Democrats, workers, and the need for an ethos

Hypocrisy exposed in Colorado and Virginia

Welcome to a Sunday night edition of Progress Report

First, Happy Mothers Day to all the moms, mom figures, mom-lovers, and fans of maternal energy out there. There is no harder or more thankless job, so I hope you moms got to experience some relaxation and appreciation today.

There is no worse fate for a parent than burying one’s own child, and tragically, Mother’s Day in my family will now forever be associated with the passing of my cousin Andrew, who died yesterday at the age of 33. Tonight’s newsletter is about having the courage of one’s convictions, which Andrew had in spades. RIP.

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A spokesperson for Colorado Gov. Jared Polis confirmed on Thursday that he would veto a bill that would remove the state’s unique barriers to unionization. The veto will make good on a threat that Polis made this winter, while once again breaking a key promise made during his ascent to power.

In January, Polis demanded that Democrats, labor, and business lobbyists come up with a compromise to the Worker Protection Act, a bill to repeal the requirement that workers in Colorado win a second election — with a 75% supermajority — in order to attain full union representation. Essentially empowering the state Chamber of Commerce with veto power meant that weeks of negotiations were all but doomed from the start, and when a deal inevitably failed to emerge, every single Democrat in the House voted to pass the original bill.

Back in 2018, when Polis was a member of Congress seeking the Democratic nomination for governor, he gave the impression that the Worker Protection Act was exactly the sort of bill that he’d wholeheartedly support. The candidate questionnaire that he filled out for the Colorado AFL-CIO that year was filled with promises to support more organizing and platitudes and pledges of solidarity.

Consider Polis’s answer to the question of whether he’d be “willing to publicly support workers in a labor dispute or in an organizing campaign.”

“Yes. I am a strong believer in the rights of workers to organize and would be proud to be a public supporter. Not only must be withstand attacks on labor, but our government needs to have a backbone when it comes to supporting labor in the fight for fair wages, decent benefits, and a safe workplace,” Polis wrote. “Unlike many other candidates in this race, I am proud to have put my name behind legislative proposals that would strengthen the Labor movement, and also to have opposed efforts to dismantle the National Labor Relations Board, weaken workers' rights, and diminish the ability or unions to collectively bargain for better work conditions and pay.”

And then there was the answer to this even more explicit question: “Will you support and do all in your power to secure the freedom of all public and private sector employees in Colorado to form a union and negotiate a contract with their employer?”

Yes. I have a proven track record of standing up to those who seek to undermine and damage the rights of workers to organize… Sadly, these attacks on organized labor aren't contained to the federal level. Here in Colorado, labor unions are regularly under threat from partisan and politically-motivated attacks meant to discourage union participation and create a dynamic where the profits irresponsible corporations are prioritized over people. As governor, you will have no bigger champion for the rights of workers to organize than myself.

These statements suggest a very different kind of leadership than Colorado has received from Polis, who has regularly thwarted pro-worker priorities after making rhetorical stands like this in Congress:

In 2024, he vetoed a bill that would have protected workers from wage theft as well as one that would have banned captive audience meetings, one of the main tools of union-busters. Polis also scuttled a paid leave bill in 2020 because he wanted private insurers cut unnecessarily into the system, and opposed the expansion of public worker union rights in 2022 before backing a modified version in 2023.

Colorado is now a solidly blue state, but not all of its Democrats are anywhere close to what we’d consider progressive stalwarts. Denver Mayor Mike Johnston, for example, is the former head of the city’s Chamber of Commerce, and there were some Democratic lawmakers who sought to reduce the tipped minimum wage just this very session of legislature.

Yet they all voted for the Worker Protection Act, because reducing Jim Crow-era barriers to unionization — not even encouraging it, but simply creating a somewhat more even playing field — is really the bare minimum that can and should be anticipated of a party that asks for union support and pledges to return the same.

Unfortunately, Polis is hardly unique among Democrats, many of whom cannot seem to grasp the moral urgency or political advantage of a society that is pro-worker and pro-union.

In Virginia, former Rep. Abigail Spanberger told a Richmond TV station that she would not sign a repeal of the state’s “right to work” law if elected governor, ensuring that unions would be legally knee-capped for at least another four years.

The rumor was that Spanberger told Democratic legislators that she’d shoot down any repeal during a closed-door meeting in February, but she was able to evade — or simply ignore — media inquiries on the subject over the next few months. Instead, she took to offering up vague promises to do things like “make sure more Virginians can negotiate for the benefits and fair treatment that they’ve earned,” a line offered up in April as she closed in on the uncontested Democratic nomination.

Now that she’s foreclosed any possibility of a primary challenge, Spanberger is eagerly moving to the right, responding to pressure from the GOP’s nominee instead of capitalize on the swelling number of angry federal union members in Virginia and contrast herself with the state’s unpopular hedge fund executive governor, Glenn Youngkin. The previous two Democratic governors of Virginia, Terry McAuliffe and Ralph Northam, also opposed the repeal “right to work,” helping keep the state purple.

Both Polis and Spanberger portray themselves as moderate and thus more broadly electable candidates, but their respective opposition to expanding union rights runs counter to those claims. As a new Harvard Law study of the 2024 election indicates, union members are far more likely to vote for Democrats, across demographics:

Our results found that unionized workers were significantly more likely to vote for Kamala Harris than their non-union counterparts. Analyses of the election results indicated that Democrats lost ground amongst some of their traditional support groups, in particular working-class Black and Latino communities.

In our survey we found that more than 68% of Black union members reported voting for Harris, while 57% of Black non-union workers voted for the Vice President. Interestingly, roughly the same proportion — 24% — of Black union and non-union workers voted for Trump. The major difference was in turnout, with 7% of Black union members saying that they did not vote, compared to nearly 18% of Black non-union workers.

Latino voters had a similar trend, as Harris’ support was higher amongst union members than non-union workers, but the major difference was in turnout.

The study also found that union members were far more likely to blame inflation on corporate greed, while non-union members tended to blame it on government decisions. Had there been more union voters, things may have turned out a bit more positively for the Democratic ticket.

What’s fundamentally clear is that having a clear system of beliefs, and delivering for key constituents even when they’re in the minority, is essential to electoral success. Just look at what conservatives continue to “achieve” at the statehouse and the ballot box, as abhorrent as much of it has proven.

If Democrats won’t stand for working people, what do they even stand for? Contrary to what some might say, it’s not winning, that’s for sure.

The Lebowski Theory of Politics

Earlier this month, Gov. Greg Abbott signed a bill that established a universal school voucher program in Texas, making it the 15th state since 2021 to enact or dramatically expand an education privatization scheme. Education privatization first became politically viable in the wake of the pandemic, and Republicans have rushed to take advantage.

Vouchers are functionally a giveaway to the wealthy, subsidized by the middle and working classes. Similarly, there have been 25 Republican-run states over the past five years to enact large tax cuts that disproportionately benefit their richest residents, a goal now being pursued at the federal level by the GOP trifecta in Washington.

The Trump White House has used executive orders to follow the lead of the 26 states that have passed laws restricting the rights of trans people since 2020. Of those Republican-run states, 20 of them have had legislatures bigoted enough to codify at least three anti-trans laws in that five year period.

It should come as little surprise, considering the above, that 25 Republican-run states have passed laws that restrict the rights of undocumented immigrants, including prohibitions on what had been uncontroversial civil liberties and crackdowns on anyone who seeks to assist them in any way.

Taken together, these laws indicate a political philosophy that is cruel, un-American, deeply unfair; an agenda of oligarchs, quacks, bullies, and bigots. But to more or less quote The Big Lebowski: Say what you want about the tenets of modern conservative, Dude, at least it’s an ethos.

The idea of “believing in nothing” was singularly offensive to the Dude, who was otherwise so extraordinarily laid back and apolitical that drifter cowboys spun tales about him out of sheer admiration. Walter Sobchak, a man who refused to even roll on Shabbos, regarded the lack of any tangible belief system as worse than Nazism, which provided some kind of predictable moral guidance.

Obviously, deriving any deep political lessons from a 30-year-old cult comedy is tenuous business, but studies have shown that consistency in message has surpasses moderation as the most important aspect of political campaigning. This is especially true in lower-trust political environments, where clear ideological commitments are seen as signs of moral commitment.

Republicans have rushed to fulfill what has been a long-time goal by an array of their most important constituencies. Elections are increasingly battles of motivated factions, more partisan than nuanced. Expanding the ranks of union members is a surefire way for Democrats to grow the ideological belief that greedy corporations are responsible for many of the problems we face today and expand a functional political populism.

Humiliating Perverts in Texas

Courtesy of Lone Star Left, here’s a deeply funny and uncomfortable confrontation between a sex-obsessed far-right Republican lawmaker named Daniel Alders, who wants to ban books en masse, and a legislator named Ann Johnson, who was determined to prove what stunted creeps these people are.

And it wasn’t just about humiliation, but instead exposing hypocrisy.

“I'm the former chief human trafficking prosecutor in Harris County,” Rep. Johnson said, dropping a bombshell on the puritanical phony. “Do you know I'm one of the only people in this room that has actually gone to bat for this population and trying to make sure that kids are protected from sexually explicit conduct and abuse? I care very much about good public policy and protecting kids from sexual exploitation good what you are doing is attempting just to get a nice campaign moment.”

Instead, she delivered him what should be viral humiliation.

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