Pittsburgh – Vice President Kamala Harris’ Labor Day message to union workers in Pennsylvania fell flat with at least one Yinzer, who found her speech unconvincing and insincere. They haven’t earned my vote,” Shawn Cribs Jr. told The Post after leaving the event at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 5 union hall. The 20-year-old IBEW brother said, “It feels like Kamala is reading off a script.
Cribs, while crediting Biden’s spending on infrastructure for helping rebuild a bridge that collapsed during one of the 81-year-old president’s previous Pittsburgh visits, said inflation has his undecided vote leaning toward former President Donald Trump. I’m dumb. I’m just a guy. I don’t care about the charts,” he said. People need to see the results first-hand to understand why they need to vote for a certain president.
Cribs noted that he saw gas and groceries get more expensive under Biden, whether or not he’s to blame. We all slave and work to make money and I think what’s most important is making money,” he said, whether you’re poor or a billionaire.
To be clear, nearly all of the IBEW members were big fans of the Harris-Biden double billing – jumping up in their seats and cheering for the rally. In her remarks, Harris tried to re-tread many of President Biden’s union-friendly lines and past achievements. She even copied Trump’s pledge to block the sale of US Steel to Japan – while avoiding any mention of the record-high inflation and soaring food and gas prices under the Harris-Biden administration.
The 59-year-old vice president also didn’t get into specifics about what executive actions she would undertake to back unions, only declaring her support for Protecting the Right to Organize Act – congressional legislation that would override state “right to work” laws that make union membership voluntary – and vaguely vowing to “end union busting once and for all.
Dennis Roddy, a Pittsburgh GOP strategist, told The Post: “She’s speaking the language she learned under Joe Biden. She just proved that you don’t have to say anything new to get a reaction that seems so new to people after the experience of being abandoned by the ‘New Democrats’ going back to Gary Hart in 1984.
Harris followed Biden on the stage in Pittsburgh, and Roddy said the two speeches were “indistinguishable.” “Kamala needed to send a signal to labor that she would be a continuation of [Biden’s] policies in the areas that interest them,” Roddy argued.
David McCall, international president of United Steelworkers, told The Post that he believes Harris’ policies can win over rank-and-file union members, who tend to be more open to Trump than union leaders – as long as the campaign is “talking to people and making sure that it is a simple, easy message.” But even McCall, who’s endorsed Harris for president, stumbled trying to articulate parts of the Democratic nominee’s vision for an “opportunity economy.” “If you read some of the policy papers she’s already put out about an opportunist, an opportunistic economy …” he said.
