Tamara Keith and Amy Walter on the political power of organized labor

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• Geoff Bennett:

  The political power of organized labor, the motivating force of abortion and elections, and the limits of age on elected leaders, all questions swirling this week for our Politics Monday team to discuss.

  That's Amy Walter of The Cook Political Report With Amy Walter and Tamara Keith of NPR.

  Great to see you both laboring on this Labor Day.

  So, well, Tam, we will start with you, because President Biden, as we reported, he spent the day in Philadelphia. He delivered this speech where he touted his economic record, his jobs record, and he took more than a few jabs at Donald Trump's record. Take a listen.

• Joe Biden:

  When the last guy was here, you were shipping jobs to China. Now we're bringing jobs home from China.

• Geoff Bennett:

  So, tell us more about what the president said and the strategy behind the speech.

• Tamara Keith, National Public Radio:

  So this is part of what the White House has taken to calling Bidenomics.

  And their pitch is that Biden's policies are good for working people, that, yes, it's a climate change, trying to prevent climate change and spending money on clean energy is important, but, also, it's creating jobs. Yes, this CHIPS bill exists, but it's also about bringing jobs into the United States.

  So that is the pitch that he's making. It's a pitch he's made frequently. It's not a pitch that's really sinking in yet with the American public.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Amy, what about that?

  Because, as you both well know, big labor helps build the backbone of the Biden base. Does Scranton Joe need to find a new approach to shore up that part of the electorate, or what?

  (LAUGHTER)

• Amy Walter, The Cook Political Report:

  Well, it's a really good point that you're making about being Scranton Joe and his relationship with labor, which goes very deep, right, in his tenure in political office.

  But the reality that Joe Biden is facing is similar to what other Democrats have been facing for these last, let's call it 10 or 15 years, as white working-class voters — that used to be the core base of the Democratic Party — now have moved over and are voting Republican.

  It didn't start under Donald Trump, but it certainly got — it was on, like, super speed, right, movement of white working-class voters from D to R. And I think Biden understands this, Democrats understand this, that they cannot win national elections and lose working-class voters.

  And what 2020 showed was not just the worry about white working-class voters moving from D to R, but also working-class voters who are Latino, who are Asian, who are Black. And that is what this pitch, I think, is really about, which is, the Democratic Party is the party of the working class, not the Republican Party.

  It's also fascinating for me to watch a Democratic president, the first Democratic president since Bill Clinton, who has been basically anti-trade and has been very tough on China.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Yes.

• Amy Walter:

  You think about, it was Bill Clinton who pushed NAFTA. It was Barack Obama who pushed TPP.

  Now you have a Democratic president whose positions on some of these issues, especially on China, look a lot more like Donald Trump than previous Democratic presidents.

• Tamara Keith:

  And this White House is also very aware that organized labor is more popular among the American people right now than it has been in years.

• Geoff Bennett:

  It's the summer of strikes. Yes,

• Tamara Keith:

  It is the summer of strikes. And President Biden said he isn't worried about the auto workers striking. It's not clear that that lack of worry is based in reality.

  I was talking to Jim Messina, who ran the 2012 campaign for Obama. And the fact that Biden is with a labor union today, yes, it's Labor Day, but it could be any day of the week, because he loves organized labor so much. Jim Messina said that, during the — 2012, Joe Biden would just call him up.

  The vice president would call him up and be like: "Hey, can you get me out with my guys? Like, I want to go out on the trail. Get me out with my guys."

  And what that meant was, he wanted to go to a union hall. He wanted to be around laborers, around union workers. He feels at home with them. And so I think we can expect to see scenes like we saw today as part of this campaign a lot.

• Geoff Bennett:

  And, Tam, you were traveling with the president when he went to Florida this past weekend to survey the damage left by the hurricane and to meet with Idalia victims.

  And even though Ron DeSantis chose not to meet with President Biden, there was another Republican who did, Florida Senator Rick Scott. How did that come to be? And Scott also heaped praise upon the president for the response.

• Tamara Keith:

  He absolutely did.

  In some ways, Rick Scott took on the role of — the more traditional role of a governor. And he is a former governor who has dealt with hurricanes before. He took on a role that Ron DeSantis didn't take on, because he sort of pointedly snubbed President Biden's visit, despite the fact that, with two previous disasters, DeSantis was willing to appear with Biden.

  But here's the thing. A bipartisan "We're coming together to help the people" image is great for Joe Biden, not so great for Ron DeSantis, who was running for president in the Republican — on the Republican side and doesn't want a repeat of the embrace that Chris Christie had with then-President Obama.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Let's talk a bit more about the Republicans running for president, because Labor Day is the start of the fall campaign.

  And Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin, who isn't running for president, but there are Republicans who want him to…

• Amy Walter:

  Yes.

• Geoff Bennett:

  … he faced — he faces a big test of his political brand come November, because there are state legislature elections, and abortion will be on the ballot in many ways in Virginia.

• Amy Walter:

  Yes, this is really pretty fascinating.

  There are two pieces of this. One is, you're right. Glenn Youngkin is being chatted up by many folks in this town who are frustrated with Ron DeSantis' collapse and want to see an alternative to Donald Trump in the election.

  However, starting a campaign after the November elections is really hard to do. Logistically,you can't get on the ballot in a number of states because the ballot access is already closed. And then putting a campaign together six weeks or so before Iowa, that is incredibly difficult.

  So there's that piece that we're going to watch. But the other piece is this issue of abortion. Glenn Youngkin is talking about the fact that, if he gets a Republican-controlled legislature — that's what's on the line in Virginia this year — he will pass a 15-week ban in that state.

  Now, Virginia is one of the last Southern states to not have any restrictive abortion laws on the books since Roe v. Wade failed. That's a pretty risky decision to make in a state as blue as Virginia is. If he succeeds, he is able to do a couple of things, one, to say, there's something about the way I pitched this and how I presented it that really connected, even in a blue state.

  And this is path forward for Republicans. If it fails, Democrats say once again, whenever abortion is on the ballot, in whatever form it is, it is problematic for Republicans.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Especially in a state like Virginia.

• Tamara Keith:

  Absolutely.

  Virginia is a state that has two Democratic U.S. senators. It is a state that is more moderate, is more purple. It is not — it's not a red meat Republican red state. And Glenn Youngkin was elected as wearing the red vest and red fleece vest, looking like a suburban dad.

  And he was elected on this wave of parents and others being upset about COVID and about schools and all of this stuff. But, as he has served as governor — most recently, he came out with guidelines for trans — how schools should deal with transgender students.

  And a large number of very large school districts rejected those guidelines out of hand, including some that were not in more liberal counties or some in more moderate counties. So I think that he has seen as governor some challenge to being a MAGA-type Republican.

  And he — and there's just sort of like this challenge with his brand, because he both wants to be suburban dad and also went out campaigning with Kari Lake, for instance, in Arizona.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Yes.

  And, to this day, there are still Democrats who say that it's not that Youngkin won in Virginia; it's that Terry McAuliffe lost in Virginia.

• Amy Walter:

  Lost.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Amy Walter and Tamara Keith, thanks. Thanks so much.

• Tamara Keith:

  You're welcome.