Card Check For All

Mickey Kaus blogs in from the Zeta Quadrant:

I don't think this is an endorsement Obama had to make for political reasons. As Dick Morris says, he's sitting pretty--he can be anything he wants to be. He could be a lot more Gary Hartish! He must want to be an old-fashioned unionizer. [But he has to win the Iowa caucuses, dominated by unions--ed Teachers' unions! They're already organized. They don't need no stinking card-check.** As for New Hampshire--look what the unions did for Mondale in 1984. ... And if Obama doesn't really believe in the card-check, wouldn't it still be smart for the GOPs to make him pay a price for selling out to the unions? That's a lot more important sign that he's a business-as-usual pol than his failure to repudiate David Geffen for taking some heartfelt shots at the Clintons.. ... ]

The endorsement in question is of the Employee Free Choice Act. Kaus is, I think, stuck in a time warp. Obviously, Obama would earn the undying enmity of all the unions in Iowa and New Hampshire (and everywhere else, for that matter) if he declined to endorse EFCA. That would be bad. What's more, at this point in time everyone in progressive politics is for card check. All the bloggers are for it. Here's Jon Chait in The Los Angeles Times in favor of card check. Here's the DLC in favor of card check. Here's a New Republic editorial praising unions.

The consituency for Kaus-style union-bashing in the Democratic Party is just gone. Obama would lose the support not just of the unions but of everyone if he didn't endorse card check. What's more, Obama's a liberal community organizer -- of course he's for making it easier to form a union.