Labor Needs Seats at the Table

Annie Karni in today's New York Times sees (and explores in some depth) the rise of impressive candidates who have been laborers and who know how to relate to the working class. Many or most of these new candidates on the Democratic side are running for US Senate seats, and they represent a real departure from the typical kinds of people Democrats have recruited in recent years to win elections -- "educated professionals with sterling pedigrees, including prestigious national security credentials." That's the elite, fussbudget image the Democratic Party wears like an opera cape.

Karni writes about many of the working-class candidates whose names I recognize, because I've written about them too, like Dan Osborn, industrial mechanic at the Kellogg’s plant in Omaha, or Graham Platner, an oysterman from the tiny town of Sullivan, Maine, or Nathan Sage, a car mechanic who was raised in a trailer park in Mason City, Iowa. These guys are attracting attention as mold-breakers and their blunt speech has energy and sting. Some of them are raising impressive money, like Graham Platner, running for Susan Collins' Senate seat. Yet the Democratic establishment has refused to endorse any of them, which is frankly infuriating. Sen. Chuck Schumer's machine in the Senate wants "safer" candidates (like a 77-year-old former governor in Maine rather than Graham Platner). (And granted, Dan Osborn is running as an Independent in Nebraska, which makes him forbidden fruit to the Party establishment. That shying away from Independents is also a policy that needs to change in certain circumstances, especially when and where Democrats don't have a viable candidate of their own and aren't likely to find one.)

Reporter Karni understands the numbers: "The halls of Congress are still, by and large, populated by career politicians, lawyers and wealthy businessmen. About 78 percent of senators currently serving in office hold an advanced degree, according to Congressional Quarterly. More than 30 percent of House members and 47 percent of senators hold a law degree."

So make no mistake. It's a class issue, which Bernie Sanders has been warning us about: 

“The Democratic leadership [Mr. Schumer, call your office] has got to make a choice whether they stand with their billionaire friends and corporate backers or whether they stand with the working class. The leadership much prefers the comfort of wealthy people rather than working-class people and grass-roots organizing. That’s a profound mistake.”

Meanwhile, the candidates profiled by Karni understand struggle, which makes them potent if not outright revolutionary for saving the Democrats: “We work nonstop every day, over and over, and it seems like all we do is survive, right?” Nathan Sage told voters at a recent event in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. With Sage's "right," he punctuated his connection to his audience's reality, and the crowd roared their fellow-feeling. They had found a champion. What differentiates a Nathan Sage from MAGA is that progressive labor doesn't want to burn it down. It wants to reform and build it stronger to uphold the social contract.

Dan Osborn, "The Guy From the Shop Floor"

 

Dan Osborn's populist run against U.S. Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., in 2024 made national headlines for turning an expected safe race for Republicans into a potential upset. He attracted an extraordinary fundraising haul of $14 million for a federal candidate in Nebraska without direct ties to a major party, including some late money from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee once they saw his momentum.

--Nebraska Examiner

I discovered the independent candidacy of Dan Osborn back in May, and Michelle Goldberg reminded me of him this morning, with something titled, "How to Make Senate Republicans Pay For Their Awful Bill." Dan Osborn is looking to flip Pete Ricketts' Nebraska Senate seat from bright red Republican to shining purple left populism. 

Short Sketch: He's liberal on abortion and on the rights of organized labor -- yet he ran for U.S. Senate in '24 as a hard-nosed critic of both Democratic and Republican machines and said he agreed with Trump about the border and about confronting China. He's a believer in the 2nd Amendment but accepts safety limitations. He presented in 2024 as an irritable independent, a powerful emanation of working-class anger. A master machinist, so he knows how to work effectively with his hands, and he's got a head for union leadership. Before that he was a Navy man and a National Guardsman, all of which has made him a plain talker who radiates steel. 

Does he have a platform? My good Lord, yes. It's quite extensive. These are points that caught my attention:

Pete Ricketts 

He wants to ban billionaires from buying elections. The current senator, Pete Ricketts, is the billionaire eldest son of Joe Ricketts, founder of TD Ameritrade, and as a 2-term former governor of Nebraska, he's the boss hog. Osborn: "We have one man who's bought up every level of government in Nebraska. That's wrong. It doesn't matter whether it's George Soros or Pete Ricketts: spending millions to buy an election undermines this country." (Osborn has dubbed this contest, “The C.E.O. versus the guy from the shop floor."

Secure the border: "Legal immigration helped build this country and is critical to Nebraska’s economy. Illegal immigration creates a pool of cheap labor with no rights and is detrimental to every American worker."

He is maybe most passionate about "the right to repair," from which I learned that the basic human freedom of farmers and ranchers to repair their essential equipment has been seriously eroded by manufacturers, many of whom now restrict repair options, often requiring customers to use only their authorized service centers or to purchase new devices instead of repairing existing ones. Such lifetime repair and upkeep contracts have also run small-time auto shops out of business. Something needs to be done!

Profiteering off Senior Services: "Private equity buys out elder care facilities, saddles them with debt, forces them to sell off real estate holdings, and pockets the savings. Facilities are then forced to reduce staffing and services. Overwhelmingly, we see two outcomes of private equity buyouts: decline in quality of care, and increase in Medicare spending. [Therefore] we must: Block private equity firms from taking over healthcare firms providing covered services when such a takeover would put those being served at risk."

School vouchers: "Although sometimes well-intended, voucher systems weaken public schools and punish rural areas that lack private options."

Handouts to Big Pharma: "Taxpayers have sent Moderna $10 billion in COVID subsidies. The CEO of Moderna made $398 million in 2022. Moderna just more than quadrupled the price of the COVID vaccine. This is madness. Stop handing huge subsidies to super-profitable pharmaceutical companies. In the heat of the pandemic, Congress handed over tens of billions of dollars to Big Pharma. Some of this turned into the vaccine. Much of it turned into CEO pay. As Senator, I will never support handing huge pharmaceuticals a blank check."

Osborn issued a statement just yesterday reaffirming his independence from the Democratic Party, promising if elected to caucus with neither party. “I’ve been a registered independent from the time I could vote,” Osborn said, and I checked: It's true. His designation as Independent is not a recent or convenient smokescreen for some standard Libtard running disguised as a Libertarian in a heavily Republican state.

Democrats are often scared of jumping on a populist bandwagon, because of the anti-elitist vibe embedded in populism's understanding of the hidden wounds of class. But at least the Nebraska Democratic Party more than hinted support: “Breaking up the one-party stranglehold on our state is going to take an unlikely alliance of Democrats, Republicans and Independents coming together to fix a very broken Washington, D.C.”

Maybe 2026 Will Be the Year of the Blue Collar

 

I tend to think that a lot of the Democrats’ problems can be solved through candidate recruitment, and just recruiting people who come from the communities that they want to represent, who sort of are fluent in the cultural norms of the places that they come from.

--Michelle Goldberg

Dan Osborn

Goldberg brought Nebraskan Dan Osborn to my attention. A tough ex-Navy and rock-hard union man whose social compact virtues make him also attractive to the Left (in a state where there's barely any Left left) -- he's liberal on abortion and on the rights of organized labor -- yet he ran for Federal office as a hard-nosed critic of both Democratic and Republican machines and said he agreed with Trump about the border and about confronting China. He presented as an irritable independent, a somewhat shocking emanation of working-class anger, running for US Senate in Nebraska in 2024 against a two-term Republican incumbent, Deb Fischer. No one took him seriously at first. The Democratic Party was initially more than merely cool toward him, but with no Democratic candidate on the ballot, the Party reportedly offered to endorse Osborn. Osborn rejected it. His determination not to be beholden to any damn clique was the final straw for the Democratic Party establishment, but many registered Democrats nevertheless discreetly flocked to his campaign. Osborn became a phenomenal money-raiser -- almost $8 million, just from out-of-state donors alone. How did he do that? (And by the way and to give away the ending, Osborn scared the wits out of Sen. Fischer and took 46.52% of the vote in 2024. He's already formed a campaign to try again in '26 against the other incumbent Republican Senator, Pete Ricketts.) 

Osborn set out to hold a series of at least two and possibly three in-person events in every single county in Nebraska, getting out among the people in a way his Republican opponent never did. The breakthrough came in September, in the heat of the campaign. A new poll suddenly put Osborn ahead of Fischer, turning a lot of heads. Boom! Osborn is appearing in a lengthy interview on MSNBC, and everybody wants to get him on camera. Money came in.

A beneficent cash-flow allows you to compete, and Osborn didn't pull punches in his TV ads.

Not only is Osborn running again in '26 -- a recent 2025 poll showed him leading the incumbent Ricketts -- but he's also now financing other authentic working-class candidates with a new PAC, the Working Class Heroes Fund, aimed at candidate recruitment, whether Republican, Independent, or Democratic. The Fund is "dedicated to uniting and mobilizing working people across party lines to give the working class a seat at the table" (website).