Unions are surprisingly bad at politics.

The business lobby has been running numerous ads emphasizing that "card check kills the secret ballot" with pictures of Jimmy Hoffa and other easy symbols of union corruption. The whole concept reinforces stereotypes of union leaders as intimidating thugs, an image opponents have enthusiastically exploited, with one business coalition even using the comically corrupt visage of Johnny Sack from The Sopranos. "There are unscrupulous unions out there who will just go in the backdoor, sign cards without the employees really knowing who they are," says Sandy Pope. "Some of the accusations of the right wing are true." (Most union leaders are, of course, neither as corrupt nor as effective as David Chase's imaginary mob bosses, but her point is important.)

Worthy as such concerns about card check are, they are not the major reasons for its death. Most politicians are posturing when they decry EFCA as "undemocratic." It's much more likely that Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., doesn't like EFCA because of campaign contributors like Kindred Healthcare, which has been involved in bitter anti-union struggles (as well as, attractively, opposing workers' attempts to improve the quality of care). Others in Congress are similarly compromised (including Democrats like Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, a former friend of card check and a major recipient of Wal-Mart campaign largesse).

Business interests vigorously oppose serious labor-law reform, and the labor movement isn't as serious as it needs to be in defending it. Serious divisions within the labor movement hampered unions from working together. Some have argued that Obama's November victory created an atmosphere of complacency, allowing unions to not push card check as hard as they needed to. Even without the unwieldy baggage of card check, unions will need to get more aggressive to win labor-law reform: After all, even the emerging EFCA-decaf-lite compromises supported by Starbucks (SBUX) are opposed by the most politically active business interests. The anti-EFCA lobby flatly rejects even Specter's compromise, despite having based its campaign on opposition to card check.

New York Times reporter Steven Greenhouse, in a recent essay on why Americans don't protest, paraphrases United Steelworkers President Leo Gerard saying that demonstrations are less needed in the United States than in Europe "because often all that is needed is some expert lobbying in Washington to line up the support of a half-dozen senators." This approach has plainly failed with the Employee Free Choice Act. To get labor-law reform, card check or no, rather than "just sitting around and lobbying," Sandy Pope points out, "we have to talk to our members. We have to get into the streets."

Mark Brenner, a labor activist and editor of Labor Notes, agrees, observing: "The labor movement is turning its back on its own history. Every major legislative advance has come about because of street protests, civil disobedience, by our turning up the heat."

Explaining why it's important for labor to return to the organizing and protesting strategies of the past, Brenner says: "We're never going to win the inside game. Wal-Mart and Home Depot will always have more money. Our strength is that we have millions of members ... and millions more people who would like to be in a union." Winning labor-law reform will take organizing to make all those people more visible. "Why no civil disobedience in Arlen Specter's office?" Brenner asks. "Why aren't we picketing in front of every Republican's house? Why aren't we bird-dogging them? If this is [labor's] most important campaign, let's act like it is."