Yet that sense of determined harmony comes at a potentially steep cost, and with no clear end-game. Some strategists and labor officials watching the protest conflagration from the outside are beginning to fret that a large-scale defeat in Wisconsin will have a devastating ripple effect, weakening labor state by state throughout the rest of the country…

“Not every state’s going to roll back collective bargaining,” the official – who, like many, spoke off the record to avoid undermining the protests — added, but said it could open the gates for union losses on various fronts, like benefits…

Many strategists and even some labor officials argue that the genuine passion and emotion being felt and displayed on the ground in Wisconsin is obscuring a central problem: Unions still haven’t figured out even a semblance of an effective PR strategy.

That includes, in many places, not taking steps that could help them, such as trying “to dress up something that looks like a sacrifice and say, ‘Here’s what we’re doing,’” another labor leader lamented.