He’s right, but he should be using the bully pulpit to push legislation regarding the Federal minimum wage, housing issues, health care, etc. I understand the political need for vapid photo ops, I just don’t like it.
He doesn’t have a bully pulpit yet. Republicans barely control the House and the Senate is gridlock 50/50. Give him a supermajority and see what he can get done
If you have a supermajority, you don’t need to use the bully pulpit. The bully pulpit is the outsized microphone that a president has to rally support and make his (or her, someday) point.
You have to be able to back it up with real legislative threats to be a bully pulpit. A president with no legislative cooperation can say whatever they want, but when everyone knows they can’t do anything, corpos will just laugh it off. Bully pulpit is really when you have enough power to be able to say, “You fix this or else we’ll fix it for you.”
The bully pulpit in Roosevelt’s mind wasn’t about pummeling legislators with presidential authority; rather, he believed the president could encourage the public to push their legislators on behalf of his agenda. - source
Not using the bully pulpit as president to push your agenda is almost malfeasance. If he has votes/support, there is no need for it.
He needs more than words. Words alone are useless. But believe what you want
It’s like people skipped that part of US History when they were in HS.
And I think you seem to be unaware of how much the presidency has changed since Roosevelt’s time. I don’t think it’s realistic to think Biden has the kind of influence just by existing that Roosevelt did. Minimally, Roosevelt was working with two Congressional parties who actually wanted what was best for the country who were capable of being ashamed. Biden… doesn’t have that.
Like, imagine for three seconds Biden threatening some of the things Roosevelt did. There’s just no way:
"Never before had a President threatened “to seize and operate a major industry”
http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/essays/1901-/theodore-roosevelts-broad-powers-erin-ruth-leonard.php
Strike Buster Joe Biden, supporting a union? I guess he doesn’t perceive them as a real threat.
He did shut down the railroad workers strike…and then got them the paid sick days they were striking to get
Probably treating this one differently because a railroad shutdown would have had much larger impact on people working in other industries.
No, he got them 4 of the 14 sick days they were trying to get, and NONE of the safety changes they were trying to get.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a union get everything they asked for. It’s not as good as it might have been, but it’s a lot better than nothing.
When a union tries and fails to get things, that’s the harsh nature of bargaining and limits of worker power. They decide when the contract is the best they’re gonna get. When they’re prevented from striking and then someone else decides they can have some benefits, it’s absolutely a different arrangement and doesn’t inherently have worker approval.
Do you think they would have gotten nothing if they had struck? Absolutely nothing? And you’re so certain of this, despite knowing that the strike would have cost billions of dollars for the rail corps?
Well, if they had decided to accept nothing, that’s their Perogative, but it’s not the place of the President to negate their rights to collectively bargain and negotiate on their behalf after gutting 100% of their leverage.
https://www.ibew.org/media-center/Articles/23Daily/2306/230620_IBEWandPaid
This is a big deal, said Railroad Department Director Al Russo, because the paid-sick-days issue, which nearly caused a nationwide shutdown of freight rail just before Christmas, had consistently been rejected by the carriers. It was not part of last December’s congressionally implemented update of the national collective bargaining agreement between the freight lines and the IBEW and 11 other railroad-related unions.
“We’re thankful that the Biden administration played the long game on sick days and stuck with us for months after Congress imposed our updated national agreement,” Russo said. “Without making a big show of it, Joe Biden and members of his administration in the Transportation and Labor departments have been working continuously to get guaranteed paid sick days for all railroad workers.
Then they could’ve rejected again, and the workers would have struck. Workers have a healthy strike fund because they don’t strike often, corporations lose a billion dollars a day… who do you think would break first? I guess we’ll never know because it is now illegal for them to strike in perpetuity because of the work that Congress did at the administrations request. They gave up their right to strike for 4 sick days, and no safety changes. Such a victory.
Did he reverse the order making it illegal for them to strike in the future? Real question – I hope so but haven’t seen it anywhere.
If he didn’t, that’s all smoke and mirrors.
Also he decided to run for re-election and the current main opponent has been touting themselves as the pro-autoworker person and Biden has been partly trying to present as the most pro-union president ever.
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Joe Biden became the first sitting US president to appear on a picket line on Tuesday, joining a protest outside a Michigan car plant in solidarity with striking members of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union, which is locked in an escalating dispute with America’s three biggest carmakers.
The UAW president, Shawn Fain, was the first to greet Biden after he arrived in Michigan on Air Force One, and he joined him in the presidential limousine for a ride to the picket line.
No other sitting president has joined a picket line, according to Nelson Lichtenstein, a longtime labor historian at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Trump, who won Michigan with the help of union members’ support in his 2016 election victory over Hillary Clinton before losing it four years later in his defeat to Biden, is not expected to visit a picket line.
Biden voiced support for the strike by Ford, General Motors and Stellantis workers, which was entering its 12th day on Tuesday, when it started on 15 September and had announced he was dispatching his labour secretary, Julie Su, and Gene Sperling, a senior White House adviser, to help the union reach a settlement with company bosses.
Trump, who won significant union support in 2016 and needs to regain it if he is to prevail next year, has said workers are being betrayed by their leadership and also by Biden’s environmentally friendly policy of encouraging the three American car giants to convert to making electric vehicles.
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