’t go far enough - O’Brien either shouldn’t’ve gone to the RNC, or should’ve flipped the bird at everybody there. Don’t just leave an endorsement out of your speech - actually say “I wanna endorse you, but you fuckers are letting us down”. I could see that acknowledging their incompetence to their faces MAYBE moving the needle on the GOP, or at least, it’d be a respectable attempt.

I get you feel like unions need bipartisan support to make a permanent, lasting difference. And y’know what? I think I agree with you on that. But that doesn’t mean I agree that it’s worth giving the modern GOP anything, so much as an RNC speech, now. They should work for it. BY ACTUALLY VOTING ON PRO-UNION POLICIES AND ACTIONS. Then, it makes sense to play both sides. Until then, let them know that they’re not getting an ounce of support.

Isn’t it too early to say, given the Senate still has to pass it? It should be more of a lock than the House was, just not sure.

I agree with the core of what you’re saying except I disagree that she “doesn’t understand” how slowly politics works. I think her decision to vote for Harris anyway speaks to that kind of understanding, else she’d endorse a third-party candidate/write-in in a poor attempt to speed-run democracy.

Yes, that was my point. I think a lot of liberals get caught up in the electoralism of general elections, and get (maybe even understandably) offended when a group they thought should clearly be on ‘their side’ decides to make a statement against them, or even simply withhold an endorsement.

Okay, I’ll take “maybe even understandably”.

Sure, meat-and-bones policy is important for advancing working class interests (i’m not sure why you chose ‘worker satisfaction’, maybe this is further evidence of our ideological differences or maybe this is just me being pedantic, but ‘satisfaction’ sounds more like corporate HR jargon than the revolutionary language of class consciousness),

Dude. SUPER pedantic.

but endorsements aren’t like straw-polls. Unions come from a bloody and cutthroat history of class struggle that have to negotiate with multi-billion dollar industries - an endorsement or even a signal of approval toward competition is just another way to gain leverage. As much as we would all really like to be able to just pick a party/ticket like picking a flavor of ice cream, that’s just not what class struggle is, least of all to a labor union.

I guess I’ll more or less repeat myself from earlier: Not endorsing the democrats could be likened to going on strike from some company, but threatening to endorse the GOP would be like choosing to go work for an even more exploitative company in retaliation.

Yes, I still think it is punching left, and I think @the_post_of_tom_joad@sh.itjust.works was mistaken in walking it back.

Okay, fine, you disagree. But the immediate question I asked was “can we agree it was a poorly worded and/or insufficiently brief critique” aka the kind of statement that it’s easy to get lost in pointless pendantry over? Y’know, the kind of pedantry I feel like we’ve been arguing over this whole time?

I think that’s a petty and entitled thing to say to a union advocating for its members.

Depends on how you define “advocating for its members”. Signaling support for the political party most of your constituents align with, most definitely for reasons outside workers’ rights, is one definition. Signalling support for the for the party that’ll actually help your constituents? That’s another.

Teamsters is perfectly within their right to withhold their endorsement in service of pushing for labor commitments from democrats

What committments?? This is exactly what I was asking you 2 replies ago, and even before that. And you’ve so far dodged the question. I still don’t understand the actual substantive things you want the Democratic party to do.

Democrats really need support from union households in the swing states where Teamsters is reporting a trump advantage in their membership. They can’t afford to be throwing punches at them (even if you think it’s not punching left).

You make it sound like she’s punching at all Teamsters, when she’s not. She’s just criticizing their leader.

What drives me crazy is that democrats have been willing to bend to a bunch of conservative issues in order to gain moderate republican support - this one issue that is objectively a leftist issue *and* involves a crucial block of voters in swing states is, what…? too radical?

You’re saying they bend to the right on a lot of things but you also want them to bend to the right…on…what exactly? On workers’ rights??

I honestly don’t know anymore. dDmocratic politics have just lost all coherence as a left-wing political party. Maybe this is just a temporary change in messaging, but it really feels like they’re abandoning all pretense as a progressive party.

Idk man, I feel like there’s some aspect of your personal political ideology that’s so different from mine (and I’ll assert, from most people) that there’s some core assumption you and I might be obliviously disagreeing on, like “the left is more politically aligned with supporting workers’ rights” or something.

I have a lot I’d like to, but won’t, say about your comment, because it’s very dismissive of my entire reply, in favor of you choosing to dissect my motivations for adding a loosely-related footnote. I will say that most of your comment feels like I could boil it down to “you almost tricked me into taking your questions at face value, but then you said that O’Brien being racist might be sorta relevant, so clearly I have a broader understanding of…something…then you, so you’ll never see that I’m right”. You could clarify if you want, but I don’t really care.

That said, I’ll try to focus on your last couple sentences:

It isn’t as simple as ‘democrats are more labor friendly’ - both parties are dominated by capitalist interests, even if one makes greater attempts to balance it with labor concessions. If labor is to gain any ground in the US, it needs to be party agnostic and be aggressive about negotiating with both parties.

If this is the entire point you’ve been driving at this whole time, then I still disagree with you, but I can respect your opinion. You might be right that we won’t see eye-to-eye, but not because of me probably not having a deeper understanding of “material relations being fundamental to political movements”, or you probably not having a deeper appreciation of “actual meat-and-bones policy being fundamental to the satisfaction of union members, both short-term and long-term”. I think you and I might just have different priorities, and I’m fine leaving it at that.

All that said, I wanna circle back one more time on the actual debate that started this thing, because it wasn’t “what is the direct course of action unions are justified in taking to optimize worker satisfaction”. It was literally something as nebulous as “Did AOC ‘punch left’ by criticizing O’Brien”. OP already admitted he probably just chose the wrong words, which I respect. Can we at the very least agree, whether your personal answer to that question is yes or no, that suggesting AOC is “punching left” is a poorly-worded and/or insufficiently brief critique?

I was literally just saying in another thread that I didn’t know much about O’Brien…well now I do! Thanks stranger!

My premise is that, with respect to supporting a party that will support unions, it’d be ludicrous to expect that support from the GOP, because they’ve been consistently anti-union for over 40 years.

one way to escalate your pressure is to scare them into thinking you might endorse the republican ticket

Yeah, and I’m asserting that it’s stupid to even consider endorsing the republican ticket, given how much worse republicans are for unions. Not endorsing the democrats could be likened to going on strike from some company; threatening to endorse the GOP would be like choosing to go work for an even more exploitative company in retaliation.

And nothing says that republicans necessarilycouldn’t offer better support to unions - even if teamsters did endorse Trump, it very well could be because Trump made a material concession to their interest. Nothing says that Teamsters should be interested in anything other than protecting their union’s interests, even if that means getting it from the Republicans, if they are “playing ball”. (The teamsters are a union for a very conservative group of members; it’s not out of the question that Trump might grant some very targeted concessions to that group in order to shore up his base)

Yeah, they could offer better support for unions…they could also offer to lower prescription drug prices and make school lunches free for grade schoolers. They’re not gonna do any of those things, b/c they don’t wanna do any of those things and they haven’t wanted to do any of those things in at least 40 years. I’ll accept cited evidence to the contrary, otherwise we can agree to disagree.

That’s why it’s crazy that the democrats aren’t making an effort to be more pro-union - in most other ways, democrats are the obvious harm-reduction choice. But let’s not pretend as if union protections haven’t been under constant attack and legal challenges during the Biden administration - there is a lot of room for Harris to offer more in the way of union and labor legislation and support.

What specific issue do you take with the Democratic party’s support for unions? Do you refute my earlier link calling a Biden a good pro-union president, and if so can you provide sourced info to explain why?

There are a lot of reasons why everyone ought to vote for democrats over republicans,

Yeah

but pretending as if there are no material reasons a group with specific labor interests might choose to endorse republicans is itself naieve.

This feels like such a “no u” lol. What reasons does a group with specific labor interests have to endorse a party that’s been overly pro-company since Reagan?

Ideally this should motivate the democrats to offer better policy to their constituents, but seems as if democrats would much rather point fingers and accuse those asking for better policy as being covert opposition.

Again, what policies specifically?

AOC shouldn’t be blaming Teamsters for agitating for better labor policy, and doing so absolutely ispunching left, because the thing Teamsters is interested in is a politically-left objective. Not that AOC doesn’t have personal reasons for ignoring those broader goals, but that doesn’t mean what she’s doing isn’t punching left.

Look. I don’t know very much about Sean O’Brien. I’m not gonna accuse him of secretly being anti-union or any crazy bs like that. But if going to the RNC and not endorsing Harris are moves that benefits Republicans (it does), and if Republicans are worse on unions (they are), then whether he means to or not, he’s hurting union workers. From that lens, AOC questioning his leadership isn’t punching left - she’s either punching a guy who’s actually to her right (for reasons outside workers’ rights) or punching a guy who might as well be.

And one more thing: at the end of the day, she’s critical of the guy, not the mission. She’s not saying “workers shouldn’t have more protections”, she’s saying “I question the leadership of this guy whose job it is to get workers more protections”. And quite frankly I agree with that.

Edit: y’know how I said I don’t know much about Sean O’Brien? Well thanks to another lemmyer, now I do!

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/31/teamsters-racial-discrimination-lawsuit

So yeah, if there’s an ounce of truth to this, it speaks to the nagging feeling I have that he’s the kind of guy who’s a probably secretly a conservative for…other reasons.

Sure, it could be to pressure the GOP to care about unions, or it could be to pressure democrats to commit to more protections.

If that’s the goal, simply withholding endorsement for the democratic nominee would achieve that goal. Speaking at the RNC, without any serious commitment to unions made by the GOP, goes far beyond that goal, and is again, naive.

A really good way to prove that democrats are more union friendly than republicans would be to commit to more union protections. That’s a simple narrative to fix, if they were interested.

A really really good way to prove democrats are more union friendly would be to have a president in office with an exceptional pro-union record, and to have earned the endorsement of at least 6 other major unions.

Not to a fucking union, there isn’t.

Yes, but the statement you’re replying to was a general statement on leftism. That’s why I follow that up with “Even in this context …”

Literally their only job is collective bargaining, and threatening to withhold support to gain concessions is famouslytheir most useful tool.

That made me chuckle, you have a fair point. But again, withholding support is one thing, and speaking at the RNC with republicans who don’t play ball with workers’ rights is another.

I mean, what’s the play exactly? “Give us even more union protections or I’m gonna help the other guys who definitely don’t give a damn?” What protections specifically? The kinds of protections given to workers by the PRO Act? The thing Republicans try to shoot down over and over again?

I don’t simply understand ‘left’ to mean ‘democrat’, I’m aware that there are people left of democrats.

Being “Left” encompasses more than just solidarity with the working class, but even specifically in this context, being the first acting teamster president to speak at the conference of a party that is historically anti-worker is…at best, naive. It could be seen as a way to pressure the GOP to care about unions, but they don’t care about unions, and speaking at their conference as a union president just gives a stronger surface-level impression to voters that they might.

He was the first acting teamster president to ever speak at the RNC, that’s a huge deal regardless of whether he was also expecting to speak at the DNC. Especially given how anti-union the republican party generally is.

Either it was an appeal to conservative teamsters, or he himself is quietly moderate or conservative.

But if your argument is that he went to the RNC as an appeal to teamsters who support Trump (aka not lefties), and that he is also choosing not to endorse either candidate on behalf of those teamsters, then that isn’t an appeal to further-left-than-democrats politics, it’s an appeal to centrism.

My point then being

Now she’s the one always punching left

Doesn’t really make sense in this context

Punching left at the guy who attended the RNC?

Yes, though it’s not a magic bullet.

Here’s a video that compares Plurality/FPTP (our current system), Ranked choice, and approval voting, and is up-front about the limitations of each method.

Here’s a link with a lot more information on different voting methods. STAR voting is the method highlighted here as the best, but Score voting and Approval are also pretty good. IRV/Ranked Choice doesn’t perform quite as well, but is at least still better than FPTP.

A new voting system that’s any better than our current system brings us closer to a political landscape where viable candidates who choose not to drop out early aren’t working against their interests, and voters are less incentivized to vote strategically. And even if IRV is only marginally better than FPTP, its popularity gives exposure to the idea that alternative voting systems are worth looking into.

I appreciate the sleuthing! Was an interesting listen

Interesting, I’ll look more into that, thanks