INDIANAPOLIS — Despite Indiana House Democrats' declarations of victory, their party's constituents are going to learn that five weeks in Illinois did little to change — or "moderate," as Democrats put it — the agenda of majority Republicans.
If the goal was to gain influence during the course of this year's legislative session, two strategies seemed to make sense for the Democrats.
The first was to leave the Statehouse long enough to kill the "right to work" bill that was most egregious and that Republicans declared dead just hours after the standoff started. Democrats could have come back with a victory and with some political capital to spend.
The second was to stay out a bit longer. They could have returned with just enough time left for Republicans to have to choose between passing only their very top priorities or asking Gov. Mitch Daniels to call an unpopular special session.
Instead, Democrats chose to split the difference. Now, they cannot threaten to flee again. They also struck their big deal and cannot influence much more as the session ends.
And though they killed "right to work," they don't have much to show for the last 34 days of their 35-day boycott.
The biggest issue of this year's session is education reform. Daniels, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett and legislative Republicans are trying to make big changes to the state's school system.
They've offered about six major proposals, and one of those involves private school vouchers. From Illinois, Democrats drew concessions on the vouchers bill, but it's important to note just how small those concessions were.
Democrats are claiming credit for lowering the income cap so that the program is targeted toward the poorest Hoosiers, but they don't quite deserve it. That change was one House Republicans were planning even before the boycott.
Democrats also are claiming credit for lowering the caps on how many students can enter the program in its first and second years by 25 percent. While that claim is accurate, it does not mean much in the long run because the program is uncapped in year threes and forever after that.
Other than that, the voucher bill looks like Republicans imagined it would, and Republicans' other education reforms are proceeding unencumbered.
As for the death of "right to work" and changes to water down House Bill 1216, the other labor bill, Democrats were, indeed, successful.
But it's not like those successes broke Republicans' backs. The labor bills were not important to Daniels. They were nowhere to be found on Republican legislative leaders' agendas for the year.
For Democrats to escape this ordeal with real victories, any momentum they have built is going to have to carry over into the 2012 campaign season.
Of all the party's struggles in the 2010 midterms, the apathy of their base was, perhaps, the most obvious. Democrats didn't seem to have much fight in them.
Though it happened a few months too late to stem Republicans' electoral tide, the House Democratic boycott and the protests that accompanied it were, for that base, a call to arms.
Labor was the focus of the standoff, but it is not just labor rights that were the subject of Statehouse protests in recent weeks.
Abortion rights supporters wore pink and railed against Republican-backed measures that would put some of the toughest abortion laws in America into place and would block Planned Parenthood from receiving state funding.
Opponents of the illegal immigration crackdown that has passed the Senate got together on a freezing afternoon to protest. Many of them were young Latinos who are legal residents and are afraid they'll be relegated to second-class status in their home state.
Gay rights supporters gathered on the Statehouse lawn in an unsuccessful effort to persuade lawmakers not to advance a measure to amend a ban on them getting married into Indiana's Constitution.
Agree with them or not, these groups are also an important part of the Democratic Party's base. Senate Minority Leader Vi Simpson, D-Ellettsville, knows it. She was at every one of their rallies.
Had Democrats stayed out until closer to the end of the session, many of these "social issues" could have fallen by the wayside as Republicans honed in on passing a budget and education reforms, as well as some smaller but also important fiscal matters.
Now, just like the education reforms, they can advance, and the only resistance that matters will come from Republicans.