The New York Sun joins Big Labor in mourning the death of Richard Trumka. He’d arisen from the mines through the United Mine Workers to become, in 2009, president of the AFL-CIO. We didn’t know him personally, but we admire enormously the role that the union played during the Cold War in — as we like to put it — driving through the beating heart of Soviet communism the stake of Free Labor.

Plus, too, we’re wistful that there never came to pass the debate we wanted to see between Trumka and Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska. We wrote about this in an editorial called “Woman of the Year.” It is about the war of words that erupted between Trumka and Mrs. Palin when the leader of Big Labor paid a visit to Alaska and attacked its governor, saying “sometimes — about Sarah Palin — you’ve just got to laugh.”

Mrs. Palin promptly issued on Facebook a challenge: “Union Brothers and Sisters, Join Our Commonsense Cause!” It expressed an idea that we’d long ago come to appreciate, that the interests of the working men and women of America are far better served by the Republicans than the Democrats. We’d always thought a debate between Trumka and Mrs. Palin would’ve been a riveting way to open a national dialog.

After all, Mrs. Palin, one of the most conservative governors in America at the time, had, upon stepping onto the national stage as the vice presidential nominee, boasted of her and her husband’s union memberships. “Unions were founded for all the right reasons,” she said on Facebook. “They were to give working men and women the clout to negotiate fairly with their employers and to fight for decent pay and working conditions.”

The debate never happened, alas. Mr. Trumka, the Times’ obituary reminds us, did make an attempt to find a modus vivendi with President Trump. Trumka met with the president-elect at Trump Tower and warned his aides against criticizing Mr. Trump personally, though policy was fair game. Mr. Trumka came to believe that Mr. Trump was “one of the most anti-worker presidents in American history.”

Yet, as it has turned out, that view may not be shared by America’s working men and women. As the billionaire president was earlier this year exiting the White House, the news was that, as NBC put it in a headline, “the GOP is rapidly becoming the blue-collar party.” Not to put too fine a point on it, the headline added: “Most of the GOP’s blue-collar growth took place during the presidency of Donald Trump.”

We thought Trump would have been a good partner for Big Labor, and we admired Trumka. When, during a scandal surrounding Ron Cary of the Teamsters, Trumka, then secretary treasurer of the AFL-CIO, took the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination before a grand jury and also Congress, we defended him. It was good, we thought, to see a man in Trumka’s position stand on his constitutional right.

It was Trumka who was leading Big Labor when Governor Palin urged unions to find their future in free market capitalism rather than in big government. We will always like that idea, most poignantly marked by the greeting Lech Walesa and Solidarity gave to Prime Minister Thatcher in Gdansk in 1988. We think of it every time we think of the heroism of Solidarity’s ally, the AFL-CIO, as we do today with the passing of Richard Trumka.

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Carey is the spelling of the last name of Ron Carey of the Teamsters. It was misspelled in the bulldog.