Mini Super Tuesday is now in the books, and unions have got to be feeling a little hung over after the $10 million dollar bender they just finished in Arkansas. So far the strategy to rescue their friends (aka Arlen Specter) and punish their foes (aka Blanche Lincoln) has notched a big goose egg on the scoreboard for 2010. 
The Specter debacle wasn’t really that bad. To be honest, unions (and POTUS Obama) only half-heartedly came to Specter’s aid in that primary. I think everyone just decided the Democrat turned Republican turned Democrat just wasn’t worth saving, and that he’d be replaced by a “labor guy” anyway. No big loss. Blanche Lincoln in Arkansas was an entirely different matter. Senator Lincoln gave the finger to labor movement on Employee Free Choice Act. She then took their best shot in the primary and gave them the finger again Tuesday night in her victory speech. Unions dumped $10 million dollars in union dues down the drain (no word yet on a refund for members, but we’ll keep you posted…) supporting a candidate who at least one insider thinks was even more likely to turn his back on unions than Lincoln. All this to punish a sitting U.S. Senator and to make an example for any other Democrat who might have thoughts of bucking the wishes of “big” labor. How’s that working for you? Lincoln not only survived the anti-incumbent wave sweeping the nation, but flipped the union strategy right back at them. Ironically, the main thing that saved Lincoln was probably the union attack itself. First, the Lincoln camp expertly used the Employee Free Choice Act as a way to illustrate that her opponent, Bill Halter, would not take a position on the issues. Halter’s contortions to avoid answering whether he supported card-check were comical. He looked worse than a typical politician… he looked like a typical politician who wasn’t even good at it. Second, Lincoln was able to use the attack by unions and Moveon.org as proof that she really wasn’t a Washington insider and that her opponent was being bought and paid for by outside interests. At the end of the election when Bill Clinton came to her defense, he used these attacks as proof that Arkansas citizens should trust Lincoln to have their back in Washington. Even worse, unions may have helped Lincoln set the stage for an improbable win in November. Lincoln trails the Republican nominee in early polling. But the extra runoff campaign followed by her dramatic come from behind victory is just the kind of story-line that could propel Lincoln to victory in November. It worked several times for Bill Clinton. Unions have said they may not endorse Lincoln in November (gasp! perish the thought!) But if unions learned anything from the Arkansas debacle (they didn’t…), they need to endorse Lincoln and spend another $20 million on her re-election bid. With that kind of support it is certain that the people of Arkansas will give her the boot. The problem for unions is the same one they always have: the citizens of Arkansas (not to mention average working people everywhere) aren’t stupid. They don’t like being told what to do by a bunch of outsiders who think they know more about what’s better for the people of Arkansas than the people who actually live there. Have unions lost their political mojo? It is beginning to look like it. It is a bad time to be seen as part of the political establishment, and when your members are mainly government workers and your leaders hobnob every day with Washington insiders and you spend like a drunken sailor on political campaigns, well that’s about as establishment as you can get. Unions are still the most potent political force for the left. But if they keep pulling stunts like they did in Arkansas they are likely to become more of a liability than an asset to political candidates, especially those in the middle of the country (what genius picked Arkansas as their Waterloo anyway – there are no union members there…) And then the mojo will be gone for good.
