My friend Mickey Kaus (well, really a friend of friends, but we've met) is a Democrat and running for the U.S. Senate in California (all of us nerd writers are fascinated when one of our own takes a leap into politics, but this is quite a leap).
He has an interesting piece in the LA Times today saying Democrats need to start learning to say no to government employee unions.
Government unions are even more problematic (and as private sector unions have failed in the marketplace, government unions are increasingly dominant). If there are limits on what private unions can demand — when they win too much, as we've seen, their employers tend to disappear — there is no such limit on what government unions can demand. They just have to get the politicians to raise your taxes to pay for it, and by funding the Democratic machine they acquire just the politicians they need.
He says that with love, of course. As long as I've known Mickey -- about 7 years -- he's been a Democrat. He's just saying the party needs to change with the times.
