The Wall Street Journal has a great editorial on yesterday’s Senate action:

Democrats did their duty for the AFL-CIO yesterday, offering and then quickly losing a vote on the Senate floor to eliminate secret ballots for union organizing elections. Democrats could muster only a single Republican vote — Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania — and so the bill went down to a GOP filibuster, 51-48 …

So it’s not surprising that Democrats staged their losing vote the same day as a key immigration vote that was certain to get far more public attention. Democrats also did little PR work, and the vote itself had a ritual quality to it, like some of those Republican votes on cultural issues when Tom DeLay was House Majority Leader: Hold a largely symbolic vote, check off a box to pay off your election supporters, and move on to something that most Americans might even care about.