Labor Day, 2007

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What a difference a year makes. On Labor Day last year, American labor unions faced a federal government dominated by their perceived enemies.

In 2000, George W. Bush had narrowly defeated then-Vice President Al Gore, whom the member unions of the AFL-CIO, in an unusual show of political solidarity in 1999, had formally embraced long before the 2000 Democratic primaries even began. After his 2004 re-election, Mr. Bush appointed two very conservative men to the Supreme Court, which had played an instrumental role in Mr. Bush's 2000 election. With 50-year-old John Roberts replacing the late William Rehnquist as chief justice in 2005 and 55-year-old Samuel Alito replacing centrist Sandra Day O'Connor in 2006, the American labor movement had solid reasons to believe its long-term interests on the nation's highest court had suffered a major setback.

Then there was the Congress, which Republicans had captured in 1994, replacing legions of labor-friendly Democratic committee and subcommittee chairmen with pro-business conservatives. Despite labor's best efforts, including the cumulative expenditure of billions of dollars — literally, billions — in compulsory dues money on behalf of Democratic candidates, Big Labor had failed to dislodge the Republican majorities in either the House or the Senate during the 1996, 1998, 2000, 2002 and 2004 elections. Democrats did manage to achieve majority status in the Senate in June 2001 after Vermont Sen. Jim Jeffords bolted the GOP and became a Democratic-caucusing independent. In a heart-breaking defeat for labor in 2002, the party occupying the White House overcame incredibly high historical odds by recapturing control of the Senate in a midterm election. Two years later, largely by sweeping five Democratic-held Southern seats being vacated by retiring senators, Republicans rode Mr. Bush's long coattails to significantly increase their Senate majority from 51-48-1 to a relatively hefty 55-44-1. Indicative of the depths to which Big Labor had fallen at the polls was the fact that Republicans in 2004 achieved their biggest majority in the Senate since Herbert Hoover was elected president in 1928. Compounding labor's political woes from the 2004 elections, Republicans won 232 seats in the House. Not only was that more seats than Republicans won in their historic landslide of 1994, which was 230, but it was more House seats the GOP had won in any election since 1946.

Indeed, what a difference a year makes. This Labor Day, Democrats control both chambers of Congress. And whoever emerges as the Democratic presidential nominee probably deserves to be considered the favorite to win the White House next year, given the political circumstances that prevail today. With the narrow 2004 defeat of John Kerry (a reversal of 1 percent of Ohio's vote could have flipped the election to Mr. Kerry), Democrats lost two crucial Supreme Court nominations to Mr. Bush. Whoever wins next year may well have the opportunity to make two or more high-court nominations, and Democrats seem poised to boost their majority in the justice/judge-confirming Senate. Speaking of the self-styled World's Greatest Deliberative Body: Including the victories of two labor-friendly, Democratic-caucusing independents, Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Democrats narrowly but absolutely won control (51-49) of the Senate in 2004. Needing 15 seats to overthrow the GOP's House majority in 2006, Democrats gained 30, emerging with a solid 233-202 advantage in the House.

Let us be clear. Big Labor was utterly indispensable to the Democrats' victories last year. A year ago, over Labor Day weekend, we noted that "many Democrats have been fretting over the prospects of getting their voters to the polls in November" because "the Republican National Committee had nearly four times as much cash on hand ($43.6 million) as the Democratic National Committee had ($11.3 million)." Into this breach charged the AFL-CIO. Two months before the 2006 congressional elections, we began that editorial, "Big Labor's wallet," as follows:

"AFL-CIO President John Sweeney signaled last week just how big a role get-out-the-vote efforts will play in this fall's elections. He announced at a press conference that he is committing tens of millions of dollars of union members' money, which the AFL-CIO will spend exclusively on behalf of the Democratic Party. 'We'll spend $40 million in this election cycle, the largest ever in a midterm election,' Mr. Sweeney pledged. 'The vast majority of that money is for our mobilization efforts.'"