The Opinions - Why This Senate Candidate Is a Potential ‘Shock to the System’

Episode Date: October 29, 2024

Much of the country is laser focused on the presidential election, but control of the Senate is also up for grabs in November. One of the seats in contention is, surprisingly, in deep-red Nebraska, where the independent Dan Osborn is running against the Trump-endorsed Republican Deb Fischer. In the episode of “The Opinions,” the columnist Michelle Goldberg travels to Nebraska to report on Osborn’s appeal and argues that his decision to run lays the groundwork for a “potential new avenue for a left-wing style of populist politics.”Thoughts? Email us at [e-mail]. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This is The Opinions, a show that brings you a mix of voices from New York Times opinion. You've heard the news. Here's what to make of it. My name is Michelle Goldberg, and I'm an opinion columnist at the New York Times. I have felt so paralyzed by a combination of utter terror and boredom when following this election. I mean, because the stakes are so terrifically high, and yet there is so. little new to say about the depravity of Donald Trump and the log jam that we're stuck in as a country. So I wanted to go to a place where something new and potentially hopeful is developing, and weirdly enough, I found it in Nebraska. I'm standing outside a cider brewery in Ashland, Nebraska.

Nobody thought that the Senate race in Nebraska was going to be remotely competitive. Everybody assumed that the Republican Senator Deb Fisher was pretty safe. And this independent candidate named Dan Osborne has come out of nowhere and really is giving Deb Fisher a run for her money and making it close to a toss-up.

his race could be a potential model for people who want to challenge Republican power in places where the Democratic Party really isn't competitive. I want to continue to be a voice for working families, not just union families, but all work for people across the state of Nebraska. Dan Osborne is an independent. He won't say who he voted for in 2020 for president. He won't say who he's going to vote for in 2020. for president.

Economically, his platform and his agenda is very traditionally democratic. He wants to raise corporate taxes. He wants to make it easier for people to unionize. I get frustrated with the corporate agendas. I have a worker agenda. Osborne spent 20 years as an industrial mechanic at a Kellogg's plant in Omaha. He eventually became president of the union. and became very politicized during negotiations over a new contract in 2021,

when he felt like Kellogg's was really being unfair to workers who had sacrificed a lot to keep the plant open through COVID. We were all working seven days a week, 12 hours a day with no time off. But we kept all four of those plants running out 100% capacity, and we made them record profits. We figured it would share a little sliver of the pie. But instead they sat across the negotiating table from us, and they said, we're going after your health insurance. We're going after your cost of living wage adjustment, which was our only form of wage increases.

He ended up leading about 500 people at that plant out on strike. Kellogg's ended up having to accede to a lot of their demands, and they were successful. You might have asked you questions about what brought you out? I met the guy named Joe Hallett, a Donald Trump's. supporter and Joe was there with his wife Sherry. With an eye. Both of whom are Republicans. Also a very strong Dan Osborne supporter.

And someone who had known him at Kellogg. He's not a millionaire or anything like that. He was a mechanic. Dan's a mechanic. We know what it's like as the working class. Isn't that the unions wanted an independent candidate. to challenge Deb Fisher was because they didn't want someone who was going to be bogged down in what they call quote-unquote wedge issues that they'd feel alienate social conservatives in Nebraska

from the Democratic Party. But when it comes to big picture policy, Dan Osborne is not completely at odds with the Democratic Party. So, for example, he says that he is personally against abortion, but he believes abortion should be legal. He's very protective of Second Amendment rights, but he also is willing to defer to urban police forces that support various sorts of gun regulation. What is your frustration with the Democratic Party? Because, I mean, the Democratic Party, as you know, is against Citizens United.

Joe Biden has been, I think, a pretty pro-union president. Yeah. My frustration with them is, I probably share the same sentiment with a lot of people that they feel like they get talked down to by the Democrats. the Democrats come in and say that you need to respect people's pronouns. And for people who are working 80 hours a week and meatpacking plants or on farms or anything else, they're not too concerned about that.

So that's where I get frustrated. And if you actually look at what Democrats are saying, you know, Kamala Harris is not running a campaign about identity politics. No major Democrat that I can think of talks more about pronouns than about wages. But there's this ingrained image of the Democratic Party. That's a very difficult thing to dislodge. In the short term, I think it makes sense for unions who want to challenge very pro-corporate Republicans to maybe just go around the two-party system.

Democrats have been shedding white working class voters, And Joe Biden has done everything possible in terms of policy levers to try to reverse this slide. And what you've seen is that it actually has done very little to stymie the erosion of the working class from the Democratic Party, which calls into question whether this is really a matter of policy at all, instead of a deeper question about branding and identity and belonging. And if that's the case, that's a much harder thing for Democrats to address. I left this trip feeling hopeful. This has been such a bleak and terrifying election season.

This was a place where there's an unexpected challenge to right-wing. power that even if Dan Osborne remains an underdog, something new is bubbling up, a kind of potential new avenue for a left-wing style of populist politics is emerging. And I think that this is a potentially fascinating model. It's certainly going to be copied if he wins. But I think it might be copied even if he loses because he's come so surprisingly close. I think that a Dan Osborne victory would be such a shock to the system and would really be a blow to the Republican Party

and could potentially thwart Republicans' chances of gaining back Senate control. If you like this show, follow it on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. This show is produced by Derek Arthur, Sophia Albuyer, Alvarez Boyd, Bishaka, Fibuette, Christina Samuelski, and Jillian Weinberger. It's edited by Kari Pitkin, Alison Bruzek, and Annie Rose Strasser. Engineering, mixing, and original music by

Isaac Jones, Sonia Herrero, Pat McCusker, Carol Saburo, and Afim Shapiro. Additional music by Amin Sahota. The fact check team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker, and Michelle Harris. Audience Strategy by Shannon Busta, Christina Samuiluski, and Adrian Rivera. The executive producer of Times Opinion Audio is Annie Rose Dresser.