- cross-posted to:
- politics@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- politics@lemmy.world
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.
It should be that easy. The US is such a bizarre place. They call themselves a developed country and have a GDP that outpaces most others, yet they can’t even offer the things that many developing countries can.
But sadly, I don’t think it’s as simple as you hope. About half of the elected US politicians want nothing to improve. The president can’t do that much on their own. If Americans gave a shit, they could fix this in a single election cycle by electing some actual progressives, but Americans are pretty fucked up and most either don’t give a shit, or give negative shits (as in, they want to see things get worse for certain people).
Yea, I obviously don’t expect the president to single handedly change things, the main point was mostly that going for a photo-op is hardly showing support if you are the president, especially in a country where that title is more than symbolic.