President Joe Biden will travel to Michigan on Tuesday and walk the picket line with members of the United Auto Workers union, he announced Friday, a trip that comes after the president faced political pressure to ramp up his public support for the union members.

“Tuesday, I’ll go to Michigan to join the picket line and stand in solidarity with the men and women of UAW as they fight for a fair share of the value they helped create. It’s time for a win-win agreement that keeps American auto manufacturing thriving with well-paid UAW jobs,” Biden said in a post to X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

Biden’s trip, and the historic presidential appearance on a picket line, underscores the political opportunity as the strike against the nation’s three largest automakers – General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis – enters its second week. It will come one day before former President Donald Trump, currently the front-runner in the GOP presidential race, is scheduled to deliver a primetime speech to an audience of current and former union members, including from UAW, in Detroit. Earlier in the week, Trump’s team confirmed he would be skipping the second Republican primary debate for the Michigan speech.

  • agent_flounder
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    1 year ago

    I think some of us are traumatized by Reddit and Trump. Because for every person offering legit, good faith, well thought out criticism of Biden or the Democratic party (and there are plenty of things to criticize), I could show you about 1000 shills, bots, The Donald magats, and so on, following the alt right playbook like a fucking bible.

    You call 'em what you will. Call me one if it feels right. But I don’t see viable options in the short term at this dark point in the nation’s history.

    I think long term it is going to have to be a bottom up involvement in politics to maybe try to put the corporate bootlickers in the Democratic party. It’s going to have to be a long fight to fix the judiciary, undo citizens united, fix the corrupt, partisan SCOTUS, reform campaign finance, implement something other than first past the post voting, fix gerrymandering, break up oligopolies, and a million other things. I’m too tired to list it all.

    Of course one could argue that centrists aren’t the right folks to fight fascism. And might enable it. Anyway…