Harris and Trump on Unions

Plus their histories on the military and veterans affairs

Ric Edelman: It's Monday, October 28th. We are winding down our month-long series on the election. I've given you 34 topics in 19 podcasts, only a few left to go. I wanted to share with you a few comments that I have received from some listeners over the weekend. This one came in first from Paul. He's in Massachusetts.

Paul: “Just read today's podcast on immigration. Many thanks. Excellent, as always. You talked about Kamala's executive leadership skills, or more accurately, the apparent lack thereof. I have read articles that alluded to those, but never summarized as succinctly as you did in today's podcast. I have to say, on the measure of effective, sane leadership, I had Harris way out in front of Trump, perhaps enough so to sway my vote in her favor, despite so many other misgivings and concerns about her positions and likely policies.

After your summary, the effective, sane leadership measure is much closer to deadlocked. Wow, I need to use your spreadsheet now more than ever.”

Ric Edelman: Well, that's really very nice of you to say, Paul. I do hope you use my spreadsheet. You can download it for free. The link is in the show notes so that you can quantitatively evaluate the importance of all 34 of these topics. Some of them will be of much greater concern to you than others. At least that's certainly the case for me.

And on some of them, you'll agree more strongly with a given candidate then not. So, this helps you determine just quantitatively who you more often agree with, and to what extent, to help you figure out who you ought to be voting for. I realize most of you listening to this have already voted, or certainly have already chosen who you're going to vote for.

But frankly, you don't care. You know why? Because all of you are deadlocked. We know this in every poll that's being conducted in the country. It's the undecideds, which are only now, according to the most recent poll that I've seen, only about 5% of the electorate remain undecided. And, that's down from 15% a couple of months ago.

And that's us five percenters who are going to determine who the next president's going to be. So, if you're among the undecided, I encourage you to use my spreadsheet. It may help you reach a decision on who you ought to vote for. It's, I think, going to help me a whole lot over the next couple of days.

 Let's move on to Josh. He's in Virginia. Here's what he wrote to me.

Josh: “Hi, Ric. Thank you for the great series. But all of the topics you've talked about have only really been surface level talks. I think to fully understand and know how to vote, you really need to look up these issues, try to understand the causes, then decide which candidate would be better. Using soundbites or biased resources to investigate these issues is setting yourself and your country up for failure.”

Ric Edelman: Josh, you're absolutely 100% correct. You know, we could spend hours and hours talking about each of these 34 topics. Rather than bore you to death, causing everybody to tune out, I have no choice but to summarize key points or key observations. I have a perspective that in some cases, as you've observed, you're not hearing anywhere else.

So, you're absolutely right. Nobody should be taking the commentary that I'm offering here as the sole and exclusive basis for rendering a decision. I would hope that you'll use this as an opportunity to go learn more, to probe deeper, to use some introspection to help you arrive at a decision on who you feel better about on a given topic and how strongly you agree with their views on that topic.

Anita, she's in Wisconsin. Here's what she wrote to me. This is the final of today's listener comments. Here's Anita.

Anita: “Hi, Ric. I need to thank you for improving my health. You see, I often listen to your podcast while working out on the elliptical machine. Since you've started this series on the election, my frustration with some of your opinions has increased the intensity of my workouts. As a result, my blood pressure has dropped 12 points.”

Ric Edelman: Well, Anita, what can I say? You're welcome. Okay. I'm glad I'm doing somebody some good for some measure on this. Even if it is unintended.

Let's move on to today's topics. Unions and veterans’ affairs. Fascinatingly. the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which endorsed Joe Biden in 2020 has said this year, it is not going to issue an endorsement for any presidential candidate.

The reason they said -- although the Teamsters has historically always voted Democratic -- this year, it has polled its members and discovered that 60 percent of the Teamsters say they support Trump. So, the leadership doesn't want to endorse Trump and in the face of its membership that doesn't like Biden, they have decided not to issue any endorsement this year.

That is, I think, a quite unfortunate development. Kamala Harris has pledged to sign legislation that strengthens unions and to oppose right to work laws that will allow workers to choose not to join a union, even if they become a union shop where they work and not therefore have to pay union dues. And yet, despite of this, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters membership doesn't like Kamala Harris.

In other states, if your company is a union shop, you have to join the union whether you want to or not. You have to pay union dues whether you want to or not. But in a right-to-work state, unions are not allowed to have that requirement. Unions say that this is the real purpose of right-to-work laws: the goal is simply to kill labor unions. Their attitude is, if the majority of workers vote for the union, that requires every worker to join the union, pay union dues, allow the union to represent all workers, and stay in business.

A right-to-work law, which says that a worker doesn't have to join the union even if the overall workers vote to do so -- they say this is a way you undermine the strength of the union. I can see their point. I mean, why pay dues if you don't have to? By the way, how much are union dues? It depends on the union, but it's typically 13% of your pay. This is no small debate here. 20% of households in this country, 1 out of 5, have somebody in that household who's a union member.

Hey, I'm a union member, SAG-AFTRA, the Screen Actors Guild merged with, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. I've been a member of AFTRA for 30-plus years because I hosted a radio show for 30-plus years. And so, I'm a card-carrying union member myself. Same is true in one out of five households.

Donald Trump is doing better with union members than any Republican presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan. And Reagan beat Jimmy Carter. So, were the unions no small reason? This is something to be paying attention to. At the AFL-CIO, the largest union in the country, the members there prefer Trump over Harris by a 2 to 1 margin.

Kamala Harris isn't even polling as well with union voters as Hillary Clinton did in 2016. But nevertheless, Donald Trump seems to manage  himself to annoy union members. Anyway, he has said, for example, that we ought to be able to fire workers who go on strike.

He wants to eliminate worker protections for federal employees.  Right now, it's extraordinarily difficult for a federal employee to be fired. That's to prevent the politicalization of federal workers. But yet, Donald Trump wants to eliminate that job protection for federal workers.

Right now, employers are not allowed to legally fire a worker merely because they went on strike. Donald Trump wants to eliminate that protection. He also says that he prefers to hire more workers than pay overtime to current workers. That's an interesting philosophical debate.

Think about this for a second. You're a boss. You own a company. And you've got more work than your workers can handle. So, you need to keep the assembly line moving more in the day, or you've got this big deadline with a client and you need your staff to keep working. Even though it's well beyond 5 p.m. on Friday, you need them to stay Friday night and work through the weekend. Do you pay those people overtime? If you don't pay them overtime, is that fair? You're making them work more than 40 hours-a-week. Shouldn't they be compensated more for the extra work, working holidays, evenings, weekends? Or, instead of paying people overtime, should you hire more workers?

In other words, which is better? Giving people more money for the extra work they do, or using the extra time to hire more people and increase the number of Americans who are earning a paycheck at all? That's a big debate. among corporations. Donald Trump's attitude is he says he'd rather hire more workers than to pay current workers overtime.

You've got to decide how you feel about that one. Hillary, remember she lost Michigan and Pennsylvania. And if Kamala loses Michigan and Pennsylvania, Kamala is going to lose the election. Unions in those two states represent 15% of the workforce. So how Kamala does with unions will matter an awful lot. Part of her problem, and this is not just with unions, but with voters nationally…part of Kamala's problem is that nobody really knows her very well. Compare her to Joe Biden. Biden who was in the Senate for 36 years. That gave him decades to create a pro-union record. And he ran for president twice before he finally was elected in 2020.

So Joe Biden was a very well-known quantity. You like him or you don't like him, but you know where he stands based on decades and decades of a voting record. Joe Biden, even while he was president, he joined a picket line of striking workers at one point. No president had ever done that. So, it's been easy for union workers to support Joe Biden because of his long record. But nobody really knows what Kamala Harris thinks or what she'll do with employment-related legislation.

Union members also love Donald Trump's pledge that he's going to impose big tariffs on imports. This tariff thing is very controversial. Most economists don't like the tariff issue. They think that it's going to harm the U.S. economy, it's going to reduce our foreign sales, it's going to cost American jobs. But a lot of unions like the big tariffs. Their attitude is that the tariffs mean that overseas goods, if you import them, they'll become a lot more expensive than they already are. Because you're going to have to pay this big tariff, this big tax, when you buy that foreign car, or that foreign clothing, or that foreign television.

And that will get Americans to buy U.S. made goods. And by getting you to buy U.S. made goods, you'll increase U.S. jobs. Which will, by the way, create even more union members. So, the unions love the idea of tariffs. Union members who follow this train of thought dismiss the criticism of the tariffs.

They dispute the fact that other countries will retaliate with tariffs against us, which will reduce our exports, which would actually reduce U. S. jobs. Anyway, the tariffs is a very big controversial element of Donald Trump's economic plan. Unions though, they tend to like his tariffs idea.

Nevertheless, despite all of this stuff, there are dozens of unions that have, in fact, endorsed Kamala Harris. The United Auto Workers, the AFL CIO, the American Federation of Teachers, the National Education Association, the United Steelworkers, the American Federation of Government Employees, the Association of Flight Attendants, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, the International Union of Government Employees, Bricklayers and Allied Craft Workers, the National Union of Healthcare Workers, the United Farm Workers, and a couple of dozen more.

So, I don't want you to think that just because the International Brotherhood of Teamsters refuse to say who they're going to support, or that the AFL-CIO members are supporting Trump over Harris two-to-one margin -- there are in fact, dozens of unions that have endorsed Kamala Harris.

In fact, the AFL-CIO has given Kamala Harris a score of 98% based on her Senate voting record. It's not all that long a record. She was only in the Senate for a few years. Nevertheless, they give her a 98% voting score. When Tim Walz was in the House, you know he served in the House of Representatives before he was elected governor.  While in the House, he got a 93% approval rating from the AFL-CIO.

On the other hand, J. D. Vance, he got a 0% rating for his votes in the Senate. So all that is really very interesting.  My conclusion on the whole union thing: number one, I just have to say that it's not all that important an issue to me. I could go with arguments on both sides very easily. The end of the day, it just isn't that big a deal for me.

One thing that does concern me is that Harris scores 98%, J. D. Vance scores 0%. Both of those represent to me extremist positions. If somebody always loves you or always hates you -- someone always agrees with what you vote and others always disagree with what you vote -- that says to me that you're probably acting in too much of an extremist position. And that worries me because that's the last thing I think our country needs are those who have extreme views in positions of power. So for me, the union issue is a draw.

Let's move on to veterans’ issues. 61% of registered voters who have served in the military say they support Donald Trump, 37% support Kamala Harris. This is the exact same data as when Trump ran against Biden. And Hillary Clinton. In other words, no needle was moved in the debate between T rump and Harris among our veterans. 63% of veterans say they are Republicans and so it just looks to me like the veterans are voting along party lines. If you're a Republican and a veteran, you're voting for Trump. End of story.

This, I gotta say, is a little surprising to me considering Donald Trump's comments about the military over the years. Remember back in 2015, when he dissed John McCain's memory. Because McCain was shot down over Vietnam. or when Trump called soldiers killed in action, losers and suckers.  He suggested that the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff be executed at one point. His lawyers once argued in court that a president who orders SEAL Team 6 to assassinate his political enemies should be immune from prosecution. He also said he would be willing to use U.S. troops against U.S. citizens if he felt like it.

So, I'm a little surprised that veterans are so favorable about Trump. On the other hand, while he was in office, Donald Trump signed a bill into law, ensuring that military veterans would continue receiving health care, even in the civilian private sector, when they couldn't get care from the VA. He said: “the veterans have poured out their sweat and blood and tears for this country for so long. And it's time that they're recognized and it's time that we now take care of them and take care of them properly. This new law is a good start, but there's still much work to do. We will fight each and every day to deliver the long-awaited reforms. Our veterans deserve and to protect those who have so courageously protected each and every one of us.”

So I guess as a veteran, they are choosing to look at that law and look at that comment as opposed to Trump's other comments that he has made about veterans. For my take, like on so many of these issues, there seemed to be two Donald Trumps, what I call ad lib Trump and teleprompter Trump. I think we would all be happier if all we had to deal with was teleprompter Trump.

As for Kamala Harris, she has supported Joe Biden's major initiatives on active duty, military and veterans, including a law that expanded veterans benefits. But both Biden and Harris are responsible for the disastrous military withdrawal from Afghanistan. Remember, she has claimed she had a key role in that decision making leading to that disaster.

And her voting record on military issues is mixed. The most important annual bill before Congress on the military is the National Defense Authorization Act. In 2017, her first year as a senator, she voted for the bill. But the next year, 2018, she voted against it. In 2019, she missed the vote. And in 2020, she voted no.

Now, running for president, I haven't been able to find anything on her campaign website that even mentions the military or veterans. While she was in the Senate in 2020, she voted to restrict Trump's ability to respond militarily to Iran. She also voted against the bipartisan bill that would have given military support to Israel and Jordan and sanctions against Syria.

And she also routinely opposed pay increases for the military. And both she and Tim Walz, her VP nominee, they opposed a bipartisan bill called the Mission Act that would have given veterans choice in where they get medical care. I mean, it seems that she's pretty tone deaf when it comes to the military.

In 2021, for example, right before Memorial Day, she tweeted “Enjoy the long weekend” as opposed to a message honoring our veterans on Memorial Day. So, I figure that despite the terrible comments Trump has made about the military and veterans, the reason that two out of three of them support him is because they're convinced he would be a stronger defender of our country as commander-in-chief than Kamala Harris would.

And on that point, I agree. So just as I gave the topic of national security to Trump, I give him veterans affairs as well. We've got two topics left, and they're big. Tomorrow, character, ethics, morals, and values. And then on Wednesday, the vice presidents.

And then finally on Thursday, I will summarize the entire list of 34 topics that I've shared with you these past 19 podcasts, and I will give you my conclusion. Join me tomorrow as we discuss Donald Trump's character.

If you like what you're hearing, be sure to follow and subscribe to the show, wherever you get your podcasts, Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and remember leave a review on Apple podcasts. I read them all. Never miss an episode of The Truth About Your Future. Follow and subscribe on your favorite podcast app.  

I'll see you tomorrow.

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Links from today’s show:  

Click here for Ric's worksheet to help you evaluate the candidates

The 34 Issues of Election 2024 – The Daily Podcasts https://thetayf.com/blogs/this-weeks-stories/tagged/election-2024

Kamala Harris Official Campaign Website Policy Page: https://www.kamalaharris.com/issues/

Donald Trump Official Campaign Website Policy Page: https://www.donaldjtrump.com/platform

11/13 Webinar - An Innovative Way to Generate Income in a World of Declining Rates: https://www.thetayf.com/pages/november-13-2024-an-innovative-way-to-generate-income

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