Graeme Sloan/Sipa USA via AP Images
Julie Su during a Senate confirmation hearing at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, March 16, 2021
Nancy Pelosi, weirdly, has been calling labor leaders and top Biden officials, including the president, to push former New York Congressman Sean Patrick Maloney to succeed Marty Walsh as labor secretary. This makes no sense on three grounds.
First, Maloney, as the former head of the DCCC who managed to lose his own seat and several others held by Democrats, is as responsible as anyone for the fact that Pelosi is no longer Speaker. Loyalty for a former, now jobless, member of the House leadership is one thing, but Maloney didn’t earn it. Quite the opposite.
Second, Maloney is not much of a progressive and has no particular ties to the labor movement. “Nancy is being incredibly disrespectful to working people by making it look like the Labor Department is a place to park political hacks,” says one senior union source. Speaking of which, the New York Post is reporting that another out-of-work pol, former Mayor Bill de Blasio, has been lobbying Biden for the labor job.
Third and most importantly, Deputy Labor Secretary Julie Su, a genuine progressive who knows the Labor Department inside and out, has already locked up broad support. Most union leaders are backing Su. The Congressional Black Caucus and the Asian American and Pacific Islander caucus have already endorsed Su, pointing out that there are no Asian Americans in the Cabinet. (U.S. Trade Rep Katherine Tai sort of counts but is far less visible.)
This is a very rare case of the astute Pelosi having a tin ear, unless she is just going through the motions to do Maloney a favor. She must know that it’s inconceivable that Biden would defy both the labor movement and the Black and Asian caucuses (unless his re-election advisers make a cynical campaign decision that this post needs to go to a white guy, which would be cheap grace—there are better ways for Biden to dramatize his support for the white working class).
Speaking of gender politics, here’s another very good reason to give Su the labor job. The White House has leaked the fact that Fed Vice Chair Lael Brainard is the top candidate to be the new director of the National Economic Council.
This is a terrible idea on two grounds. First, we need Brainard at the Fed as a counterweight to the perverse tight-money policies of Chair Jay Powell.
Second and even more important, though Brainard is good on monetary policy, she is a traditional free-trade globalist at a time when Biden is all in on an agenda of economic planning and conditioned subsidies to reshore production to America. Brainard’s impulses would be at odds with the president’s own priorities.
Why Brainard? Because with Jeff Zients as the new chief of staff and Jared Bernstein soon moving up to chair the Council of Economic Advisers, succeeding the departing Cecilia Rouse, the White House doesn’t want the optics of three white guys in the top economic job. Thus they need a woman at the NEC.
But Brainard is the wrong woman and—stop the presses—labor secretary is also a top economic job and Julie Su is a woman. So the symbolism of naming Su to head the Labor Department frees Biden to appoint the best person to head the NEC, regardless of gender.
Meanwhile, incumbent Labor Secrertary Marty Walsh, who embarrassed everyone with the leak of his reported imminent departure to the NHL Players’ Association, has yet to ice his deal. This could go into sudden-death overtime.
