'Look, the Democratic Party has lost their way to some extent with working class voters,' said Ted Pappageorge, secretary treasurer of the powerful Culinary Workers Union Local 226 in Las Vegas. 'When we were (knocking) at the doors … it was pretty clear that Trump was winning the fight about dealing with inflation and kitchen table issues and Democrats essentially were being viewed as the party of abortion.'

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Pappageorge said one issue essentially eclipsed everything else Biden delivered for working families and organized labor. “All of those things are important, but the No. 1 issue on the mind of working-class people, including union people, was inflation and the cost of living,” he said.

Pappageorge described Biden as “my hero” because of all of his accomplishments for working people, but he believes the president dug an insurmountable hole for the party by trying for months to emphasize the economy’s positive aspects rather than challenging companies raising prices and rents, as Harris forcefully did immediately after she entered the race. “Kamala had the best message we saw; we think her message was on point,” Pappageorge said. “If Biden had been running on Kamala’s program earlier, I think they would have reaped the benefit of that. But they didn’t. They tried to tell working class people the economy is setting records.”