Democrats did much better than expected during the midterm elections, gaining a real majority in the Senate and only losing the House by a handful of seats despite aggressive Republican gerrymandering, but they hardly get a pause before the 2024 campaign season starts.
Georgia Republicans tried to suppress the votes of working voters, making it more difficult to use mail-in ballots and cutting the early vote in the runoff to one week, but Sen. Raphael Warnock prevailed with 51.4% of the vote, 2.8 points ahead of Herschel Walker.
The midterms showed that the 2020 election that put Joe Biden in the White House and Democratic majorities in Congress was not a fluke. With Warnock’s victory, voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania elected Democratic senators. Voters in Wisconsin re-elected Gov. Tony Evers (D) and stopped Republicans from achieving a veto-proof majority in the heavily-gerrymandered state Assembly, as the Republicans fell two seats short of a two-thirds majority in the House. Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly (D) was re-elected with 49.6% of the vote but Republicans maintained a two-thirds majority in the Legislature. And Massachusetts and Maryland replaced outgoing Republican governors with Democrats.
The red wave that swept through Iowa carried Sen. Chuck Grassley (R) to his eighth term in the Senate. After 42 years in the Senate, Grassley, 89, took a race that polled tight three weeks before the election and he finished 12 points ahead of Democrat Mike Franken. Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) easily won re-election, the Legislature remains firmly in GOP control and US Rep. Cindy Axne lost to Zach Nunn by 0.8% of the vote, giving Republicans a sweep of Iowa’s four congressional districts for the first time since 1994.
The red wave in Iowa may have washed out the last argument for keeping the Hawkeye State’s position as the first-in-the-nation caucuses to kick off the 2024 presidential campaign.
The Democratic National Committee, at the urging of President Biden, is moving to displace Iowa’s leadoff caucuses with South Carolina’s primary in the first spot on the presidential primary calendar, to give Black voters a greater role in the process. The DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee Dec. 1 approved the proposal, which will take several months before it comes before the full DNC. Under the plan, New Hampshire and Nevada would be second in line, casting their ballots the same day. Georgia and Michigan would follow.
Biden is beholden to Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.), who jump-started Biden’s campaign in 2020 after he finished among the also-rans in Iowa and New Hampshire and placed second behind Bernie Sanders in Nevada. Clyburn’s glowing endorsement got Biden a big win in South Carolina and propelled him in following states.
But, for the record, Biden didn’t carry Iowa or South Carolina in the general election. He did carry New Hampshire and Nevada.
Iowa was valuable as a leadoff contest for 50 years when it was a swing state, where a candidate could campaign on a face-to-face level with an educated population that was interested in dialog with presidential wannabes. And sure, voters had to put up with the caucus process, which can take a couple hours to play out — but what else is an Iowan going to do on a frostbit Tuesday night in February?
Anyway, if the DNC is going to move the leadoff primary—and insist that it be an election, not a caucus—the leadoff should be a swing state where a candidate can campaign on a budget and have a chance to build a following. Nevada would be a good place to start, since candidates would spend most of their time in Las Vegas and Reno, sweet-talking Culinary Workers Union members. New Hampshire could bat second. Then South Carolina, Michigan and Georgia.
Maybe Iowa Democrats can work their way back into the lineup.
Railway Workers Deserve Paid Sick Leave
In the spirit of fair play and ensuring a safe workplace, President Joe Biden should issue an executive order to require freight railroads to grant paid sick leave to workers. Biden urged Congress to prevent a national railway strike by imposing a contract negotiated with the railroads and the unions by the White House, after the membership of four unions, representing a majority of freight rail workers, rejected the contract, mainly because it failed to provide paid sick leave. Eight other unions accepted the contract.
Democrats in Congress tried to add seven paid sick days to the deal, and that resolution passed the House but was filibustered in the Senate and 42 Republicans and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) upheld the filibuster. Without the paid sick leave provision, the resolution was passed.
More than 70 Democrats in Congress Dec. 9 sjgned a letter whose main author was Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) calling on President Biden to take executive action to ensure railroad workers are afforded the paid sick leave.
“While this agreement was much better than the disastrous proposals put forward by the rail industry, it still does not guarantee a single paid sick day to rail workers who work dangerous and difficult jobs, have risked their lives during the pandemic to keep our economy moving, and have not received a pay raise in over three years,” the letter states.
The Association of American Railroads said it believes the question of sick days should be addressed in negotiations with the unions, but when those negotiations came to an impasse, the railroads turned to the federal government to impose the deal on workers. If the federal government takes away the workers’ right to strike, it owes the workers consideration for their role in keeping the economy moving.
The railroads insist that the workers can use personal or vacation days if they are too sick to report to work, but union representatives say deep staff cuts in recent years (which have greatly increased railroad company profits) have left the railroad crews so lean that workers can’t get approval to take time off if they’re not feeling well. If they take unauthorized time off, they risk losing pay and being disciplined.
The letter noted that the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) authorizes the US Secretary of Labor to set mandatory safety and health standards for businesses that affect interstate commerce.
In 2015, then-President Barack Obama signed an executive order requiring companies with federal contracts to grant a minimum of seven days of paid sick leave to workers—but excluded rail workers from the protections.
“We can think of few things that threaten the safety and health of workers more than being required to come into work sick and exhausted,” the Democrats wrote, “and we can think of few industries more quintessential to interstate commerce than freight rail.”
Greg Hynes, national legislative director for the transportation department of the Sheet Metal, Air, Rail Transportation Union, the largest rail union representing about 28,000 conductors, told CNN the Biden administration has been helpful. “Of course, they want to do this. Whether they can do it, we’re going to find out.”
Make it so, Joe — JMC
From The Progressive Populist, January 1-15, 2023
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