Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: Trust politicians to do anything they can to woo voters.
But it can happen only in America.
In an unprecedented move, Joe Biden joined agitating auto workers on the picket line in Michigan on Tuesday in a historic first for a sitting US president, a day before rival Donald Trump could make his own bid for the blue-collar vote in the battleground electoral state, ahead of the Presidential elections due next year.
Wearing a baseball cap with the logo of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union, the 80-year-old Democrat told banner-waving employees through a megaphone that he was on their side, the media reported on Thursday.
The US President told workers that the “Big Three” automakers — Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis — were “doing incredibly well, and guess what, you should be doing incredibly well too.”
“You deserve the significant raise you need and other benefits,” he said amid cheers from the crowd.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre described it as a “historic” trip.
“Today will mark the first time a sitting US President has visited a picket line in modern times,” Jean-Pierre told reporters aboard Air Force One. “This is an important message to America’s auto workers.”
The UAW’s boss Shawn Fain greeted President Biden on the tarmac in Detroit and accompanied him to the picket line.
For Joe Biden, facing concerns about his diminishing poll ratings, his advancing age, and the recessionary economy, the trip gave him an opportunity to woo working-class workers and union members.
“That is huge,” an auto worker, Patrick Smaller, 56, said about President Biden’s visit as he stood on the picket line outside a massive Ford plant in Wayne County, Michigan.
As cars and trucks honked in support, another worker, Tiara Conner, said she was “not surprised” that Trump was visiting too.
The current and former Presidents are both targeting the blue-collar vote in Michigan, a key swing state that Trump won in 2016 and then Biden flipped back in 2020.
But their messages there are very different as they look towards a rematch next year. While Joe Biden has consistently talked up his pro-union credentials, and an endorsement from the United Auto Workers (UAW) union helped him secure the presidency three years ago, Trump is focusing on winning back the working-class voters who helped propel him to the White House in 2016, rather than unions with whom he has long had difficult relations.
So far, Trump focused on attacking Biden’s drive to fund a shift to more environmentally friendly electric vehicles, saying it is driving jobs abroad. The former President also accused Biden of copying his plans and of “pretending” to be a picket.
However, President Biden said his push for electric vehicles is part of a plan to bring manufacturing jobs back from China to the United States and put America in the lead of a global race to develop green technology.
Jean-Pierre said Biden was “fighting to ensure that the cars of the future will be built in America, by unionized American workers in good paying jobs, instead of being built in China.”
Joe Biden’s Michigan trip carried a political risk also, as he must tread a fine line between backing the workers and trying to end a strike that is costing the economy billions of dollars.
The White House deflected a barrage of questions about whether President Biden was taking sides in the dispute, saying he wanted a “win-win” agreement and would not get involved in negotiations.