Can This Election Save the Unions?

Whatever the details, a political and policy pattern now seems well embedded: during those brief windows of liberal legislative opportunity, organized labor often plays a key role in electing Democrats and in advancing reforms, such as financial regulation, a more progressive tax regime, and health care innovations that nudge the polity in a social democratic direction. But during those same moments of Democratic Party power, labor itself has repeatedly failed to win any federal legislation that would strengthen its institutional capacity for growth or for the exercise of what economic and political leverage it still commands