California farmworkers may struggle with clout in our state Capitol, but they definitely have friends in higher places.

Those include Dark Brandon, that feisty internet alter ego of Joe Biden who is done being the ice-cream-eating nice guy — and is letting his antagonists know it, whether they are MAGA Republicans or wayward California governors.

Sunday, on the eve of Labor Day, Biden weighed in on a boiling fight between the United Farm Workers and Gov. Gavin Newsom over a bill that the governor has signaled he will veto.

The president made it clear he’s with the UFW.

“In the state with the largest population of farmworkers, the least we owe them is an easier path to make a free and fair choice to organize a union,” he wrote in a four-paragraph statement.

“Government should work to remove — not erect — barriers to workers organizing,” he continued.

Along with supporting farmworkers, which Biden has long done (he has a bust of César Chávez on his desk, borrowed from the national monument outside Bakersfield), there’s a Dark Brandon subtext in the statement: Keep dishing it out and we’ll serve it right back.

For months, Newsom has been calling out fellow Democrats for not being tough enough on “Make America Great Again” Republicans. It’s been refreshing to see and has garnered the governor national attention for standing up to the far right’s war on women, trans people, gay people, educators, librarians, FBI agents and anyone else that doesn’t support Christian nationalism.

But it’s also put other Democrats, including Biden, in a hard position. Newsom found a political sweet spot as the in-the-trenches Democrat, at the expense of fellow Democrats. Monday, Vice President Kamala Harris, whom Newsom would have to leapfrog for a 2024 spot, also tweeted support for farmworkers.

The measure in question, Assembly Bill 2183, is on paper a proposal to change the rules on how farmworkers unionize. From UFW’s perspective, the bill is about how the farmworker workforce has increasingly changed over the decades from legal immigrants to those without documentation — making them vulnerable to threats of deportation if they try to join a union. That’s been happening at the same time that agricultural interests have more labor leverage, using more workers with temporary visas who can be ousted from both jobs and the country with almost no protections.

But Newsom has indicated he thinks the bill has too many flaws and gives the union too much leeway — a union that has been rightfully criticized for not using its clout to organize more laborers. Behind the scenes for weeks, the governor’s staff has scrambled to find a compromise with UFW and the bill’s author, Assemblymember Mark Stone, D-Scotts Valley, that would narrow the discretion the bill gives to union organizers by putting more power in the hands of the state Agricultural Labor Relations Board.

The UFW has offered this solution: a sunset clause that makes the whole framework disappear after five years unless the Legislature renews it.

It hasn’t swayed the governor. In fact, rumors have been circulating that he will veto the bill as soon as this week.

It has become a wedge in an otherwise tight relationship with organized labor.

The president weighing in so directly and forcefully changes the game. With unionism sweeping the nation right now, and a new generation of young workers embracing the old ideal of solidarity, Biden has ensured that a veto would be a stain on Newsom’s progressive credentials, now and in the future.

“It is long past time that we ensure America’s farmworkers and other essential workers have the same right to join a union as other Americans,” Biden wrote.

How can anyone be against that?

Anita Chabria is a Los Angeles Times columnist. ©2022 Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.