On both the Left and Right, there is a prominent tendency to frame organized labor’s problems as most fundamentally about its perception (or non-perception) in public consciousness. For the new pro-worker right, figures like Sohrab Ahmari, “the mainstream of the labor movement must detach itself from goofy progressive gender politics and open borders. Now. Today.” In their view, labor is suffering from its attachment to an ideology that is anathema to the majority of working people in the United States.

For the Left, meanwhile, labor is time and again “forgotten” by the Democrats, dropped from public consciousness when its cause should in fact be a rallying cry, as that of the January 6ers was for the MAGA base. What these views share is the idea that if only labor could be represented to the public in a good light, it would throw off its shackles and start to make some real gains.

It’s important to note first that there is truth in both of these positions. Many union leaders are often out of line with working-class attitudes on political issues, partly because they share an associational world with activist nonprofit leaders who have no social base and garner their opinions from other urban professionals. And the Democrats should indeed be making an issue of, for instance, Amazon’s union-busting as a way of winning back working-class voters.