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While the race for the GOP presidential race heats up, Democrats are facing a potentially devastating loss as unions look to strike out on their own.

Over the last twenty years, unions have given more than $600 million to the Democratic Party and their candidates. But even more importantly than that, they have provided the manpower for the bulk of the Democratic Party’s GOTV (Get Out the Vote) efforts in every election. That help has arguably been worth far more than even the half-billion dollars they have put directly into the party’s coffers as those efforts often provided the margin of victory in close elections around the nation.

So when Barack Obama got elected with union help, Democrats expanded their control over the House of Representatives with union help, and Democrats obtained a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate with union help; unions were understandably elated. At long last, they were going to possess the Holy Grail of unions: Card Check. The Employee Free Choice Act, an Orwellian name if ever there was one, would have eliminated secret ballots in union elections, forced government-run arbitration, and imposed harsh penalties on businesses that ran afoul of its terms. After all that unions had done over the decades, the $68 million they gave in 2008 alone, and all the GOTV boots they put on the ground, that was the least that Democrats could do for unions and to ensure their own political power. Right?

Wrong. Democrats never even brought it up for a vote. To make matters worse, Democrats strung unions along throughout 2010 by telling them that they would bring it up during the lame duck session after the November elections in order to ensure that union members would turn out to help Democrats during that election. Surprise, surprise. It never even came up for a vote, even after unions spent another $61 million for Democrats during the 2010 elections.

After the 2010 elections swept record numbers of Republicans into office, public sector unions began taking a beating. In Wisconsin, their collective bargaining privileges were stripped away in the “budget repair” bill passed by Republicans. In Ohio, Republicans limited collective bargaining privileges too. In Indiana, several laws were passed which placed some restrictions on prevailing wage contracts which favor unionized contractors as well as expanding school vouchers which allow students to attend schools typically staffed by non-union teachers. In Michigan, Republicans passed a series of laws designed to limit the power of unions in the name of fiscal savings as well. Democratic legislators in Wisconsin and Indiana fled the state to delay passage of these laws, but they ultimately returned while both Barack Obama and national Democrats largely remained silent throughout.

To be sure, it’s not like the unions got nothing in return for their support. The 2009 Stimulus sent billions of dollars to states to keep public sector union employees from being laid off. But the Stimulus failed to live up to the promises made to justify passing it, and when the money was spent, many of them wound up losing their jobs anyway.

Obama stuffed the NLRB with union activists, and it has since sued Boeing on behalf of unions in Washington state and instituted new rules forcing employers to notify workers of their rights to form a collective bargaining unit.

While those are far from minor accomplishments, they are not nearly on the scale of support that unions expected from Democrats. That has left union leaders feeling like they’re not getting the best bang for their multi-millions of bucks.

“Let’s assume we spent $100 in the last election,” [AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka] said, explaining the union’s position.

“The day after election day, we were no stronger than we were the day before,” said Trumka. “If we had spent that [$100] on creating a structure for working people that would be there year round, then we are stronger.”

Much like the TEA Partiers who have formed outside groups not controlled by the Republican party, unions now appear to be exploring similar options in order to operate more independently from the Democratic Party.

Trumka’s remarks follow the news that the AFL-CIO will set up a so-called Super PAC, allowing the nation’s largest labor federation to spend unlimited amounts of money on political activity for next year’s elections and beyond. Trunka confirmed Thursday that the union was moving forward with plans to create the PAC.

In years past, unions supported individual candidates but they also gave large amounts of money to the Democratic Party which the party was then free to spread around in support of candidates which may or may not have been strong supporters of unions. This is especially true in swing and Republican-leaning districts where supporting card check or other union initiatives would hurt those candidates.