WSJ What’s News - Democrats Spotlight Workers, Abortion Rights on First Night of Convention

Episode Date: August 20, 2024

A.M. Edition for Aug. 20. President Biden rallies support for Vice President Kamala Harris in Chicago, and several union leaders take the stage. Our Luke Vargas reports from the convention and asks the WSJ’s Sabrina Siddiqui about Democrats’ efforts to recapture the working-class vote. Plus, Israel recovers the bodies of six Gaza hostages. And, Edgar Bronfman Jr. makes a $4.3 billion bid for National Amusements and a stake in Paramount. Kate Bullivant hosts. Sign up for the WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Benefits vary by card, other conditions apply. Israel's military recovers the bodies of six Gaza hostages. Plus President Biden's swan song at the Democratic National Convention. You got the sense that he wanted to be giving a much different speech at this convention, a speech on Thursday night, accepting the nomination, instead of a speech on Monday

night where he'd kind of be disappearing as the days went on. And Edgar Bronfman Jr. makes his play for Paramount's parent. It's Tuesday, August 20th. I'm Kate Bulevant for The Wall Street Journal filling in for Luke Vargas, who's in Chicago reporting from the DNC. Here is the AM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today. We begin in Israel, whose military said this morning that it recovered the bodies of six

hostages taken by Hamas in the October 7th attack. Five of the hostages were over 50 years old when they were captured, while three had family members that were released during a ceasefire in November. The bodies were recovered during an overnight operation in southern Gaza. The mission came as the United States, Egypt and Qatar are working to mediate a new ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas that would include the release of the remaining captives held by the militant group. Hamas is believed to still be holding more than

a hundred hostages, though Israeli authorities estimate around a third of them are now dead. As Democrats kicked off the first day of their convention in Chicago, Vice President Kamala Harris made an impromptu appearance, speaking briefly to the crowd of roaring supporters. But the evening culminated with President Biden passing the torch to Harris in a speech that served as a sort of swan song for a more than 50-year-long political career. I spend the honour of my lifetime to serve as your president. I love the job, but I love my country more. Our Luke Vargas, along with a team of Wall Street Journal reporters and editors, is in Chicago to cover the event and he brings us this report.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Joe, was the chant that Biden took the stage to last night, wiping away tears as he did so, a message tinged with double meaning as Democrats here celebrated his accomplishments in office, as well as his decision to cede the top of the ticket to Kamala Harris. President Biden's speech was actually multiple speeches. Damian Paletta is the Journal's Washington coverage chief. Probably the most powerful part of the speech was before he even started talking.

There was almost a five-minute standing ovation from the crowd, and they were thrilled, quite frankly, that he had decided to pass the baton to Kamala Harris. So it was very emotional in the auditorium. You can see people were in tears. But what followed were remarks you'd reliably hear on the campaign trail, with Biden at times sounding like he was forcefully, maybe even angrily, making a case for himself to get a second term. He shouted that essentially that he didn't get the credit that he deserved

for the bills that he passed through Congress and for the progress that he made in fighting covid and rescuing the economy after the coronavirus pandemic and you got the sense that he wanted to be giving a much different speech at this convention a speech on thursday night accepting the nomination instead of a speech on monday night where he'd kind of be disappearing as the days went on then then he shifted gears and he started talking about Kamala Harris. I promise I'll be the best volunteer Harris and Walz has ever seen. The night wasn't all gestures though and we got a strong early indication of the

issues Democrats want to highlight this week. Reproductive rights were in focus with several women sharing tragic pregnancy stories that they connected to abortion restrictions in Republican states, and there were repeated appeals to working-class voters, and in particular, union members. Because when unions do well, we all do well. In fact, no less than seven union leaders graced the convention stage, including United Auto Workers President Sean Fain, who called Harris a fighter for the working class, and got the crowd fired up with this line about her opponent.

Donald Trump is a scab. I caught up with another union leader, AFSCME President Lee Saunders, and asked him how organized labor is responding after Trump used his Republican convention last month to make a strong pitch to union members. And Saunders, like a lot of union people I've chatted with here in Chicago, brought up remarks from a recent live stream on X that we actually talked about on the podcast last week. A couple of days ago, Trump was laughing with Elon Musk about firing strikers. I mean, I look at what you do, you walk in and you just say, you want to quit?

They go on strike. I won't mention the name of the company, but they go on strike and you say, that's OK, you're all gone. The Republican convention, as far as talking about supporting workers, is not a reality. The Trump administration, when they were president, tried to do everything they could to gut workers' rights. So their argument is phony, it's not true, and workers will not fall for it.

My colleague Sabrina Siddiqui told me Democrats have good reason to want to double down on organized labor. The issue that Democrats have is in winning over the rank-and-file union members, who in recent cycles have drifted toward Trump and Republicans. An Emerson College poll from when Biden was still atop the Democratic ticket showed his lead over Trump among union households in battlegrounds Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin slipping to just five percentage points. And when Sean O'Brien became the first Teamsters leader to speak at a Republican convention last month, that served as a warning sign that Democrats

can't take union support for granted. Here's Rick Smith, a Teamster who brought his progressive radio show to the DNC. My problem with Sean O'Brien and normalizing Trump's record is he's gonna make it okay for a lot of Teamsters members to go and vote for Trump. And OK for a lot of Teamster members to go and vote for Trump. And there are a lot of Teamster members who are Republicans. By him being at the RNC, that was a tacit endorsement, no matter what the union does. And even on matters of substance, no matter if Biden prioritized union labor and his infrastructure and clean energy laws or became the first sitting president to walk a picket line, the shift of working class voters toward Republicans is one Sabrina told me Democrats

will have to contend with. It remains to be seen whether you have that disconnect between union leaders and rank and file members of these unions who broadly belong to that white working class vote that Democrats have been trying to recapture ever since 2016. And, you know, it's critical to battleground states such as Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, the so-called Rust Belt, President Biden, although he did recapture those states in 2020, there was not a dramatic shift among white working class voters. We'll see if anything changes with Vice President Harris at the top of the ticket in November. We'll have more dispatches from Luke and the Journal's contingent in Chicago as the week

goes on. Tune into tonight's episode for the next one. Coming up, Edgar Bronfman Jr. makes a rival bid for Paramount's parent company and why Gen Z's are racking up record amounts of debt. Those stories and more after the break. We're exclusively reporting that media executive Edgar Bronfman Jr. has submitted a $4.3 billion offer for Paramount Global's parent company National Amusements, as well as a minority stake in Paramount itself. The offer could scuttle a previous agreement to merge Paramount with Skydance Media. Bronfman's bid would match Skydance's offer for National Amusements and its proposed injection of $1.5 billion into Paramount's balance sheet.

His pitch is that his deal is better for Paramount shareholders because they wouldn't be diluted. It's now up to a special committee at Paramount to decide if the bid warrants extending a so-called go-shot period on the Skydance deal that's due to end tomorrow. Skydance declined to comment. Boeing has found cracks in the structure of its 777X jetliner in initial test flights and says it will ground its four-plane test fleet while it replaces the faulty component and sorts out what went wrong. This marks the latest setback for Boeing's long-delayed new aircraft, which

the planemaker unveiled in 2013 and said would start delivering in 2020. Currently, Boeing has orders for 540 of the jets that it plans to start delivering in 2025. It's unclear what impact the issue could have on the plane's launch date. And now let's take a look at what could move markets today. Big natural gas producers including EQT, APA and Chesapeake Energy are holding back gas from the market for the second time this year. They are trying to stem a glut and prop up prices with benchmark natural gas futures now trading roughly 15% lower than a year ago and 29% below a recent peak earlier this summer. And Alaska Air and Hawaiian Airlines' planned merger has cleared

a major hurdle after the Justice Department opted against challenging the billion dollar deal on antitrust grounds. The Department of Transportation still needs to give the green light for the merger to go ahead. If it does, it will be the first major US airline merger since 2016. And finally, the oldest members of Gen Z are only in their mid to late 20s, but they've already acquired a financial habit that could be hard to shake. Journal audio intern Tadeo Roisandaval has been digging into the record-setting pace of debt accumulation among his Gen Z peers. For a special three-part series on our Your Money Briefing podcast and he

spoke to our Luke Vargas. Today, it would make sense that Gen Zers who are recent graduates would have student debt, but I gather as you've been digging into it, there is a whole lot more to the Gen Z debt story than just that. There definitely is. It's not just about the amount of debt that Gen Z is accumulating. It's about the way that they're tackling it. See, when you get a student loan, you get a credit card, a car loan, whatever types of loans that you're getting, you're not taking into account that you also have to pay for rent.

You have to pay for groceries, you have to pay for everyday expenses, and the paychecks that Gen Zers are getting now are simply not stretching enough. And because they're not able to attack this debt effectively when they can't afford groceries because all of their money is just going to these minimum payments, they have to often pay with their credit card which often leads to even more debt. Todayadeo, debt always carries some risks, but inflation and the way that is hitting Gen Zers as they take out debt kind of makes this all the more challenging of an issue potentially for them going forward, doesn't it? Yes, it is, absolutely.

So inflation in the past decade has risen by about 32% according to the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. And as Gen Zers are entering the workforce, they are having to use more and more of their paycheck to service their debt. According to a trans-union study that looked at 22-24 year old Gen Zers, as well as comparing them to Millennials 10 years ago when they were the same age, they found out that Gen Zers were using 16% of their income to service their debt, compared to Millennials who only used 12% of their income to service their debt when compared to millennials who only use 12% of their income

to service their debt when they were the same age, making it harder for them to save. And as we explore in this series, this problem, Gen Z's debt, isn't just their problem, it will be a problem for every other generation as well. The first episode of Gen Z and the Debt Trap has dropped on the Your Money Briefing podcast. Go check it out. Thanks, Tadeo. Thank you very much. And that's it for What's News for Tuesday morning. Today's show was produced by Daniel Bach with supervising producer Christina Rokker. And I'm Kate Bulevant for The Wall Street

Journal filling in for Luke Vargas. We'll be back tonight with a new show. And until then, thanks for listening.