Many moons ago, the late Sam Myers, UAW 259 president, asked me to run a workshop for auto mechanics in the New York area. Sam, an old-time socialist who somehow survived the McCarthy era labor purges, was eager to expose his workers to our new political economy courses.

At the end of the first workshop, I slipped in one final question on politics: “Should labor support the Democrats, the Republicans, or a new party of working people?” Nearly everyone’s hand shot up for the prospect of a new labor party. Sam shot up too and said, “You can’t do that! We need to support the Democrats, no matter what.” And that was the end of the conversation.

For many labor leaders today not much has changed. They are still all in for the Democrats, even though more of their rank-and-file members are not. Many union members have drifted to the Republicans. Others have stopped voting. And nearly all feel that the Democrats have let them down. No amount of cajoling will bring these disappointed workers back to the Dems. Yet many union leaders continue the ritual, pushing union voters toward the Democrats while praying that nearly half their members who vote the other way won’t rebel. It isn’t working.

It’s time to build a political home for these disaffected working people, not only those who have given up on the Democrats, but also those who have been attracted to the Republicans’ rhetorical turn to populism. That’s certainly what workers say they want, according to the recent YouGov survey we conducted of 3,000 voters in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin. (See here and here.)

It’s time to build a political home for these disaffected working people, not only those who have given up on the Democrats, but also those who have been attracted to the Republicans’ rhetorical turn to populism.

Fifty-seven percent of the Rust Belt voters in our survey supported the following statement. Note especially the first two policy proposals:

Every demographic group supported these proposals, led by 71 percent of Rust Belt voters under 30 years of age, and 74 percent of those who feel very insecure about losing their job.

Again, please look at those first two policy planks. No national Democrat in memory, except for the Independent Bernie Sanders, an Independent who twice ran for president in the Democratic Party primary, has said anything like that in their campaigns. And yet 57 percent of the voters in these Rust Belt states said they supported these radical policies, with only 19 percent opposed.

Most labor leaders and Democratic Party strategists, however, don’t want to hear it, no matter what our polling shows and no matter what their own constituents say they really want. While some unions are willing to flirt with fusion efforts, like the Working Families Party, they know that in the end fusion parties will support the Democrats.

It’s understandable that labor leaders are gun shy about building a new political formation. They just don’t have the bandwidth while trying to keep their unions afloat, given incessant assaults by corporate forces and anti-labor politicians. They are backed into a corner.

What they’re missing is the potential power that would flow from a new entity of disgruntled working people, totally independent of the two parties. A new independent party could help unions organize new members while also building stronger connections with and among their membership. Instead of dividing their members by pushing the tarnished Democratic brand, a new worker political formation could build solidarity around the issues that affect workers most.

Imagine that a new Independent workers political association (maybe call it Workers USA?) formed to run more labor candidates in one-party races – that is, in any of the 132 congressional districts and 20 senatorial races in which the Republicans won by 25 or more percent. Doing so would not split the Democratic vote because that vote evaporated long ago.

Dan Osborn, a former local union president in Nebraska, is a good example of a working-class candidate who nearly took down three-term Senator Deb Fischer by running on a strong anti-corporate populist program as an independent in 2024. The Democrats didn’t even bother to field a candidate. So, Osborn filled the breach, forced Fischer and her party to spend millions of dollars they didn’t plan on, and came within seven percent of Fischer in Nebraska, a state Kamala Harris lost by 20 percent to Trump.

Osborn ran unabashedly on an anti-corporate populist program and proved it could gain traction in a deep red state. He believes he is opening the working-class door to more such races:

If more and more working-class candidates entered these one-party races and showed promise running on a strong populist economic platform, their successes would support those within the Democratic Party who want to move the party more in a progressive populist direction, and away from the corporatist path it has traveling since the days of........

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