The Incredible Disappearing Senate Democrats

What the hell did Julie Su do between 2021 and 2023 to render her unfit to be labor secretary?

How many Senate Democrats voted for Julie Su when President Joe Biden nominated her back in 2021 to be deputy labor secretary?

I’m so glad you asked! All of them.

How many Senate Democrats can the Biden White House count on to confirm Su as labor secretary, a position for which Biden nominated her in April?

Forty-five.

Senators Joe Manchin (D.-W.Va.) and Jon Tester (D.-Montana) were untroubled by Su when they voted to confirm her as deputy to then-Labor Secretary Marty Walsh in July 2021. So were New England independents Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Angus King of Maine, and so was Kyrsten Sinema, who was a Democrat in 2021 but is now an independent. All these independents caucus with the Democrats. But today, Manchin quietly opposes Su; Sinema probably does too but won’t say so; and Tester and King are on the fence. (Sanders was strongly for Su then and remains so now.) If Tester and King vote yes, and if Senator Lisa Murkowski (R.-Alaska), who voted against Su last time, can be persuaded to vote yes this time, Su will be confirmed.

If not, she’s toast.

The rap against Su is not that she’s been a bad deputy labor secretary. Republicans can’t argue that because she’s been quite a good deputy, often called on, I suspect, to take up the slack from Walsh, who never moved down from Dorchester and, as I’ve noted, was never much good at the job. (Republicans who complain that Su is no Marty Walsh are paying her an inadvertent compliment.) Indeed, in her capacity as acting labor secretary, Su may have averted a recession last week by helping labor and management agree on a new contract for west coast dockworkers. Su was even thanked by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce! (The Los Angeles branch has gone further, and endorsed her nomination.)

The rap against Su is that before she became deputy labor secretary she was labor secretary in California, which on her watch passed a state law cracking down on worker misclassification. That didn’t bother Manchin and Sinema (or, potentially, Tester and King) back in 2021. Why should it bother them in 2023? That’s the subject of my latest New Republic column. You can read it here.