At no point in his career has Biden proven willing to take the slightest political risk on behalf of workers. His appearances in union halls occur when he needs something from labor. On the other hand, when Biden went to vacation in the Hamptons during the 2011 Verizon strike, workers in the area sought him out “just to possibly get a show of support, a thumb’s-up, a head nod, anything” – to no avail. That same year in Wisconsin, labor leaders specifically asked Biden to come to rally their resistance to the brutal, ultimately successful attack by Scott Walker; Biden declined.
Nor does Biden have a public policy record favorable to the working class. In 1977-1978, during unions’ big push for labor law reform, he vacillated for months and sabotaged the proposal with public criticism. He voted for Nafta and supported the Trans-Pacific Partnership. He authored the punishing 2005 bankruptcy bill, a reward to creditors and punishment to debtors. Worse still, he has been one of the main legislative architects of mass incarceration, a regime that has devastated the heavily policed and punished American working class.
When Biden cracked a joke several weeks ago about his habit of touching women without consent, he was speaking to the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. While the IBEW today takes a strong public stand for workplace equality, both the union and the industry have deep histories of ignoring sexual harassment and racial discrimination. According to a 2013 study, only one-quarter of women in the building trades believe they are equally respected on the job. This context makes Biden’s joking about the accusation of a Latina before that particular crowd seem altogether more insidious. Harassment, after all, is nothing if not a workplace issue. You’d only joke about it to a union crowd if you didn’t think women were really workers.
This is all the worse in a moment that invites broad and radical vision. More workers went on strike in 2018 than in any year since 1986. Over 90% of those who did worked in either healthcare or education – sectors that were not included in the mid-century “basic bargain”.
What’s remarkable is that Biden’s proletarian minstrel act has worked for this long. When he dropped out of the 1988 presidential race, it was after getting caught plagiarizing a monologue by the British Labour party leader, Neil Kinnock, on his coalminer roots. Biden’s spokesperson explained that, while Biden had no immediate relations who were coalminers, the “people that his ancestors grew up with in the Scranton region, and in general the people of that region were coalminers.” In fact, Biden did have an ancestor in the coal industry, Patrick F Blewitt, who died in 1911. But he wasn’t a miner – he was a boss.