In the wake of the 2020 election, many Trump supporters took heart in the fact that the former president was playing “4-D chess” in his effort to rout the deep state, outmaneuver his enemies, and win back the White House. The brilliant plan, whatever it was, never came to fruition and left many people wondering, “Where’s the Kraken? He was going to release the Kraken.”
I was skeptical that there was a Kraken, but I kept an eye out to see if anything substantive materialized. Of course, the rest is history. Granted, it is history that we seemed destined to relive every news cycle, but it is history.
But even the most die-hard haters of Trump and all things Trump-adjacent would have to admit that his campaign caught the White House completely unaware this week. Politico reports that the Biden camp is concerned that Trump’s campaign may be a bit more savvy than it has been credit for. Trump is skipping the next debate to go to Detroit. There, he will speak to striking auto workers.
One strategist told Politico, “Trump scooped us. Now if we announce we’re going, it looks like we’re just going because of Trump. We waited too long. That’s the challenge.” But some remain skeptical that Trump can get any traction. Biden campaign spokesperson Ammar Moussa commented:
Donald Trump’s anti-worker, anti-union record is one of the key reasons Michigan rejected Trump in 2020 and sent Joe Biden to the White House. His failed presidency is defined by auto companies shuttering their doors and shipping American jobs overseas while lining the pockets of the wealthy and big corporations.
Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) said that Trump would not fight for the workers and stated that the former president has said that he would move EV manufacturing to China. Politico noted that Trump picked up many votes from the members of the UAW during his 2016 campaign.
Meanwhile, Shawn Fain, the president of the United Auto Workers Union, is obviously less than thrilled about the move. American Wire had this quote from a press release:
Every fiber of our union is being poured into fighting the billionaire class and an economy that enriches people like Donald Trump at the expense of workers. We can’t keep electing millionaires and billionaires that don’t have any understanding of what it is like to live paycheck to paycheck, and struggle to get by and expecting them to solve the problems of the working class.
That the union leadership and Democrats would close ranks behind Biden is not surprising. And for Trump to announce an incursion into a traditionally deep-blue territory was an eyebrow-raising experience for them.
But the real danger may not be from a Trump whistle-stop. Success may depend on how many union members are tired of high prices, the current administration, and everything else that makes up Joe Biden’s America. The Democrats’ problem may not lie with Trump but rather with the status quo that they have worked so hard to create.
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