Big Labor is expecting a big payoff for its efforts to elect Barack Obama and congressional Democrats. But depending on how the three up-in-the-air Senate races are resolved, labor groups won't get their biggest wish: the passage of "card-check" legislation that would effectively bring an end to secret elections for organizing labor unions.

Last year Arlen Specter was the lone Republican to side with the Democrats on a vote for cloture on the Employee Free Choice Act, which included the card-check measure. Although Virginia's senator-elect Mark Warner won't say if he supports card-check, I suspect that he could be "persuaded" to go along with it if his vote were decisive. But even if you include Warner among the 57 Democrats in favor of card-check and add on Specter, the Employee Free Choice Act is still two votes shy of breaking a filibuster.

So card-check will only pass if Democrats win two of the three seats in Minnesota, Alaska, and Georgia, or if a couple of weak-kneed Republicans break under the pressure of Big Labor. The latter possibility shouldn't be discounted. I hear the arguments of some labor organizers can be very, um, persuasive.