What do these people have in common:

1. A journalist for a big newspaper in New York City
   
2. A school teacher in suburban Georgia
   
3. A single, unemployed, high school dropout 24 year old mother of 4
   
4. A senior grandmother of 12, receiving her AARP materials at her home in Tennessee
   
5. A UPS driver in Arizona
   
6. An IRS agent stationed in Washington state
   
7. A white male, old money Harvard professor of sociology
   

What these folks all have in common is they will most likely vote, if they are registered, for Democratic candidates. Their politics are almost exclusively described as liberal. Aside from that they have little in common with each other that they don't also have in common with every one else in the United States.

Similarly the demographics of the membership of the AFL-CIO share less in common with each other than they do with other people who may not be union members. Yet they are banded together because they are union members. But this organization does not simply restrict its actions to things which benefit workers. Instead it takes unrelated political positions and distributes propaganda. Some of their work is directed at protecting employment related "rights" or to further political ends in favor of labor. But more than half the efforts taken by this country's labor unions is pure liberal doctrine without regard to whether that doctrine is in furtherance of labor's desired ends. This week we are seeing the fracture of the union of unions. You've undoubtedly seen news reports informing you that several unions have quit the AFL-CIO. The reasons given have mostly to do with the affiliation's inability to accomplish anything benefiting these unions' memberships.

I could go on for a while here about how the union affiliation break up is going to have dire consequences for the Democratic party but I'm not so foolish as to believe that somehow all the teamsters or service workers will now somehow vote Republican. But I wonder about the issues these labor organizations as well as other groups like the AARP have pushed forward over the past many years.

Why should a grandmother in Tennessee be concerned with abortion on demand or whether schools teach abstinence vs. use of contraceptives? Why does the teacher in Georgia care about CAFTA? Why would the UPS driver be deeply concerned about universal socialized medicine? What does the IRS agent care if auto makers are moving jobs offshore? Does the journalist really care about the War in Iraq any more than anyone else? Does the dropout child-mom stay up at night worrying that seniors will have their social security benefits cut? Does the Harvard professor worry that women's rights may be eroded because there is a conservative movement going on?

The answers to all of these questions are that these people do not care about 90% of their chosen political party's positions. They may care a little about some of them but they don't care any more than anyone else regardless of political affiliation. Yet the unions and other organizations have become proponents of these same irrelevant issues. Sometimes their attention takes their collective eyes off their very reason for being. When that happens, these organizations begin to fall apart.

People will join any organization which advocates something very important to them. They like being affiliated with an organization which demonstrates an ability to accomplish good things that which are relevant to their daily lives. But when that organization extends to irrelevant things, those same people begin to lose interest. When the organization completely loses sight of the reason its members joined, membership will drop. And when the membership contributes its own hard earned cash which is then mostly used for things totally irrelevant, mass exodus is sure to ensue. That is what we are seeing with the splintering of the AFL-CIO.