Why Debbie Dingell thinks Joe Biden should stay away from the UAW’s bargaining table
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The center of presidential politics this week was the swing state of Michigan.
Trump won the longtime Democratic stronghold in 2016, and Biden won it back in 2020.
It will be pivotal again in 2024.
And that’s why both candidates flew to metro Detroit on consecutive days this week to insert themselves into the United Auto Workers’ strike against the so-called “Detroit Three” — General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis, the company that owns Chrysler.
On Tuesday, Joe Biden, the self-proclaimed “most pro-union president in history,” appeared in Wayne County, home of Detroit, on a picket line with workers — something no modern president has done during a strike.
His message: that UAW members deserved a raise now that their employers have recovered from the Great Recession, when the Obama-Biden administration pumped billions into the auto industry and UAW workers sacrificed some key benefits.
On Wednesday, former President Donald Trump held an opposing rally in neighboring Macomb County.
According to Trump, the real problem was Joe Biden’s insistence on transitioning the industry to electric vehicles — something that, in the former president’s words, has already sold workers out to “China,” “environmental extremists and the radical left.”
When you unpack the politics of the two Michigan trips a lot of big issues emerge: populism, trade, the U.S.-China relationship, climate change, the long-running debate between environmentalists and unions, and questions about whether the Democrats or Republicans are the party of the working class.
And there is one member of Congress who understands all of this better than just about anyone in Washington: Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.).
In the House, Debbie Dingell is the key player when it comes to the UAW strike: advising — sometimes yelling at — Biden’s top aides about how they should handle the strike; communing with auto workers in union halls whenever she’s back home; mediating fights between the interests of environmentalists and manufacturers.
On this episode of Playbook Deep Dive, host and Playbook co-author Ryan Lizza joins Rep. Dingell in her Washington, D.C., office for wide-ranging conversation about the realities of the UAW strike, including her honest thoughts about Joe Biden’s appearance on the UAW picket line; why she thinks that Democrats may be in danger of losing Michigan in 2024; and why the biggest sticking point to the UAW strike is something you might not even have heard about.
