Checkmate
The Democratic Party's honeymoon is over.
BY
For Big Labor, this week's "card check" victory marked the ultimate payoff for past Democratic election support. For House Democrats, it marked the end of the honeymoon.
Democrats won in November in part by playing down their special interest patrons--unions, environmentalists, trial lawyers--and by playing up a new commitment to the moderate middle class. The big question was whether the party had the nerve to govern the way it campaigned, and card check was the first test. The answer? AFL-CIO chief John Sweeney isn't smiling for nothing.
Up to now, Speaker Nancy Pelosi had kept her troops in line and her party's liberal wing in check. The vaunted first "100 hours" was run like a military operation, and revolved around a carefully chosen legislative agenda that would unify every faction in her party. It was small potatoes, but it worked, and it was a lesson in how Democrats can practice smart politics.
The card check, in contrast, is a lesson in how the party's liberal base forces Democrats to back political losers. The legislation's only purpose is to give unions an unfair advantage in organizing, namely by eliminating the secret ballot in union elections and instead allowing thugs to openly bully workers into joining up. Americans understand and despise this, with polls showing 90% of the public thinks card check is a racket.
Democrats therefore left themselves wide open for their first public drubbing. The card check gave Republicans a rare opening to beat the daylights out of the new majority, successfully accusing it of trashing democratic elections and shutting down free speech. It unified the business community, which put aside its disagreements on health care and immigration to instead team up to make the vote as painful as possible for Ms. Pelosi's moderate wing. Even the liberal press jumped ship.
And all this, meanwhile, for a vote that was largely symbolic. President Bush has vowed that a card check law is dead on arrival. And that assumes the legislation could even make it through a Senate filibuster--which it can't. As low points go, this was the lowest the new majority has had so far.
The issue for Ms. Pelosi is that this will undoubtedly not be the only low point. The card check is instead the first illustration of the biggest dilemma Democratic leaders will face over the next few years. Savvier party members understand the threat special interests pose to Democrats' ability to commune with more of
For years now, unions have provided thousands of volunteers for get-out-the-vote efforts. More important, they've provided a huge purse to get Democrats elected. This time they handed over the money on condition that Democrats support what has become their biggest priority. This week they called in their chits.
Many Democrats also see the card check as vital to their political survival. Union membership has been nose-diving for years. In 2006 it dropped to just 12% of workers. The reigning belief is that if Democrats don't do their part to reverse this decline, they'll see a huge source of manpower and cash for future elections disappear. The card check might be terrible politics, but it is the best shot they have to force more Americans into unions that will spend the dues to re-elect Democrats.
Whatever the motivation, enough Democrats were willing to take a hit if it meant getting card check through. Not that they didn't attempt to lessen the sting. One reason this was the first major domestic legislation up for a vote was that Democrats were anxious to get it out of the way quickly, and put space between it and next year's election. House insiders were this week referring to that strategy as the "Rip Off the Band-Aid" approach: This is gonna hurt, so do it fast.
It also explains the pains House Labor and Education Committee Chairman George Miller took to put the bill through as quietly as possible. The card check will be the biggest change in labor law in decades, yet Mr. Miller allowed but a single hearing and markup on the issue. That hearing was held in the middle of the House's very public
The issue exploded nonetheless, and it was the party's moderate wing that got caught in the crossfire. Big Labor, to its credit, had approached the card check with a lot more political savvy than is usually the case. In particular, it started approaching Democratic moderates several years ago, demanding they co-sponsor a card check bill. While many in the Blue Dog wing wouldn't normally agree to such an anti-business measure, they saw this as a useful opportunity to score some union points. After all, Republicans weren't about to bring up the legislation. The problem came when Democrats won, and they had to stand behind their previous support.
The unions' other big coup was to get to this year's Democratic freshmen early in the electoral game. Labor explained that any union support they received in their tight races in GOP-leaning districts would be entirely conditioned on their later vote for card check. Most of them signed up for this devil's bargain, since, as one Democratic aide admitted: "We didn't have a choice."
The business community this week made sure that those Democratic moderates felt the burn. The Coalition for a Democratic Workplace--a group of more than 300 business outfits against the card check--earlier this week laid out a six-figure radio buy for just three House districts, targeting North Carolina's Heath Shuler, Florida's Tim Mahoney and Kansas's Nancy Boyda. All three ran as conservative Democrats, and have only tenuous grips on their seats. The Chamber of Commerce spent another $400,000 on radio ads targeting 51 Republicans and Democrats who are also vulnerable next year. The ads had an effect. Card-check supporters had been hoping to get as many as 290 votes; instead they mustered just 241.
Ms. Pelosi might remember that she only won last year's election because of the success of these moderate candidates. They were the ones who benefited most from Democrats' new promises to focus on "middle class"
Ms. Strassel is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board, based in
http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/kstrasselpw/?id=110009737
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