One of the unacknowledged semi-victories labor has had over the past half decade is converting Democratic elected officials, and occasionally even some members of the commentariat, to their position on trade. At the time of the Seattle demonstations in 1999, the position of finance on trade -- all power to the corporations and investors, none to workers and their communities -- was known as the Washington Consensus. It still is the consensus at most editorial boards, but the phrase "Washington Consensus" as such has largely dropped from use, since free-traders can no longer pretend that it exists.

One reason for the shift on free trade among electeds and others is class-driven: When the work of software writers and radiologists started to be outsourced, the downside of trade wihout labor protections ceased to be just -- just! -- a working class concern. But the fact that no more than a handful of House Democrats (probably fewer than 10) will vote for CAFTA while 102 voted for NAFTA a decade ago is also partly the result of the AFL-CIO and some of its affiliates doing a better job of lobbying, educating and mobilizing on the issue. But the possibility that the Bush Administration may yet win this battle, buying off individual Republican members with barnyards of pork, is a refraction of labor's fundamental weakness: not enough union members to elect a sympathetic Congress.

By the way -- a plug for my home state -- there's a poll out today of California voters, conducted by the Survey and Policy Research Institute of San Jose State University, that shows just 41 percent approve of Arnold the Governator while 57 percent approve (and just 32 percent disapprove) of unions. The poll further shows that voters side with teachers over Arnold by a two-to-one margin if there's an initiative battle over school spending this November.

And there's some stuff to ponder in the findings that 62 percent of voters think of teachers as classroom instructors and just 20 percent as union members. That is, the Republican attack on teachers unions as special interests has been more than effectively countered by the anti-Arnold ads putting individual teachers on the tube. And -- the flipside -- "union member" remains a less favorable designation than "classroom instructor." Which is to say, California is still part of America.