DEMOCRATIC RHETORIC, REPUBLICAN GOVERNANCE:

Organized labor's agenda hits roadblock; what now? (SAM HANANEL, 2/28/10, Associated Press)

This wasn't what unions expected a year ago after spending more than $400 million to help elect Obama and increase the size of Democratic majorities in the Senate and House. [...]

Some labor experts say unions have come up flat in mounting an effective liberal response to "tea party" activists who helped Republican Scott Brown win the special Senate election in Washington to succeed Democrat Edward M. Kennedy, who died last year. An AFL-CIO poll showed that 49 percent of union households supported Brown.

"There's been no indication that there's muscle behind their money," said Leon Fink, a labor historian at the University of Illinois at Chicago. "There was no equivalent mobilization for public works or for a progressive health care measure."

Even more troubling for unions, their membership in the private sector fell 10 percent during Obama's first year in office to a historic low of 7.2 percent. A poll this past week from the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found that 41 percent of those surveyed have a favorable view of unions, compared with 58 percent in a similar survey in 2007.

Wait'll they see what his deficit commission suggests taking from public employees.

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 28, 2010 7:40 AM