Mr. Shoe, Meet Mr. Other Foot: Boston liberal columnist Joan Vennochi doesn't like the way the Democratic Convention in Boston is being "held hostage" by unions. (See Viking Pundit for continuing coverage and commentary on this.) Says Joan:

It is a scene out of old Boston, old labor, old politics. You can smell the cigar smoke, even though no one is actually smoking one. You can imagine the leg-breaking, even if none actually takes place. It is the kind of old-fashioned, old-style labor politics that turns off young and independent voters. Could the timing be worse? At the very moment the nation is celebrating the memory of a president who stared down labor in the form of air traffic controllers, Democrats are celebrating union thugs?

I don't remember many Democrats seeing the PATCO firing as a cause for celebration, though. Why the sudden resentment of union muscle? After all, this is the way unions have always done business. Oh, wait:

[L]ooking at the bigger picture, it's hard to understand how a scene like this benefits the Democratic Party and Democratic presidential nominee Kerry . . . There's a bigger urgency at stake: not just showcasing Boston, but the Democratic party.

Show some collective courage, Democrats. If you can't stand up to Tom Nee, how do you stand up to Jacques Chirac, Yasser Arafat or Al Qaeda?

The unions are a wonderful and glorious thing . . . until they start making Democrats look like idiots. Off with their inconvenient heads! I smell the possibility of some union households drifting GOP this year.