The Morning Jolt
Striking Dockworkers Agree to Take a Measly 62 Percent Raise and Not Spoil the Election for Democrats
On the menu today: The dockworkers’ strike is suspended for three months; Axios notices that President Biden has largely disappeared from the public eye; and an interesting murmur emerges about the Wisconsin Senate race. Plus a reminder that electronic toll collection like E-ZPass can save lives.
The Democrats’ ‘Just Win, Baby’ Mentality
Good news. After four days of a strike that shut down the nation’s ports on the East and Gulf Coasts, an agreement between the International Longshoremen’s Association and the United States Maritime Alliance yanked out the self-inflicted dagger thrust into America’s economic heart. The dockworkers will be back to work until at least January 15, while negotiations continue.
The two sides have agreed on wages — merely a 62 percent raise over the next six years. Remember, before the strike began, the ILA had turned down an offer of a miserly near–50 percent raise over the next six years.
In the year 2030, do you think you’ll be making 62 percent more than you make right now?
Still, you’ve got to figure that Harold Daggett, the ILA boss, realized he’d gotten way out on a thin limb with his threats to “cripple” the economy a month or so before Election Day. If the New York Post can fly a drone over his mansion, so can everyone else.
Or perhaps the ILA wasn’t sure they wanted the public to see Florida National Guardsmen rolling up to the ports in that state and doing the work union members were refusing to do, as the southeastern region digs out from the deadly consequences of a devastating hurricane.
One Morning Jolt reader observed that, over at Slate, associate editor for business Nitish Pahwa wrote a column arguing, “Everyone is getting the dockworkers strike all wrong. The striking union deserves your support.”
It’s safe to assume the readership of Slate is pretty darn left of center and at least instinctively sympathetic to union workers going on strike to secure higher wages and resist automation, which could end up replacing them somewhere down the road.
And yet the reaction in the comments section for that article, though not uniform, was a far cry from enthusiastic support for the ILA:
- “Meet Harold Daggett, the James Comey of 2024.”
- “Nice economy you got there, would be a shame if something happened to it. Bada, Bing!”
- “Union president, who made $900k last year and each son made 600k in ‘undefined roles’, meets with Trump for photo ops. Couple weeks later, and just before the election, he shuts down the ports. Someone is getting paid here.”
- “Just a 77 percent pay raise for the highest paid blue-collar workers, plus preventing modernization. This is how St. Louis lost in the steamboat vs. railroad days. Don’t oppose modern technology, you’ll just get left behind.”
- “Slate’s take on this strike won’t age like a fine wine, if this strike continues, and helps elect former President Donald Trump. It will be very easy for voters (and Republican Leadership) to connect the dock strike to delayed Hurricane Helene recovery efforts, delayed medical supplies, and rising prices.”
- “None of this needed to be settled before the election. If this results in inflation that throws the election to Trump, we’re all doomed. They should have passed a temporary extension, and resolved this in a month.”
- “I’ll support the Unions as long as the grocery store has toilet paper and cat food. Once those start disappearing from the shelves and I’m going to start rooting for a Reaganesque solution for the Longshore Union.”
- “Comment sections have basically taken food off your postal carrier’s table, if not outright killed them. I suggest you all exchange mailing addresses and make it right.”
Democrats want to win the presidential election. They have fully embraced a complete Al Davis “just win, baby” mentality. If that means some traditional Democratic interest group gets the short end of the stick, there will be time and money to make amends after the election. But no part of the Democratic coalition is allowed to put its personal or parochial priorities ahead of the collective priority of winning the presidential (and down-ticket) elections. There is a discipline, focus, and clear prioritization at work on the Democratic side that simply isn’t matched by the disparate factions on the Republican side.
In other union news, our James Lynch reports: “The International Association of Firefighters (IAFF) executive board narrowly voted Thursday against endorsing a presidential candidate after listening to members’ views on the issues, the union announced. The vote not to endorse a candidate passed by a 1.2 percentage-point margin.”
For Democrats, that’s a real ominous rattle in the engine. Since 1984, the IAFF has endorsed Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, Bill Clinton (twice), Al Gore, John Kerry, Barack Obama (twice), no one in 2016, and Joe Biden last cycle.
Say, did anyone else notice that the only two Democratic nominees not endorsed by the firefighters’ union since the “Where’s the Beef?” commercial are the two women?
The MIA President
President Biden’s brief and rare public comments are more terse and indecipherable than ever.
Give Axios some credit for studying Biden’s schedule and adding numbers to what we all know: Joe Biden has largely checked out of the traditional duties and roles of the presidency. We barely see him — that’s what his staff wants, that’s what the Harris campaign wants, that’s what congressional Democrats want, and apparently that’s what the first lady wants, too.
Biden hasn’t scheduled public events in 43 of the 75 days since he dropped his re-election bid, a reflection of the 81-year-old president’s unpopularity and age limitations as he approaches his last three months in office.
- Vice President Kamala Harris — who has praised Biden but doesn’t routinely talk about him in her speeches — has had just one campaign event with him along with a few official events in Washington. . . .
Since dropping out on July 21, Joe Biden has scheduled just two public appearances before 11am, none before 10am, and five after 5pm, according to an Axios analysis of Biden’s schedules.
- With one exception, all publicly scheduled calls and meetings with other world leaders have been between 11am and 5pm — a sign of how Biden’s staff continues to narrow his work hoursas they manage his stamina.
The son of good friends recently suffered a concussion while playing football. Thankfully, he’s fine. I just hope that when the trainers were doing the concussion test and asked him, “Who’s the president?” he answered, “Well, if you’re asking who’s running the country, that’s kind of a complicated question at the moment . . .”
White House spokesman Andrew Bates told Axios that President Biden “works around the clock, long before and after these times, as the historic results he continues to achieve weekly for the American people demonstrate.” Uh-huh.
It’s the same spin as before Biden withdrew from the presidential race, that we’d just missed him doing cartwheels down the hall. Why is no one over in the White House capable of conceding even an inch on this? Why do we never get an answer along the lines of: “Yes, President Biden is approaching his 82nd birthday, and you can see it in his walk and hear it when he talks. Long trips tire him out. But he’s still got the same judgment, the same experience, and enough gas in the tank to fulfill his duties, helped by a capable staff, until he waves farewell on Inauguration Day.”
We should also note that what Biden says is less connected to reality than ever. On July 24, in his Oval Office address to the nation, he boasted, “I’m the first president in this century to report to the American people that the United States is not at war anywhere in the world.”
A bit more than a month earlier, the AP reported, “The U.S.-led campaign against the Houthi rebels, overshadowed by the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, has turned into the most intense running sea battle the Navy has faced since World War II, its leaders and experts told The Associated Press.”
The day before, from U.S. Central Command: “In the past 24 hours, U.S. Central Command forces successfully destroyed three Iranian-backed Houthi missile launchers in a Houthi-controlled area of Yemen. It was determined these weapons presented an imminent threat to U.S., coalition forces, and merchant vessels in the region.” A few days before that, U.S. forces “destroyed four Iranian-backed Houthi uncrewed surface vessels in the Red Sea.” Two days after Biden’s speech, U.S. “forces successfully destroyed six Iranian-backed Houthi uncrewed aerial vehicles in a Houthi-controlled area of Yemen. Separately, USCENTCOM forces engaged and destroyed three Houthi uncrewed surface vessels operating off the coast of Yemen.”
A week before Biden gave his address, Iranian-backed militias attacked U.S. forces at Iraq’s Ain al-Asad airbase with drones; two days after Biden spoke, U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria were attacked by rocket fire.
Did Biden ignore all this? Did he forget? Is he being regularly briefed about these attacks? Can he hear, see, and understand his briefers well enough?
Or are we fighting “the most intense running sea battle the Navy has faced since World War II” on autopilot?
No, really, who is running the country these days?
ADDENDA: Ladies, why are so many of you swooning over RFK Jr.?
I am skeptical, but I notice that this assessment is coming from worried Democratic sources, not overoptimistic Republican ones:
There is growing Democratic fear over how quickly the Wisconsin Senate race is tightening, with party insiders worried they could shockingly lose the critical contest, Axios has learned. . . . [Democratic senator Tammy] Baldwin leads by just two points in internal Democratic polling, a source familiar with the campaign told Axios. That is much closer than what public polling has shown for months.
The last word on International Longshoremen’s Association head Harold Daggett fuming that E-ZPass took away union jobs from tollbooth operators: “Sonny Corleone would have died of old age if he had had EZ Pass.”