And not just for you. That said, I suspect the problem is more one of myopia than unions. Perhaps as simple as our old friend Mr. Alienation.

To a disturbing degree, many, most, Americans don't see themselves as part of a community anymore (after all, that's the root word in "communism" and we all know that's bad; all things collective are, as Ayn Rand wisely taught us. ) Hence the people gunning for your Senator are only looking at how this one vote stands to hurt them; the sacrifices that would otherwise be required of other groups aren't their concern. Of course, if the Legislature had simply decided to raise taxes enough that they didn't have to cut any services or jobs, they'd have a completely different demographic screaming for their heads for precisely the same reason.

They're not seeing all the positive things your Senator does that only affect them tangentially, or remembering all the times she was on their side, since that's ancient history now. Remember, in politics it's "what have you done for me lately?" Unions happen to be robust enough in WA, apparently, that they have the financial and political clout to single-handedly win elections, but I assure you that's not the case nationally. Last I checked (and that was the mid-nineties) national union membership was around 12% and falling due to the combined effects of shrinking US manufacturing, Taft-Hartley and applying RICO laws to unions as if they were AUTOMATICALLY organized crime. After all, the unions were enraged when Reagan fired striking air traffic controllers thirty years ago, but it didn't change anything (apart from the sudden spike in airplanes landing IN runways instead of ON them. )

So, yeah, this time, in this place, it happens to be the unions, but other times and other places it's completely different groups doing exactly the same things for the same reasons. It may be a little more frantic up there because, frankly, US unions are running scared and have been for some time. For a generation the decline of US manufacturing has routinely made them choose between cuts to pay and benefits or unemployment, and as prices rise there's a limit to how much wages can fall before mere survival becomes impossible. Go someplace else and it's ranchers bitching about property taxes, or businesses bitching about regulation, or environmentalists bitching about LACK of regulation, or inner city residents bitching about inadequate school funding. And not one of them gives a dead rats ass about the problems of any of the others.

That's our kinder gentler ownership society, m'friend, not so much "ownership" as "you're on your own. " Until we remember that nothing happens in a vacuum, that we hang together or hang separately, it's going to get a lot worse before it gets any better. "Union" in every sense is becoming an obsolete concept in America.