MSNBC host Joe Scarborough admitted Friday that Vice President Kamala Harris “needs help” after a second major union declined to make a presidential endorsement for the Nov. 5 election.
The International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF), which endorsed President Joe Biden in the 2020 campaign, announced Thursday it would not be endorsing a presidential candidate in the 2024 election, slightly over two weeks after the International Brotherhood of Teamsters said it would not endorse either former President Donald Trump or Harris. Scarborough said that endorsements like the one musician Bruce Springsteen gave Thursday were crucial for the vice president.
“Guys that may have voted for Trump in ‘16, barely were able to vote for him in ‘20, and they’ve said it to me, they hate the fact that they’re going to have to vote for this guy in 2024,” Scarborough told “Morning Joe” co-host Jonathan Lemire. “They don’t feel right now, some of them don’t feel, like they can vote for a Democrat, let alone Kamala Harris. That’s why Bruce Springsteen here, not that one rock star is going to make a difference, but it certainly is the kind of phrase of the campaign, it’s the permission structure, ‘Hey, wait a second, I’ve listened to this guy for 50 years. I know him. He’s a good guy. He shares my values.’ If he says she’s okay, maybe when they walk into the booth, they go, ‘Yeah, okay, let’s do it.
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But right now, Jonathan, to underline this fact that Kamala Harris needs help in this area, you had more, I thought, very surprising news yesterday, and not good news for the Harris campaign,” Scarborough continued. “The firefighters, who were Joe Biden’s most strident supporters, the firefighters union followed the Teamsters union and decided they weren’t going to get involved in the presidential race. Again, it could have been much worse. They could have done what Teamsters have done in the past and endorse a Republican president, but they did not do that yesterday.”
Trump trails Harris by 2.2% in the RealClearPolling average of polls from Sept. 19 to Oct. 2, with the vice president’s lead dropping to 2% when Green Party candidate Dr. Jill Stein, independent candidate Cornel West and Libertarian candidate Chase Oliver are included in surveys.
“Yeah, the firefighters union endorsed Joe Biden in April of 2019, very early days of his campaign. They were immediately on board for him. Yesterday, they announced they’re not going to endorse at all. There was a close vote of its members, and they opted, much like the Teamsters, to not back at all,” Lemire said. “That is reflective of what is becoming a growing concern among Democrats and the Harris campaign, that she is, indeed, struggling with male voters, in particular working class, blue collar and often white male voters. There needs to be more outreach to those groups. These are groups that, over the last few years, have started to break toward Trump, these non-college educated voters are breaking Republican, they’re breaking Trump. It’s a growing sign of concern.
The Teamsters announced it would make no endorsement in the election, even though Trump received overwhelming support among its rank-and-file members.
“And by the way, we showed the Tim Walz and J.D. Vance numbers after the debate and showed how it was pretty much a draw, even though Walz’s approval ratings went up far more. But you look at the crosstabs of white male voters without a college degree, J.D. Vance won overwhelmingly,” Scarborough said. “So if J.D. Vance is running around, like wall-to-wall, a lot of America may be looking at the cat memes, when J.D. Vance goes to rural areas in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, he’s getting a warm welcome. He messages much better there than Tim Walz does.”
Trump has made significant gains among working-class voters over 2020, including holding a 31-point lead among trade school graduates, CNN data reporter Harry Enten noted.
