Who Would Be the Best President for the Working Class? | Opinion

For working people, the choice in November’s election couldn’t be clearer. On the one hand, you have Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, who have chosen careers that serve workers and our communities: Harris as a district attorney, state attorney general, and U.S. senator; and Walz as a teacher and coach, member of our nation’s military, U.S. representative, and governor. They’ve marched with us on picket lines, created breakfast programs for our children, and defended us in court. Donald Trump and J.D. Vance, on the other hand, have alternately served themselves and the wealthiest and most privileged among us. And they’ve attacked the pillars of our families’ economic security: Social Security, Medicare, the Affordable Care Act, and our public schools.

Let’s take a closer look.

Harris and Waltz stand for the issues that matter most to the people I represent, in education, health care, government, and all working people.

—They support our rights at work: our freedom to form unions and bargain collectively with our employers, our right to a safe workplace, and our right to be free from discrimination and harassment.

—They support good jobs and prosperity for all. As vice president, Harris helped pass the most ambitious program to create good jobs in America since Franklin D. Roosevelt, transformed our country’s trade policy to focus on the interests of American workers rather than giant corporations, and helped save pensions for hundreds of thousands of retired union members.

—They have made it clear that they will defend Medicare, Social Security, and the Affordable Care Act, just as Harris did with President Joe Biden. And they believe that the wealthiest among us should pay their fair share for our common good, not a smaller percentage of their income than working people.

—Perhaps most importantly—No working person is free or safe without democracy. Harris and Waltz have dedicated their careers to promoting and defending our democratic freedoms—to vote, to speak our minds, to read what we want, and to make our own decisions about our health and our bodies.

Trump says he is a champion of working people, but he is a world-class con man. He has ripped off hundreds of workers, including painters, plumbers, dishwashers, lawyers and others, for decades. He has been fined millions for ripping off charities and ripping off students through his fake Trump University. Trump does not care about American workers.

—Trump and Vance are against our rights at work. They have deep ties to Project 2025, which would gut the freedom of private-sector workers to collectively bargain. In the Senate, Vance would not support the PRO Act or other legislation that would strengthen workers’ rights. Trump has crossed multiple picket lines and joked with Elon Musk about illegally firing workers for exercising our right to strike.

—Trump talked big about infrastructure, but then did nothing to pass an infrastructure bill. He would condemn our children to a nightmarish future of unchecked climate change in exchange for favors and funding from his billionaire buddies in the oil and gas industry. And he cut taxes on billionaires and giant corporations, and cut taxes on corporations that moved their businesses offshore, after promising to do the opposite.

—Trump and Vance supported the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, which cut off health insurance for millions of working people and allowed insurance companies to play the pre-existing conditions game at our expense again. Every year of his presidency, Trump proposed federal budgets that would have cut Social Security and Medicare, which were only stopped by Democrats in Congress. Project 2025 proposes gutting these programs that working Americans have helped fund and that are necessary to keep us safe in retirement.

—Trump led an insurrection on January 6, 2021, and has made it clear that he does not intend to honor the results of the 2024 election if he loses again. He has attempted to use the U.S. military against American citizens and has indicated he would try again if elected. He has attempted to coerce election officials in Georgia and Arizona to commit voter fraud, and he has supported the submission of fraudulent slates of electors in several states where he lost.

Finally, Harris and Walz will support public education. They understand the harm of defunding and destabilizing public schools through private school vouchers, and they realize what we would lose if extremists and privatizers get their way. Trump supports universal school vouchers and defunding public schools, and Vance says strange things that suggest he believes teachers should be forced to have children.

Donald Trump and JD Vance take care of themselves and their billionaire friends. Their entire lives have been spent selfishly. Kamala Harris and Tim Walz work for the American Republic and the welfare of working people. It’s a no-brainer what to do in November.

Randi Weingarten is president of the AFT, a 1.8 million-member organization representing workers in education, health care and public service.

The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own.