UNION WEAK — Kamala Harris’ problem connecting with working-class voters finally got real this week. On Wednesday, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters announced it would not endorse a candidate in the presidential election — a break with decades of precedent for the influential union, which has backed Democrats for president since the 1990s. It wasn’t altogether unexpected. Teamsters President Sean O’Brien made waves earlier this summer when he spoke at the Republican National Convention — and was subsequently snubbed from the Democrats’ conclave in Chicago. And the Teamsters PAC earlier this year raised eyebrows when it donated $5,000 to the conservative populist Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) In the aftermath of the non-endorsement, the Harris campaign is downplaying the snub from Teamsters leadership. A number of Teamsters locals in swing states broke with the union’s leadership and backed Harris, the campaign points out, along with the Black caucus in the union, and the West Coast caucus. All told, the Harris campaign says those Teamsters groups endorsing her candidacy add up to more than a million members. That’s all true, but it also papers over some serious problems for Harris with working-class voters — whether in unions or not. When President Joe Biden was still in the race, a Teamsters straw poll showed him beating Trump with its union members by 46 to 37 percent. Now, 58 percent of Teamsters members overall are backing Trump, according to internal polling from the union. That erosion in working class support can be seen in broader polls as well. In 2020, Biden lost non-college educated voters by 8 points, according to Pew, while Hillary Clinton lost them by 7 points. Now, averages of recent polls show Harris losing them by nearly 12 points, even after clawing some back with a solid debate performance. The decline is occurring even as Harris closes the “trust gap” on the economy with the overall electorate. A recent Midwest swing state poll showed that Harris has nearly closed the “trust gap” with Trump on the question of the economy, whereas Biden had been losing the issue handily. Those shifts may suggest that most of the folks who are feeling better about Harris’ economic platform are not the working-class voters who helped deliver Democrats the Midwestern “Blue Wall” states in 2020 and 2022. Instead, they are likely professional class voters, many of them in suburbs, who have college educations but were uneasy about Biden — the fabled “Nikki Haley voter” that Democrats have been trying so hard to woo.
And that shift makes sense when you consider Harris’ economic message since she ascended to the top of the ticket, which has been squarely aimed at professional-class concerns. Whereas Biden made manufacturing and industrial policy the centerpiece of his campaign speeches — and still does as a lame duck — Harris barely mentions those policies on the campaign trail. Instead she is focusing much more on elements of the so-called “care economy,” like a child tax credit, as well as helping new homeowners and small businesses.
The Harris camp downplays that shift and argues that her economic message is more focused on lowering costs for the middle class than any element of the “care economy.” The vice president “is proud to have helped create 800,000 manufacturing jobs by casting the tie-breaking vote on historic clean energy jobs legislation and helping pass the high-tech manufacturing CHIPS bill to make us more competitive with China and the bipartisan infrastructure law,” spokesperson Lauren Hitt said. But that statement — delivered after our article pointing out the economic pivot — is one of the few times you’ll hear the campaign or candidate talk about the Biden administration’s trillion-dollar investment in infrastructure and clean energy manufacturing. The only other time recently came when Harris touted the industrial policies near the end of the debate with Trump. But that came after a detailed outline of her other economic proposals, and was in response to a question on climate change — not the economy. The shift away from industrial policy rhetoric worries some Democrats in the Midwest who still rely on working-class voters, particularly union members. “Consider me in the camp pushing on our future president to keep that industrial policy front and center,” Rep. Elissa Slotkin, the Democratic nominee for a hotly contested U.S. Senate seat in Michigan, said after a campaign event in Macomb County, a one-time working-class bellwether that has voted twice for Donald Trump. “If you’re not talking about the economy and the future of work in the Midwest, you’re having half a conversation with the voters.”
But even if Harris does pivot back to industrial policy, it’s unclear if touting those policies will win over manufacturing sector voters who have been drifting toward Republicans in the Trump era. In Wisconsin this summer, even some factory employees who worked at facilities funded by Biden’s policies and visited by the president still told POLITICO they planned on voting for Trump — they dinged Biden for inflation, even though they themselves received a double-digit raise this year. While the Harris campaign may downplay those dynamics, it’s clear it understands her background as a California prosecutor and public servant may not resonate in the Rust Belt the same way Biden’s did.
Case in point: their nomination of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Midwestern stalwart with a background of supporting industrial policies and unions. At a recent Biden rally in Michigan, some union members who said they were still evaluating Harris’ economic policies praised her decision to choose Walz.
“I think [Harris] does speak to us” as union members, said Nick Ciaramitaro, a commissioner on the Michigan Civil Service Commission and former director of legislation and public policy for Michigan AFSCME Council 25. “I think Walz has helped her a lot with that.”
Harris could still overcome her difficulties with working-class voters, holding on to some with industrial policy rhetoric and adding more professional-class voters to her coalition. But long term, the situation points to the continued transformation of the Democratic Party from its roots as a working-class coalition to one based on credentialed, more educated voters. [There’s more on that in the latest episode of our podcast, POLITICO Energy]. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s author at gbade@politico.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @GavinBade. | 
