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🗓️ 15 September 2023
⏱️ 51 minutes
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Joe Biden likes to boast that he is the most pro-union president in American history. His fondness for unions, though, has been tested by a wave of strikes. In office, President Biden has regularly voiced support for workers, and handed unions more power. But white working-class Americans, once his party’s reliable base, now mostly vote Republican. Can Democrats win back working-class voters?
The Economist’s Simon Rabinovitch assesses Joe Biden’s union credentials. The Economist’s James Bennet ponders one of the great “what-ifs” of American political history. And political scientist Ruy Teixeira considers how Democrats could solve their working class problem.
John Prideaux hosts with Charlotte Howard and Idrees Kahloon.
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0:00.0 | The railroads around Chicago were in chaos. |
0:07.5 | Workers for the Pullman Palace car company had gone on strike after the company's owner |
0:11.4 | had cut their wages but not their rents. |
0:14.8 | In sympathy, other railway workers refused to handle any Pullman train cars. |
0:21.2 | Federal troops were sent to try and get the railways moving again. |
0:25.2 | But the striking workers rioted and the troops shot at the crowd, killing some of the strikers. |
0:32.3 | President Grover Cleveland, fearing a backlash from working-class voters, offered an olive branch. |
0:39.0 | Many states already had a holiday that celebrated working Americans. |
0:43.2 | He signed a bill creating a federal one and since 1894, Labor Day has both marked the |
0:48.8 | end of summer and the toil of the American working class. |
0:53.5 | Joe Biden is a more avowedly pro-worker president than most but like his predecessor Grover |
0:58.9 | Cleveland, he has a problem with working-class voters. |
1:04.0 | I'm John Prado and this is Chex and Balance from the Economist. |
1:10.0 | Each week we take one big theme shaping American politics and explore it in depth. |
1:23.4 | Today, can Democrats win back working-class voters? |
1:38.0 | Joe Biden likes to boast that he's the most pro-union president in American history. |
1:43.1 | His fondness for unions though has been tested by a wave of strikes. |
1:48.5 | In office, President Biden has regularly voiced support for workers in handed unions |
1:53.0 | more power. |
1:54.8 | But white working-class Americans, once his party's reliable base, now mostly vote Republican. |
2:01.8 | And Democrats ever solve their working-class problem. |
2:19.3 | With me this week to talk about unions and the Democratic party's relationship with the |
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