Ben Smith of the Politico talked to me New Year’s Eve about whether Sen. Obama was doing long-lasting damage to his relations with labor because of his criticism of 527 money flowing in to Iowa in support of Hillary Clinton and John Edwards. Obama never actually used the words "special interest" and "unions" in the same sentence but everyone knew what he was talking about.

    I find that rap pretty repellent and one reason I remain quite wary of Obama: he tends to pick up some pretty conventional framing of political debates. For example, that money coming from unions is "special interest" –i.e., somehow tainted and corrupting–and can somehow be equated with money coming from corporations. It isn’t. And just repeating that frame is truly stupid.

    But, having said that, here’s what I said to Smith for his piece on the topic:

Others, however, doubt whether labor can afford not to support any of the Democratic nominees — all of whom have promised to ease union organizing and tighten trade restrictions — against the nominee of a Republican Party who’s often openly hostile to organized labor.

“It’s a choice of allowing a party that is trying to kill it to keep power versus a Democratic Party, which isn’t always the greatest ally, but is an ally and isn’t out to kill it every day,” said Jonathan Tasini, the executive director of a pro-labor research group, the Labor Research Association.

He predicted that “whoever is the nominee of the Democratic Party is going to have 1,000 percent labor backing.”

    Is there any other rationale person would would argue otherwise?