As a harbinger of this fall’s midterms, whether Conor Lamb won or lost by a few hundred votes in a Pennsylvania congressional district that Donald Trump carried by 20 points in 2016, in a race where Trump’s party outspent the Democrats by about 2-to-1, really didn’t matter that much. Either way, the Republicans are clearly in trouble. Having said that, beating Trump felt fucking fabulous.
If we want to have that feeling again after the November midterms, if we want to retake the Senate and win a strong majority in the House of Representatives—one numerically strong enough to allow for elected Democrats to vote their district on certain issues when necessary to keep the seat in our hands in 2020—we need to learn the lessons Lamb’s victory taught us. One of the most important ones is that unions still matter. The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, a local media outlet, noted the importance of “union support” for Lamb in the headline of its article analyzing the contest. And the Democrat earned that support.
As John Nichols over at The Nation noted, “on the essential issue of labor rights, Lamb ran a far more militant campaign than most prominent Democrats have in recent decades.” His opponent, Rick Saccone, was a bitter foe of unions who opposed giving more people the ability to access unemployment benefits, and who defended union-busting ‘right-to-work’ (for less) laws.
In his victory speech, Lamb made very clear just how much unions mattered last Tuesday:
Side by side with us at each step of the way were the men and women in organized labor.
Organized labor built Western Pennsylvania. Let me tell you something: tonight, they have reasserted their right to have a major part in our future. These unions have fought for decades for wages, benefits, working conditions, basic dignity and social justice. Thank you! Thank you!
You have brought me into your ranks to fight with you. Let me tell you something else: I am proud to be right there with you.
And this is from the “Priorities” page on the candidate’s website:
Union members in our district can count on me to be the most effective ally they have in fighting to protect their rights, support prevailing wages and Project Labor Agreements, and defeat the ideological extremists who want to put unions out of existence.
Damn right.
Let’s get a couple of things out of the way here. To start, Conor Lamb is not my idea of a progressive. There are a number of issues where he is simply too close to the center for my taste. But he points the way forward on how to appeal to working-class and economically vulnerable voters of any race, voters Democrats can win without abandoning our core values on civil rights.
Lamb ran not only as an ally of unions, but as an opponent of Trump’s rich man’s tax cut, which as Laura Clawson noted, flopped as an issue for his opponent. The Democrat also supported Obamacare, and the exit poll conducted on Tuesday showed that the Republican position on Obamacare—repeal it—hurt them in PA-18. On the tax scheme, three separate national polls (Monmouth, Quinnipiac, and New York Times/Survey Monkey) showed a decline in support this month from the previous level reached a few weeks earlier.
We did see sounds of caution raised, one exemplified by Bob Moser’s claim in his Rolling Stone piece that Lamb represents “the establishment” pushing back against “the resistance.” Moser also characterized him as a “a flashback to the "Republican Lite" candidacies the Democrats specialized in during the Clinton '90s and '00s.” Moser then offered more evidence of what he saw as the problem with Lamb:
In a rally over the weekend in a rural corner of the district, the president of the United Mine Workers, Cecil Roberts, summed up the reasons why white people were about to vote for a Democrat here, hailing Lamb as "a God-fearing, union-supporting, gun-owning, job-protecting, pension-defending, Social Security-believing, sending-drug-dealers-to-jail Democrat."
Note that this praise—with which Moser sought to damn Lamb—came from the head of the mine workers union. Lamb is “God-fearing”? So what? Since when does one’s religious faith in and of itself make one a worse Democrat? Barack Obama expressed strong religious faith. So did Hillary Clinton. So did Martin Luther King. As for wanting to protect jobs, pensions, and Social Security, none of those are “Republican-lite” or “establishment” positions either. He wants to send drug dealers to jail? Okay, fine. Democrats don’t? Dealing drugs is still illegal right now. As for guns: so, he owns them. The NRA opposed him in this race, even spending money on Saccone’s behalf. Even if he’s not perfect on the issue, he’s good enough for me.
And, finally, “Union-supporting”? We’ve covered that already, but I’ll just add that the idea that a “union-supporting” candidate has anything to do with the “establishment,” let alone “Republican Lite” and the “Clinton 90s,” is simply inaccurate on its face.
Unions are under siege in this country, and have been since Ronald Reagan took office. One of the great missteps of the 2009-2010 period was the failure to pass federal laws that could have helped strengthen them. Despite having President Obama on its side, and having majority support in the House (where the Republican who previously represented PA-18, Tim Murphy, had voted for the Employee Free Choice Act in 2007), there were enough opponents—you know, those ‘moderate’ or ‘establishment’ or whatever you want to call them Democrats—among the 60 in the Senate Democratic caucus to cause the bill’s defeat. The idea of any Democratic senator being willing to not only oppose but filibuster a bill supported by a liberal president and most of the Democratic caucus still gets my blood boiling.
Things may well get worse if, as it appears, the Supreme Court’s 5-to-4 anti-labor majority votes in Janus v. AFSCME to further weaken American labor by stopping public sector unions from making sure some employees don’t ride freely by taking the benefits of collective bargaining without contributing to the costs. Don’t forget that when unions get weaker, Republicans get more votes. That’s why Republicans almost always oppose unions.
Establishment Democrats were the ones who sank card check and the Employee Free Choice Act, not pro-union ones like Conor Lamb. If a strong bill had passed, maybe Democrats would have had enough union support to win some close races they lost in recent years, such as the most recent presidential election. Hillary Clinton barely got a majority of votes from union members. Trump did better than any Republican since Reagan in 1984—despite doing 20 points worse than Reagan did overall that year. Think about that for a second.
Democrats have been arguing about what kind of focus we should have in 2018 and beyond. That’s fine. But the idea that we have to choose between a message aimed at white as opposed to minority voters is simply wrong. Of course candidates must tailor their message to their district to some degree, and Conor Lamb did that.
Overall, however, we need a message built around the principles of justice, fairness, and equal opportunity—in the economic arena and in the arena of civil rights. That’s a message that can appeal to all voters. Being pro-union does not mean being pro-white working class as opposed to being pro-anyone else. Unions increasingly consist of women and Americans of color. A Democratic party that doesn’t fight hard for unions can’t win. Moreover, it doesn’t deserve to.
Ian Reifowitz is the author of Obama’s America: A Transformative Vision of Our National Identity( Potomac Books).