I read this with a little bit of skepticism… like okay let me provisionally accept this, criticizing Biden over Gaza is absolutely just and right, and there absolutely is a divide between the establishment left and the “rank and file” in terms of how they see the issue, and he’s losing support because of it. And at the same time, I’m reading this wondering whether it’s a genuine article about the issue or just an excuse to throw shade at Biden and bring a little anti-union-rank-and-file shade into the equation also.

Most unions (management or not) are heavily anti-genocide, with little bits of disagreement about how far to go with it (e.g. whether to divest from all weapons production work that might help Israel), and most unions (management or not) are heavily pro-Biden for obvious reasons. I would describe the divide as a little bit less “management vs rank and file” than it is “do we care so much about Gaza that we’d erode support our favored candidate because of it.” (And there’s a pretty good argument that they should care to that extent; I’m just saying that’s more where the divide lies, with most deciding to support him anyway.)

Here’s my take on what I discovered in the article as my way of answering what was the goal of the article:

Instead of adopting an increasingly rightwing rhetoric and policy toward immigration, Neumann-Ortiz said, Biden should use his executive authority to expand protections for undocumented immigrants and campaign on protections for immigrants that his administration has implemented – like a 2023 measure the Department of Homeland Security quietly passed to protect non-citizen workers whose workplace rights have been violated from deportation.

“You’re not going to win those Trump supporters, but you are definitely eroding and alienating your own base,” said Neumann-Ortiz.

This year, Biden has touted legislation to crack down on the southern border and limit the number of asylum seekers accepted on a daily basis there

Here’s a summary of Biden’s immigration changes. Not listed in that is the fact that he formed a task force to find the families of all those separated children who were just loose kicking around in the system growing up in hell after Trump’s family separation policy, and tried to reunite them with their families. Maybe the sum total number of people impacted by that is small, but to me that perfectly encapsulates the difference in humanity in Biden’s immigration policy versus Trump’s and the current Republicans.

Sure, you can give him a hard time because while trying to work out a deal to get desperately-needed aid to Ukraine, he adopted some of the rhetoric of his opponents and offered them way more than he should have, in terms of conceding to the terrible things they want to do at the border, to try to bargain for help for millions of other non-Americans who were at risk of dying somewhere else in the world. Using that hard time as an argument for why he affirmatively wants to do bad things on immigration, and a reason to give more power to the opponents instead of to him, is very very clearly a whole bunch of nonsense.

, and even used the pejorative “illegal” in his State of the Union address.

Blow me. Be fair if you’re going to give criticism; don’t do this way, or it’s going to make me look at the whole rest of your article like “wtf what are you tryin to pull man.”