The Railway Labor Crisis Tells Us A Lot About Democrats' Priorities

Earlier this week, the Biden White House issued a statement of thanks to Democrats and Republicans in the House of Representatives who had just voted to impose a contract without sick days on railworkers and override their right to strike. Running less than 150 words, the press release revealingly made no mention of the other House vote — to include seven of those very sick days in the same deal — that had just taken place. Subsequently confronted over the omission, White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre offered the verbal equivalent of a shrug. “The president,” she said, “supports paid sick leave for rail workers. But he understands there are not sixty votes. Right? There are not sixty votes in the Senate to make that happen.”

Roughly twenty-four hours later, the initiative duly died its expected death and fell eight votes short of the necessary threshold. Parallel legislation to impose a contract on railworkers meanwhile passed by a whopping margin of eighty to fifteen. Never let anyone tell you that bipartisanship is dead.