At a private meeting tomorrow in Washington, D.C., the most powerful and prominent leaders of the labor movement are planning to finalize the details of a major public campaign to push for what labor is hoping to get from the incoming Obama administration and the new Congress.

The meeting tomorrow morning at AFL-CIO headquarters will provide a glimpse into labor's hopes for the new order in D.C., at a time when a labor resurgence is looking like a real possibility. The big unions played a major role in delivering white union and non-union workers to Barack Obama in the battleground states, and will be expecting a seat at the table next year.

According to a senior AFL-CIO official, the labor leaders -- who could include AFL-CIO head John Sweeney, AFSCME chief Gerald McEntee, and others -- will be putting the finishing touches on plans for a national campaign, including possible TV ads, to press members of Congress for quick passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, one of labor's major agenda items.

The measure, which would give workers the right to join a union as soon as a majority of employees at a workplace say they want to, went down to defeat in 2007 and is likely to provoke huge opposition from business groups again this time around.

The labor heads will also discuss the Obama team's ongoing transition efforts and evaluate whether they think labor has had an adequate role in behind-the-scenes discussions, the AFL official said.

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It's become an article of faith about this race that outside groups didn't really lay out significant resources to influence the campaign's outcome. It turns out that this isn't really true, however.

A new study by the Campaign Finance Institute tallied up the numbers. More than $180 million will have been spent by so called "527" groups, less than the $338 million spent by them last time but still a sizable chunk of cash by any definition.

Meanwhile, other right-wing and business-backed groups poured huge money into the race, with the NRA chipping in $40 million and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce dropping $12 million.

And still other winger groups were active, too: Let Freedom Ring and the American Issues Group spent a combined $8 million on ads attacking Obama, for instance over his associations with William Ayers.

One other key finding, on a pet topic of ours: The big unions were huge in picking up the slack on the left. Since January of 2007, Dem-backing 527 groups spent $133 million, with the biggest players being unions like AFSCME and the SEIU. When the history of what happened in the battlegrounds is written, labor deserves a big, juicy plug.

In another sign of key movement in his direction, Barack Obama has dramatically improved his standing with three key constituencies in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan, according to internal polling conducted by the AFL-CIO that an official shares with us.

AFL spokesperson Steve Smith says the union federation will release polling numbers later this morning that show jumps in those three states among gun owners, veterans, and retirees. Here's an advance look:

Among union gun owners, it's now 58-30 Obama, up from 48-41 in early September, a 21 point jump.

Among veterans we're at 58-32, up from 49-41 in early September, an 18 point jump.

And among retirees, we're now at 59-31, up from 52-37, a 14 point improvement, nearly double the margin.

Smith adds that AFL polling also shows big gains for union members overall in those three states:

In Ohio, Obama now has a 29-point advantage (61%-32%) over McCain among union members, an improvement of 16 points since August.

In Pennsylvania, Obama's support has risen 22 points to a 63%-27% advantage.

In Michigan, Obama now holds a commanding 68%-23% lead among union members, up 26 points.

If these numbers bear out, this is a pretty big deal, because union voters comprise a big chunk of the vote in Rust Belt states. Obama's apparent gains underscore yet again the big role union organizing in the swing states played in filling the vacuum left by the relative lack of outside group activity on the left this year.

The AFL-CIO tries to broaden the map for Obama, dropping a big blitz of mail attacking McCain and Bush on the economy in West Virginia, a state that went for Bush over Kerry in 2004 by double digits.

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McCain doesn't appear to be biting on such stuff yet, though: He has cut a radio ad specifically geared for the state, but for now it doesn't appear to be running.

An AFL-CIO official sends over some detail about its planned get-out-the-vote operation, which the labor federation will be announcing a bit later this morning.

If AFL makes good on its vow, which is to mount the biggest operation in its history, it will be lending an enormous boost to Obama in the battleground states.

AFL promises to deploy an army of 250,000 volunteers in 20 states, including shifting resources to new toss-up states like North Carolina and Indiana, its spokesperson, Steve Smith, says.

AFL is also promising a new, micro-targeted approach to very specific swing constituencies, such as working class veterans, retirees and gun owners -- groups which have already been targeted by the union and will receive what the AFL official calls "intense communication" in the final stretch.

Such micro-targeting may be paying off already. Smith tells us that AFL's internal polling shows improvement among those very groups, with Obama building a sizable lead over McCain among active gun owners, veterans, and Appalachian voters in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

The Obama-backing labor federation Change to Win is about to drop some 750,000 mailers in the battlegrounds slamming John McCain and George W. Bush for having "wrecked our economy," with a fun play on the question, "how do they look themselves in the mirror?".

A Change to Win official sends over an advance copy (click on the images to enlarge):

Change to Win says this is their second largest mail drop to date; it's going out to a dozen battleground states.

It really is worth noting that between mailers, ads, phone calls and shoe-leather house-to-house organizing, the big unions did play a key role in staking out an aggressively populist left-flank for Obama -- and against McCain -- in the key states, well before the meltdown hit.

The AFL-CIO keeps up its intense and very targeted economic assault in the swing states, dropping half a million copies of this mailer hitting John McCain on a host of issues important to retirees, a key swing constituency.

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The AFL official who sends over the mailer says this mail blitz, combined with an intense door-to-door effort, represents the final push in the union's efforts to target three constituencies: Gun owners, vets and, now, retirees. The above mail is going only to retirees, who represent a key umber of undecideds in the battlegrounds.

One other interesting note: The AFL is dropping this piece, and is now sinking additional resources, into Indiana and North Carolina, in addition to the core swing states, suggesting that the big unions, too, are seeking to broaden the map in the race's final stretch.

A scorching new mailer from AFSCME keeps up labor's economic assault on John McCain, directly blaming McCain and Bush for presiding over "the greatest financial meltdown since the Great Depression."...

The AFSCME official who sent us the mail piece says it'll be dropped today on undecided and swing households in 17 battleground states. Another forthcoming AFSCME mailer hitting McCain on health care is after the jump.

Meanwhile, in other outside-group news, Catholics United has a very interesting new mail piece that pushes a liberal pro-life vision that espouses improved health care and education, among other things. We're told it will go out to targeted Catholic households in Pennsylvania and Ohio.

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With the big unions unleashing their final pushes in the battleground states, the Communication Workers of America is blitzing the battleground states with over 120,000 mailers painting McCain as a stooge of big corporations and sharply contrasting him to Obama on the economy.

A CWA official sends over the mailers. The first takes a shot at "the pundits," calling on voters to "ignore" them and instead focus on the two candidates' records, which are contrasted in a tidy chart (click on the images to enlarge)...

The second piece focuses only on McCain and hits him over his "fundamentals" gaffe...

Late Update: CWA spokesperson Candice Johnson gets in touch to point out that the mailers are really a small part of the story when it comes to the work the unions are doing in the battlegrounds.

"CWA is focused on one-on-one worksite contacts, phone calls, and canvassing," she emails. "These mailers are really the tip of the iceberg. We deliver a lot of information to our members on the issues that they care about."

Micro-targeting is the name of the game in this election, and the AFL-CIO is about to unleash one of its most micro-targeted pushes yet -- a blitz of mailers defending Obama on gun rights that's aimed strictly at union households made up of gun owners.

Here is the first mailer, a piece going to some 80,000 gun owners in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. It offers a stout defense of Obama on gun rights and ties it directly to an economic message (click on the images to enlarge):

"I want to protect two things: My job and my gun," union member Mike Day says in the mailer. "That's why I'm supporting Barack Obama."

The union's decision to depart from a strictly economic message and to edge into the culture wars is driven in part by a stepped up campaign in the battlegrounds by the National Rifle Association, which has run ads accusing Obama of conspiring to take away people's guns.

The new mail piece is the latest in a broad effort by the AFL-CIO to reach very specific voting blocks in the swing states. Last week the union unleashed a wave of mailings targeting union households with veterans, and union officials promise an intensified -- and targeted -- campaign of mailers, phone calls and door-knocking in the race's final stretch.

Working America, the arm of the AFL-CIO that does outreach to nonunion workers, keeps up the economic assault on John McCain with another huge, hard-hitting mailing targeting the battleground states (click to enlarge):

Also, in an interesting experiment, the AFL-CIO tells me that they'll be emailing this video out to a list that includes thousands of Republicans and Independents in the swing states -- "a persuasion piece," as AFL spokesperson Steve Smith puts it.

The thing to keep in mind is that the ratcheted up activity by the big unions is driven partly by the fact that their own internal polling indicates that the race is much more volatile in the battlegrounds than public polls suggest, and that low-info voters there tend to be surprised when they learn the truth about McCain's economic proposals.

Late Update: The mail piece is going out to more than a million swing-state households, and the vid is the first in a three part series.

In the latest effort by the big unions to try to fill the gap left behind by the absence of third-party spending on the left, the AFL-CIO is hitting the Rust Belt states with a massive mail blitz hammering John McCain over his claim that the "fundamentals" of the economy are "strong."

This mailer will go out to more than one million union households in the swing states of Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania (click on the images to enlarge):

The piece is the latest sign of just how up for grabs Reagan Dems remain in the key battlegrounds -- and the urgency the big unions feel about the need to off-set McCain's ongoing populist makeover, via ads and speeches, in these critical states.

The AFL-CIO and an affiliated independent group are preparing to unleash an unusually large blitz of mailers targeting at least 1.5 million households in battleground states and across the country -- the group's first foray in a new and all-out campaign to win back Reagan and Bush-supporting Dems in the race's final stretch.

The mailer, which we obtained in advance of its public release, features testimonials from a number of these workers, including a school bus driver and Marine veteran who articulates the campaign's core message: "I voted for George W. Bush because he promised to change Washington. I'm not falling for the same old line from John McCain."

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The mailer is the first big move by an outside group called Working America, which gets funding from the AFL-CIO and is the union's affiliate for non-union workers.

Working America is a group that bears watching. It's going to be doing a fair amount of heavy-lifting when it comes to winning back blue-collar "Reagan Democrats" who supported Bush in 2004 and risk being seduced by McCain's claim to being the race's real change agent -- hence the mailer's message.

Working America and the AFL-CIO will blast out the mailer next week to some 270,000 households in the swing states of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, and to another 1.3 million union households in those states and across the country.

"This is a new front in the effort to reach working-class moderates on the pocketbook issues that are critical to them this election year," Karen Nussbaum, Executive Director of Working America, tells us.

"Our members have seen their living standards decline, their communities decay and their economic security disappear," Nussbaum continues. "Yet John McCain still thinks the fundamentals of our economy are strong."

The group -- which claims 2.5 million members in 11 states, including 800,000 in Ohio alone -- plans more mailers and on-the-ground organizing in the weeks ahead.

In a move that signals a major new effort to woo elderly voters to Obama, the AFL-CIO is dropping a scorching new mailer in battleground states hammering John McCain on Social Security and directly referencing McCain's wealth, his corporate jet, and his expensive Italian shoes.

"McCain's worth over $100 million," reads the mailer, which we obtained in advance of its public release. "He owns 10 houses...he flies around on a $12.6 million corporate jet...he walks around in $520 Italian loafers."

"If John McCain lost his social security, he'd get by just fine," the mailer continues. "Would you?" Click on the images below to enlarge:

The new mailer, which highlights McCain's history of support for privatizing Social Security, signals a recognition that unions can play a role reaching out to what they think will be a pivotal swing state vote: Retired union members.

Steve Smith, a spokesperson for the AFL-CIO, tells me that the union will be striving to reach out to more than a million union retirees in coming weeks.

"In key battleground states, the retiree vote is going to be crucial in the presidential race," Smith says. "Our research -- polling, focus groups -- indicates that many seniors still are unaware of John McCain's record in support of privatization and plans to drastically reduce benefits."

The mailer will go out tomorrow to 50,000 retirees in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan, and more mailings will soon be dropped in those states, where the union is also planning a series of Social Security events.

The mailing's hard-hitting references to McCain's wealth also suggests that the big unions see another role for themselves: Striking a sharp populist tone in attacks against McCain that others have been calling on the Obama camp to employ, particularly in response to McCain's "celeb" ads. The message, quite simply, is: Who's the real elitist here?