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STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Editor's note: Julian Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. He is the author of "Jimmy Carter" and "Governing America." The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.

(CNN) -- Labor Day used to be a big deal for the Democratic Party. For much of the 20th century, organized labor was at the heart of Democratic politics. Unions were a driving force that gave the party its heart and its muscle.

Unfortunately for Democrats, the importance of organized labor has diminished dramatically since the 1970s. Union membership has declined from nearly 30% of the workforce in the 1960s, according to the Congressional Research Service, to what the Bureau of Labor Statistics pegs at about 11% today. Politically, unions have become more controversial among Democrats: Once the status quo among Democrats, now they are often seen as outliers.

Many Democrats since the 1960s, including some environmentalists and civil rights advocates, concluded that unions were too often in opposition to their goals. Even though he came from a progressive background, President Obama has repeatedly disappointed union leaders with his failure to support key proposals that would make it easier for unions to grow.

Julian Zelizer

The loss of organized labor's clout within the workforce and among the Democrats has been a devastating loss for the party. As the party turned away from this constituency and hesitated to support policies that would reverse the damaging trends that have hindered union membership, they have lost an animating force that could help sustain them in their struggles against a rightward bound Republican Party.

The relationship has a long, important history. The union movement was pivotal to the success of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal in the 1930s. FDR and northern Democrats pursued policies greatly benefiting the organization of industrial workers in Northern states like Michigan and Wisconsin.

In 1935, Congress passed the National Labor Relations Act (also known as the Wagner Act), which formally gave workers the right to join a union and created the National Labor Relations Board, ensuring that employers allowed legitimate elections to take place. In 1936, Roosevelt said: "The Fourth of July commemorates our political freedom. Labor Day symbolizes our determination to achieve an economic freedom for the average man which will give his political freedom reality."

While FDR's policies benefited workers, including the new Congress of Industrial Organizations, or CIO, labor came out in droves for the Democrats. They rallied workers on Election Day, encouraged their members to show support for the party that had helped them, raised money to help Democrats succeed, and their lobbyists on Capitol Hill constantly helped round up votes for a liberal agenda that ranged from bills that directly benefited workers to other measures with even greater constituencies. At the height of its power, the civil rights movement relied heavily on union leaders like Walter Reuther to win support for legislation in Congress.

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How labor unions, Democrats broke up

Chancellor Angela Merkels Christian Democratic Union held the eastern German state of Saxony in an election that saw an anti-euro party boost its status by entering its first state assembly.

Merkels party took 39.5 percent of the vote today, with the anti-capitalist Left party placing second with 18.8 percent, according to projections by national broadcasters ARD and ZDF. The Social Democrats took 12.3 percent, enough to form a coalition with the CDU, which has governed the state since German reunification in 1990.

The anti-euro Alternative for Germany, known as AfD, was projected to take 10.2 percent, while the CDUs Free Democratic Party coalition partner crashed out of the regional assembly in Dresden with 3.7 percent, below the 5 percent threshold to win seats. The Greens took 5.8 percent.

Saxonys record of favoring strong, center-right government was upheld today in the score of Merkels CDU, Carsten Nickel, senior vice president at Teneo Intelligence in Berlin, said in an interview. At the same time, the vacuum left by the Free Democrats exodus to the right of Merkels party was filled to a surprising degree by the AfD.

The vote extends the shakeup of German politics by giving a greater platform to opponents of the euro and probably ending the Free Democratic Partys streak in state governments after almost 70 years. The AfD narrowly failed to take any seats in the vote in national elections in September.

Saxony was the first of three eastern regions comprising half of the areas voters to hold elections in a two-week span. Brandenburg, which surrounds Berlin, and Thuringia vote on Sept. 14, rounding off the first set of electoral tests since Merkel won a third term in September. Merkel plans to comment on the Saxony vote at 11:45 a.m. Berlin time tomorrow.

CDU state premier Stanislaw Tillich rode personal popularity to victory in Saxony, home to 4 million people, though he will need another coalition ally if final results confirm the FDP has dropped out. While he didnt speculate on possible partners in television interviews today, Merkel has ruled out cooperation with the AfD nationally.

A center of heavy industry in former communist East Germany, Saxony is the richest of the six eastern states except Berlin and has the lowest per-capita debt of Germanys 16 states.

Alternative for Germany, which advocates a breakup of the euro area, campaigned partly on locally resonant topics such as education, families and fighting crime. Support for the anti-immigrant National Democratic Party was projected at about 5 percent, signaling it could retain seats in the legislature.

Alternative for Germanys tally shows the party has finally arrived in the German party political landscape, party chief Bernd Lucke told reporters.

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Merkels CDU Wins Eastern State Vote as Anti-Euro Party Surges

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Louisville, Kentucky (CNN) -- A secret audio recording of their biggest election year target -- Sen. Mitch McConnell -- talking to a donor summit arranged by the Koch brothers, the Democrats' 2014 bogeymen.

Democrats pushed "The Nation" story around online with frenetic glee.

McConnell's Democratic challenger for his Kentucky seat, Alison Lundergan Grimes, couldn't wait to whack him on it, telling CNN in an exclusive interview that "Mitch McConnell got caught in his 47% Mitt Romney moment."

"I think it shows the extent and the lengths he will go to to pander to his party millionaires and billionaires at the expense of hurting Kentuckians," Grimes told CNN.

The problem with the Democrats' argument is that Romney's 47% moment was only a moment because he was saying to donors in private something he would never have dared to utter in public:

"Forty-seven percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it. That that's an entitlement," Romney said behind closed doors about President Obama's supporters in 2012.

But unlike Romney, what McConnell said to the Koch brothers are things he has said in public, and more importantly, his comments mirror positions he has publicly backed with actual Senate votes: opposition to Democrats' plans to increase the minimum wage, extend unemployment insurance and make student loans more affordable through the tax system.

If Republicans are in charge, he said, those won't be coming back to the Senate floor.

"We're not going to be debating all these gosh-darn proposals," McConnell told the Koch brothers and the rest of the room full of billionaire donors.

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The limits of a secret tape

The implosion of Ed FitzGerald's gubernatorial campaignis painful forOhio Democratsbecause he was supposed to be their Next Big Thing.

It's particularly devastating, though, because he's basically all they had. Behind him, the cupboard is pretty bare when it comes to recruiting capable Democrats into big-time statewide campaigns.

But how is that possible? How could Ohio, one of the nation's premier swing states and a political mecca if there ever was one, have such a thin Democratic bench?

It's actually pretty simple: They have very little farm system (to borrow a baseball term). And that's because Republicans, as they have done in several key states, have taken it away from them.

As I noted Tuesday, Ohio Democrats control just one-quarter of the state's 16 congressional seats, less than one-third of the state Senate, less than 40 percent of the state House and none of the state's five statewide constitutional offices. None of these numbers are coincidences. Republicans snapped upa lot of territory in the 2010 wave election and gave themselves the right to redraw Ohio's congressional, state House and state Senate maps. The gerrymandering that ensued madeit very hard for Democrats to compete on any of these mapsfor the next decade.

It's not hard to follow the logic from there. A GOP-friendly map = fewerDemocrats = a much smaller Democratic farm system. The fact that Democrats have just four members of the U.S. House-- to the GOP's 12 -- and none of the five statewide constitutional officers means they don't have manyobvious recruits-in-waiting for Senate or governor. (These are the positions, after all, that tend to take that next step. About75 percent ofthe non-incumbents running in key Senate races come from these two recruiting bays.)

And when it comes to recruiting for Congress and these statewide offices, Democratshave problems there, too. The fact that there are five GOP state legislators for every three Democrats means Republicans have a massively bigger pool of potential recruits to pull from for those more intermediate statewide offices and congressional seats. It's a problem that really runs from the statehouse up.

Unfortunately for Democrats, it's not a problem just in Ohio. This is an emerging issuefor themin as many as eight key swing and blue-leaning states which comprise basically one-fourth ofthe American political map.

In theseeight states --Florida, Michigan, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin -- the average percentage of Democrats is:

That's right, acrossthese eight states -- seven of which President Obama won in 2008 and six of which he carried in 2012 -- Democrats can't crack 40 percent in any of the key farm systems. They don't even control a state House or state Senate in oneof them.

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The Fix: Democrats have a depth problem

CNN #39;s Borger Calls Out Democrats #39; Sexist Attacks
CNN #39;s Gloria Borger calls out Democrats #39; sexist attacks on Monica Wehby. (CNN #39;s, "Situation Room" 5/20/14)

By: Sandra Walker

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CNN's Borger Calls Out Democrats' Sexist Attacks - Video