For 20 yrs, corporate Dem leadership sipped lattes while the GOP took over state governments [View all]

[brentspeak]

Obama's reelection? The Democrats holding onto the Senate for the next two years? A few more House seats picked up in a GOP-controlled chamber?

Savor those victories, because with Michigan's passage of a right-to-work law, they might be the last major Democratic victories for a long time.

That's because with the cascade of right-to-work laws that will likely be passed in the majority of states within the next couple of years (maybe earlier), the cornerstone of crucial union-raised campaign contributions and on-the-ground people support which the Democratic party has relied on for the past 80 years will begin to see its end.

And this is happening partially because the Democratic centrist, Third Way leadership largely ignored the relatively unromantic state and local legislative races and instead concentrated resources on winning or holding onto federal-level seats in select swing states and blue states. This allowed the GOP to take the opportunity and win total state legislative majorities in Wisconsin and Michigan -- at the exact same time that both states elected Republican governors who take orders from the Koch brothers and ALEC. Democrats even ceded state government control of Alabama, Arkansas, and North Carolina to the Republicans -- states which haven't been controlled by the GOP since Reconstruction.

It's true that for 2012, party leadership has finally realized that it had to compete for some state governments if it wanted the national Democratic party to actually have some sort of future; Maine has reverted back to Democratic control, and New York has a Democratic-run Senate for the first time in 50 years. California now has a Democratic super-majority.

But it may be too late. Missouri's state government now has a GOP super-majority, and with it, the Republicans have veto-proof power to pass a Missouri "right-to-work" law over Gov. Jay Nixon.

With the eventual crushing loss of union dollars and ground support, what do you think the Democrats' future will look like? The corporate Democratic brain-trust should have considered that long before they gave moral support to the GOP's war on organized labor.