The Massachusetts House has now joined lawmakers in Wisconsin, Ohio, and Indiana in voting to limit the bargaining powers of public service unions, which have wrenched concessions out of the elected officials they help elect year after year for decades.

The reason? The Bay State can no longer afford sweetheart pension giveaways. No state can.

The big deal here is that Massachusetts is as solidly Democratic a state as there is, but reality has struck even there.

“It’s pretty stunning,’’ said buy generic prednisone Robert J. Haynes, president of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO in this Boston.com story. “These are the same Democrats that all these labor unions elected. The same Democrats who we contributed to in their campaigns. The same Democrats who tell us over and over again that they’re with us, that they believe in collective bargaining, that they believe in unions. . . . It’s a done deal for our relationship with the people inside that chamber.’’

Instead of blaming their erstwhile friends in Boston, the union leaders should snap out of their trance.  It’s over. It’s time to deal in reality.