Gender, class … and fracking?

KCRW's Left, Right & Center

KCRW

352865, News

4.2 • 4.8K Ratings

🗓️ 11 October 2024

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Teamsters President Sean O’Brien recently announced that the influential union wouldn’t be endorsing a presidential candidate. Meanwhile, other major unions are supporting Kamala Harris, but she’s struggling to secure the working-class male vote. Have Democrats lost the ability to connect with this bloc, or is something else at play? And what do we mean when we say “working class” these days?

There was a lot of attention on Kamala Harris’ previous stances on fracking when she joined the presidential race. In 2019, Harris was firmly against fracking, but has since reversed course. It’s seen as a key issue in the swing state of Pennsylvania, but the industry actually accounts for less than half of 1% of jobs there. With such little impact on the state’s economy, was supporting the controversial form of energy production necessary?

A Drag Queen Story Hour in Lancaster, Pennsylvania made the town’s library another front in the culture war. As part of our 50 states series, KCRW discusses how to overcome the urge to tune out the people and ideas we disagree with and find opportunities to unite.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hey everybody welcome to left right and center. I am David Green. We have taken our
0:05.7	show on the road this week to a state that just may play a central role in
0:11.4	deciding the next president of the United States and that is
0:14.0	the state of Pennsylvania.
0:15.4	We are in front of a lovely audience at Franklin and Marshall College here in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
0:20.9	Just a fun fact, I grew up right across the street, like literally across the street. My mom taught psychology here. This is really coming home for me.
0:30.0	And I am happy to show off Lancaster to Sarah Isker.
0:33.3	Mo Aleithi is missing the chance to see my hometown,
0:35.7	but Nomeki Konst is back.
0:37.2	She's a political commentator, former Democratic strategist.
0:40.4	She served as a national fundraising co-chair for President Obama's 2012 campaign and later was an advisor to Bernie Sanders
0:46.7	No, Mickey, thank you not only for coming back to the show but for making the trip to Pennsylvania to do it with us.
0:51.0	This is so fun. This is, I mean, we dream of showing up in
0:55.5	swing states and learning what's happening. Yeah. What am I top sliver? You're just
0:59.7	taking me for
1:05.0	grind at this point? I don't, thank you too, Sarah for being here.
1:06.0	This is part of what happens here. I get in trouble with Sarah.
1:09.0	So we are both in a swing state. We're all in a swing state, the three of us.
1:15.0	And I want to focus on one of the demographics that we talk about so often when we talk about states like Pennsylvania and in any presidential
1:25.7	campaign and that's the working class vote. This is the time in a campaign when union organizing can be so crucial, I think, particularly for Democrats,
1:38.0	but they can't count on that as much this year.
1:41.0	We saw the Teamsters Union decide not to endorse a candidate, either
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from KCRW, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of KCRW and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.