October is here, and it seems like we’re getting our October surprise on the first day of the month. The International Longshoremen’s Association has gone on strike on the East and Gulf coasts. This is their first strike since 1977.
With the economy, and in particular inflation, being the issues they are, this seems to have the potential to tip the election back in Trump’s favor. What do you all think?
I think it would be better to have both the strike and its effect on the election in the same thread, so please feel free to discuss both the strike itself and the politics of it in this thread. If mods feel this should be two separate threads, then my apologies for trying to lump them together.
I think an “October surprise” is more of a campaign thing, where one camp unveils some scandal that may negatively affect the other. This does not seem connected to either camp, and besides, Trump isn’t smart enough to engineer a strike like this.
Could it impact the election? Yes, possibly, if shortages are felt across a wide enough slice of the economy. Biden has been strongly pro union, so he will hope for a resolution before the election - and if not, I can definitely see the Trump camp making hay over this. Not sure it will move the needle much but it’s going to be a distraction the longer it goes on.
Based on the lack of any movement in the polls based on things like the ongoing ME conflict, Trump claiming immigrants are eating pets, felony guilty verdicts, assassination attempts, etc, I find it hard to believe a union action the effect of which won’t even be fully felt by Election Day will have any impact…
But maybe this is the one thing that finally moves voters out of their locked-in positions.
Funny thing about unions is how traditionally they were stalwart dem votes. Something of a switch has been taking place for the last few election cycles where the GOP has been picking up votes here but at the same time losing their own formerly stalwart college educated voters to dems in the suburbs.
Culture war issues and immigration policy is driving that. It’s why despite Biden bailing out the Teamsters pensions, their union head spoke at the RNC and then decided to sit out an endorsement of Harris even after Trump bragged about being anti-union.
I think there is a twisted sort of irony where this administration has been the most pro-union in decades yet they’re not going to get a sizeable increase to go with it despite the Trump administration being anti-union and the man himself having a career of bragging of stiffing blue collar workers.
It’s been brewing for months. Retailers ordering for Christmas were ahead of the game and began stocking up months ago so not to be caught out once Christmas shopping begins.
The media pretty much ignored the coming strike because you can’t sell newspaper on something happening weeks or months down the road. Media has been occupied stirring the political pot and typical day to day events.
I see this as several October surprises.
One is the expanding war in the Middle East. Biden has been reluctant to push hard on Israel. Trump can play that card and hurt Kamala.
The Alaska Events. Chinese and Russian warships and planes are testing America in joint efforts we have not seen before. The video of the recent and dangerous flyby of a Russian fighter cutting off an American fighter jet is quite provocative .
Taiwan. The recent escalations of war games by the Chinese, including actual flyovers of the island is again pushing the U.S. Now there are reports China is expanding its provocation with the Philippines and what would America do.
Disinformation. It began with all sorts of fake social media AI images pulling at heartstrings with fake American military images (“Wish me a happy brirthday!”), fake disable people images. Then it expanded to include fake news. The Department of Justice went after some of those sites as they are run by Russian threat actors. Now the fake AI news has expanded on social media, working to support Trump (because once in office he can be manipulated) and discrediting Kamala.
Maybe drifting toward the realm of conspiracy theory, but labor unions and various left-wing organizations in the US have always gotten a lot of support from Russia (knowingly or unknowingly). They supported Democrats as long as Russian interests were more aligned to Dems. Now Republicans are all but open supporters for Russia, and surprise surprise, all the lefty groups are threading various needles of non-support for Dems or outright support for Republicans.
Not every destabilizing force in American politics has been malign (for example the civil rights movement was just and moral), but wherever there’s a cultural rift that fractures and destabilizes, Russia is always there to help twist the knife. Not just in Russia but in every country with democratic aspirations. That’s one reason (of many) why it’s so important to help Ukraine. It’s payback and deterrence owed to Ukraine specifically, but salubrious for the whole world in general.
Making a big deal out of a strike conflicts with their ability to blame the price of bananas on Biden inflation.
That’s why the price of eggs is because of Biden inflation and not the pandemic that’s resulted in the killing off of a significant number of chickens.
If the facts conflict with the narrative, the narrative is what gets pushed, and the facts be damned.
[quote=“snowthx, post:3, topic:1008330, full:true”]
I think an “October surprise” is more of a campaign thing, where one camp unveils some scandal that may negatively affect the other. This does not seem connected to either camp, and besides, Trump isn’t smart enough to engineer a strike like this.[/quote]
It doesn’t have to be a scandal. The first time I heard the phrase used was in regard to the possibility that the 52 remaining hostages in Iran would be released just before the 1980 election, to give Carter a short-term boost.
Anyone in this industry who wants Mr. Trillion Dollar Tariff as our President should do us all a favor and retire to a nice farm upstate.
I also support unions, and 50% raises over 6 years seems pretty solid to me. They seem to want their pound of flesh from a 2 year once in a lifetime windfall that is long over.
I don’t doubt there is pernicious stirring of the pot by outside actors. We just found out a few weeks ago several pro-Trump media commentators were being funded to the tune of millions of dollars by Russian propaganda operations.
However specifically with unions there has been a shifting of the guard for quite a long while and I think if there is a bullhorn that can explain that it would be Rush Limbaugh and the dominance of right wing talk radio. Because you have to take into context that even in the old days when blue collar labor was staunchly pro-Democrat in their voting habit, many of them were also pretty socially conservative on a bunch of issues. However so was the Democratic Party and so with the schism of social issues a lot narrower between the two parties what really separated them was economics. The idea of the nuclear family, a man being the breadwinner and the wife the homemaker, opposition to homosexuality and racism existed in union leadership back then. Cesar Chavez’s statements on immigration were closer to Trump than a Democrat today too.
I think what started to change started from the 1980s which coincided with Limbaugh and others like Michael Savage pushing their views to an audience that was quite blue collar about how those things were being taken away by liberalism and the end result is now being anti-woke is now a big thing. It’s a long project but there was not a counter to conservative talk radio being blasted through the airwaves to a large audience of white non college educated men.
To the extent that the strike timing is election related it could be that the Unions think that Biden will want this taken care of quickly before the election and so will pressure the companies to make a deal.
I don’t think they had any particular election timing in mind for the strike, as it happened on the exact day their contract ended. My understanding is that their contract end dates have historically been Oct 1st.
This afternoon a judge released Special Counsel Jack Smith’s 165 page filing against Donald Trump for his alleged interference in the 2020 election. These allegations are designed to be immune to the Supreme Court ruling that a President’s executive actions are immune from federal prosecution.
