Both parties are charmed by romantic parlor socialism.
Word is the Biden White House is torn. On the one hand, the United Auto Workers strike is a searing critique of this administration’s environmentalist policies and the price instability its profligacy has produced. On the other, it’s a labor action, and organized labor is beyond criticism. For a president who has styled himself the “most pro-union president leading the most pro-union administration in American history,” failing to endorse the union’s extreme remedy to stalled salary negotiations with the “Big Three” automakers amounts to hypocrisy. As such, President Biden now “faces pressure to join auto workers picket line,” the Independent reported.
But it’s not just the left that is putting pressure on the president. As part of his effort to counterprogram against the second Republican presidential-primary debate, which he intends to avoid, former president Donald Trump is off to Detroit. There, he plans to meet and commiserate with striking autoworkers. Trump’s play is designed to advance the tantalizing notion that he can transform the GOP into a workers’ party — a political vehicle to which the working-class and suburbanites alike will gravitate, forming the basis for a majority coalition to last the ages.
Both parties are besotted with a proletarian fantasy that has left the majority of Americans on the sidelines. It is somewhat inexplicable that neither party appears interested in even acknowledging, much less endorsing, the concerns of car buyers — a dramatically larger pool of potential voters whose financial hardships have become acute.
If we had a party in America dedicated to promoting the interests of car consumers, that party might make note of the fact that the cost of used cars and trucks has increased by 40 percent. They might note that new cars will cost you, on average, $8,000 more than they did prior to Joe Biden’s inauguration. They might observe that the cost of insuring a vehicle is up by 14 percent and the price of car repairs will run you 20 percent more than you’re probably used to. And that party would be remiss if it didn’t remind its constituents that this labor action is going to increase those costs, particularly if the UAW’s champions are successful.
The union is now seeking a 36 percent pay hike, down from 46 percent, over the next four years. It hasn’t budged from its other demands, including 40 hours of pay for a 32-hour workweek, more generous pension benefits, and an end to the tiered wage system in which newer and part-time employees earn less compensation. A strike would “send already-inflated vehicle prices higher,” the Associated Press reported. So, too, would a settlement along the lines sought by UAW leadership.
And yet, because both parties are now charmed by the romantic parlor socialism that seduces the overeducated functionaries who so insist upon themselves, Democrats and Republicans alike are abandoning the interests of a much larger pool of voters to promote those of a much smaller contingent of rent-seeking activist groups. Because politics is, at root, a numbers game, this seems like a profoundly stupid trade-off.