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Card Check a dead letter?

posted at 10:36 am on January 5, 2009 by Ed Morrissey
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The Wall Street Journal detects a marked decrease in enthusiasm among the Democratic majority in the Senate for Card Check. Until now, support came easy for people like Mark Pryor as long as they knew that Republicans would block the bill from becoming law. Now that they have an almost filibuster-proof majority, Democrats have begun to think twice about becoming the party that killed the secret ballot:

Paradoxically, it’s Mr. Reid’s bigger majority that is now hurting him. In 2007, he got every Democrat (save South Dakota’s Tim Johnson, who was out sick) to vote for cloture. But it was an easy vote. Democrats like Mr. Pryor knew the GOP held the filibuster, and that Mr. Bush stood ready with a veto. Now that Mr. Reid has 58 seats, red-state Democrats in particular are worried they might actually have to pass this turkey, infuriating voters and businesses back home.

Mr. Pryor isn’t alone. Fellow Arkansas Democrat Blanche Lincoln voted for cloture in 2007 but is now messaging Mr. Reid that she’s not eager for a repeat. She recently said she doesn’t think “there is a need for this legislation right now,” that the country has bigger problems. What she didn’t mention is that she is also up for re-election next year, and that one potential GOP challenger, Tim Griffin, is already vowing to make card check an issue. South Dakota’s Tim Johnson, Nebraska’s Ben Nelson and others face similar pressure. And it seems unlikely new Senate arrivals such as Colorado’s Mark Udall are eager to make card check an opening vote, especially with visions of United Auto Worker bailouts fresh in voter minds.

Republican “moderates” aren’t eager for card check either. If this were a minimum-wage vote, Maine’s Susan Collins, for example, would be lining up. But polls show more than 80% of Americans disagree with eliminating union ballots. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has bolstered opposition by turning card check into a litmus test of Mr. Obama’s promise to work with the other side. Even Pennsylvania’s Arlen Specter, the lone GOP vote for card check in 2007, is backpedaling, worried about a 2010 primary challenge.

I’m not quite as sanguine about this newfound respect for the secret ballot as the WSJ. While the measure has definite baggage, the unions supply millions of dollars in political funding every election cycle. Card Check would eventually multiply that flow as unions forced dues from intimidated workplaces around the nation. Democrats would be the main beneficiaries, and while some short-term unpopularity might be the result, the long-term prospects for owning the political system will probably overcome any reticence from moderates.

However, the prevailing winds at the moment run against the unions. The massive auto bailouts have been seen primarily as union-rescue packages, which uses up what little goodwill they still have. Putting American workers at risk of intimidation tactics by stripping them of the secret ballot may be a little much in 2009, even for Democrats. If it does pass and turns out to be terribly unpopular, they will have no bipartisan cover for their sell-out to the unions.

That makes communication even more critical. Don’t let your Senator start this session of Congress without expressing your support for the American tradition of secret ballots and the security of American workers from thug tactics from management and unions alike.

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Every circus needs a clown, that’s why we elected you.

Al Franken. Al Franken.

It’s becoming a bad joke, so it makes sense to have you.

Al Franken. Al Franken.

Caligula at least sent the whole horse, Minnesota just the back.

Al Franken. Al Franken.

Now excuse me while I vomit, I can taste it in my mouth.

Al Franken. Al Franken.

Mr. Joe on January 5, 2009 at 10:37 AM

Well thank goodness for little favors.

Of course expanding unions requires business.

Obama’s plan is expanding government unions, where the real growth will be.

Mr. Joe on January 5, 2009 at 10:38 AM

Another promise by Obama tossed out?

right2bright on January 5, 2009 at 10:40 AM

Without card check, how is the UAW going to unionize Toyota, Honda and Nissan in the south? The union has eaten all the meat off of GM and Chrysler, and spent a good deal of money on dems the past two cycles, basically for card check. Talk about a huge broken promise.

Vashta.Nerada on January 5, 2009 at 10:41 AM

They may attach it to some bill that enough of the GOP wouldn’t vote against, say, a “stimulus” bill.

Wethal on January 5, 2009 at 10:42 AM

Here’s hoping. Card check is one of the “biggies” I’m worried about with Obama. If it goes away, I can enjoy the fireworks (Blago, Richardson, Wright, ad infinitum) with less sadness.

cs89 on January 5, 2009 at 10:45 AM

donks stabbing a “key constituency” in the back? who knew?

Buckaroo on January 5, 2009 at 10:50 AM

Well lets see….wouldn’t it help if the workers stood up for themselves against the unions? Isn’t this how unions were born in the first place? Workers standing up for themselves? There are a lot more workers than there are Union goons. Government isn’t going to fix this crap, the people will have to do it. I think we are heading towards a time in our history again when we have to get our fists a little bloody.

gator70 on January 5, 2009 at 10:57 AM

I was hoping they’d continue to push Card Check. It would be an easy win for conservatives and a great demonstration of the anti-democratic mindset of liberals.

Bugler on January 5, 2009 at 10:57 AM

I was hoping they’d continue to push Card Check. It would be an easy win for conservatives and a great demonstration of the anti-democratic mindset of liberals.

Bugler on January 5, 2009 at 10:57 AM

As Wethal pointed out, they are more likely to hide it inside some other bill, in order to avoid a fight and to give cover to their own members.

MarkTheGreat on January 5, 2009 at 11:30 AM

Perfect way to kill Card Check is to remind democRats that it would allow the evil EMPLOYERS a way of finding out how their vascile, serf-like, minion employees voted.

kurtzz3 on January 5, 2009 at 11:30 AM

I think this will pass. Here’s why; for the majority of people out there, this is a non-issue. Union membership is what 13% or something like that? So for 87% of people, they’re probably neutral since they don’t think it affects them. So let’s say they poll 50/50 on the issue. But then you have the 13% who poll 80/20 in favor of it. And since they are the only ones really paying attention, there will be no blowback by passing it form the 87% who don’t care one way or the other.

This issue is almost like a farm bill. Nobody outside of farmers every know or care or even understand farm bills. Yet they always pass even though they are some of the worst bills out there.

angryed on January 5, 2009 at 11:36 AM

Steny Hoyer (D) House Majority Leader was on Fox News with Chris Wallace yesterday saying he hoped to have the card check legislation approved in early February. Of course he called it something else like “Frredom in voting Act” or some such nonsense.
I am sure there is a clip of it up by now from Fox.

Just A Grunt on January 5, 2009 at 11:46 AM

One of the biggest rip-offs of the taxpayer is the unions that represent government teachers and workers. They are a political monopoly that cannot be resisted by normal “union busting” methods. The result is their wages have all gone up disproportionately to the rest of the workers, and, what they deliver has gone down. There is little or no accountability.

DL13 on January 5, 2009 at 11:47 AM

Here is the excerpt from the Chris Wallace interview with Steny Hoyer on the question of card check.

WALLACE: Big labor’s top priority is what’s called union card check, and that would be eliminating the right to a secret ballot in determining whether or not you’re going to organize, unionize, a working place.

I love the way that you’re smiling already. Are you going to move on that in the first month?

HOYER: I’m smiling because of the way you phrase it. It’s the Free Choice Act, of course, and what it does is…

WALLACE: Well, union card check, free choice. Both sides have their best — their euphemisms.

HOYER: Of course, and you used one side. That’s why I was smiling.

WALLACE: And you used the other. OK.

HOYER: Well, my point being that we believe that one of the problems that has existed in America is that working people have had a very, very difficult time in getting represented by unions in the workplace.

Workplace has resisted that. The NLRB has not been very vigorous in assuring the lack of unfair labor practices. So we believe that the employees — if over 50 percent of them sign and say, “We want to be represented by a union,” they ought to be able to be represented by a union.

Let me say that many, many employers currently under existing law recognize such signatures right now and start to bargain and have a union representative.

WALLACE: Whatever you call it, Congressman, are you going to pass it in the first month?

HOYER: I don’t know about the first month, but we’re going to pass it early.

Just A Grunt on January 5, 2009 at 11:59 AM

How ironic is it that democrats ( and some very stupid RINO’s) find cutesy names for suppression of freedoms.

Free Choice Act and Fairness Doctrine are hardly free or fair.

Kini on January 5, 2009 at 1:27 PM

I’m not quite as sanguine about this new found respect for the secret ballot as the WSJ.

That puts you well ahead of me, because my sanguinity level is zilch.

I’m confident that before the Dems lose control, they’ll find a way to pass card check. Like their immigration proposals, it operates to give the left a permanent, irreversible majority, and that’s the predominate goal of our new government.

petefrt on January 5, 2009 at 1:56 PM

So they were for it before they were against it? I doubt the polling data will stop this from getting passed, and I look foreward to hearing the Union members gripe.

DannoJyd on January 5, 2009 at 6:26 PM

I dont think its just Honda’Toyota and other car mfgs. they want.
I think the big one they want to ruin is Walmart.

hanoverfist on January 5, 2009 at 7:33 PM

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