Legendary labor leader Samuel Gompers was once asked what, exactly, organized labor was after. What was the end game? How much would be enough? Gompers answered "more." He explained "when it becomes more, we shall still want more. And we shall never cease to demand more until we have received the results of our labor."

That last bit was a rhetorical concession only -- a bit of false modesty to keep unions from sounding like greedy capitalists. Organized labor will always press for "more," from employers and, increasingly, from government. These are demands without end. There is no way to meet them that will not lead to ruin.

The End of Equality was the title of popular blogger and California Democratic Senate hopeful Mickey Kaus's first and only book. It was a lover's quarrel with a liberalism that he thought had forgot something important: how to say no to its interest groups. Liberals no longer knew how to resist some of the more outlandish demands of welfare advocates, labor unions, and other lobbies, and this had put them at odds with American voters, Kaus argued.

The book was published in 1992 and it proved influential in the debate over welfare reform. The left had stymied efforts to reform welfare under President Ronald Reagan. The challenge from reformist Democrats, including Kaus, proved too much. After the disastrous 1994 midterm elections, a Republican Congress passed -- and a Democratic president signed -- legislation that ended welfare as a way of life for millions of Americans.

Kaus often comes in for criticism as a crypto-conserative, but reading his book, his blog, or listening to his speeches should put the lie to this criticism. He is clearly a liberal who believes in a large, activist government. He has always supported some system of publicly guaranteed national healthcare. Kaus's quarrel with the Obama administration on healthcare was that he thought it was selling reform on thoroughly fraudulent grounds, thus making it more vulnerable to challenge.

But Kaus differs from modern liberals in that he does not consider "more" an acceptable answer to the question, "What does liberalism want?" He thinks government should do certain things to ensure social but not necessarily economic equality. And he believes that, in order to govern effectively, Democrat-controlled government needs to stand up to some pretty powerful Democratic interest groups and tell them "enough" or even "give it back."

In his current protest campaign, that means that Kaus has singled out unions for criticism, as well as the "Hispanic lobby." He argues that unions have wrecked American manufacturing and education, and made government at all levels prohibitively expensive.

Kaus wants the Obama administration and the California government to work to reverse these trends, rather than accede to most union demands. He also wants the federal government to seriously cut back on the flow of illegal immigrants before it considers granting the demands for "more" amnesty for illegals already in the country.

Critics, including Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer, argue that these positions make him a de facto Republican. Kaus counters that they are really bad liberals, because they are not thinking through where such demands will lead. That message does not appear to have resonated with California Democratic primary voters. The Republican Party nomination this year is fiercely competitive. Nobody seriously argues that Boxer won't crush the shoestring Kaus challenge underfoot.

That Kaus's candidacy and message have been so easily dismissed by the primary electorate could end up being bad news for Democrats. Kaus wrote in the Los Angeles Times, "We need nonretired Democrats who tell the unions no. Or else, perhaps after more bankruptcies and bailouts, Republicans will do it for them."