Off The Bus on HuffingtonPost.com

Jacob Soboroff: Election Mail Fraud? Not Here, Says Postal Service

2008-05-17T20:30:02Z

This post is published on Why Tuesday? as well as OffTheBus.

Oregonians' presidential preference will be known on Tuesday, but many if not most Oregonians have already voted. That's because Oregon is the only state in the Union that votes entirely by mail, and as NPR's Ina Jaffe reported last week, that's not only changing the way campaigns conduct their get-out-the-vote efforts, it also removes the tradition of the secret ballot entirely from Oregon's voting system. Yesterday I met with United States Postal Service Communications Program Specialist Larry H. Dozier to learn more about voting-by-mail.

Why Tuesday? is an effort to make America's democracy stronger through increased voter participation; we work to make election reform an issue that our politicians cannot afford to avoid. Read more campaign coverage from OffTheBus by clicking here.

Chip Collis: Bush Misunderestimates History, Anoints Obama

2008-05-16T18:58:26Z

One of the least charming aspects of the Bush Residency is its stubborn resistance to the entire basic high school curriculum. Math, science, econ, Spanish, civics, English, history: Bush manages to mangle them all on a regular basis. And he did so again Thursday, incorrectly confusing talking to enemies with appeasing those enemies, citing the history of pre-World War II Europe as a grim warning. Obama and the entire Democratic establishment have been mercilessly counterpunching ever since.

Santayana once said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." This has been the hallmark of Bush's mal-Administration, as Bush cannot remember things like Viet Nam, for example. Maybe because the only Santayana quote he thinks he knows is "Oye como va."

Yesterday is a prime example of Bush repeating history, even though this history is less than a year old.

Flash back to a Democratic debate last July 23rd. The CNN- YouTube debate in Charleston, South Carolina. Anderson Cooper hosting. A stage full of contenders, all trying to dislodge Hillary Clinton from her inevitability. Mike Gravel complaining about not enough air time. The question to Obama comes from a YouTuber named Stephen: would you meet "with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea, in order to bridge the gap that divides our countries?"

Obama gives the answer we are all familiar with. But wait, Stephen is in the audience. Anderson asks if he got the answer to his question. Stephen says "Well, I'd be interested in knowing what Hillary has to say to that question."

Hillary, of course, goes the other way, and Edwards agrees with her, moments later.

The next day, this exploded into a full-blown war of words between the Clinton and Obama camps, when Hillary called Obama's stance "irresponsible and frankly naive" in an interview with an Iowa paper. Obama counter-punched elegantly the day after that, "I don't want a continuation of Bush-Cheney. I don't want Bush-Cheney lite."

SNAP!

Back then I was not yet blogging, but just a regular commenter on HuffPost. In response to a story on this, I commented:

Hillary is making a big mistake to be engaging Obama directly right now. A front-runner is supposed to duck these types of confrontations because it's a no-win situation for her. All she does is shower Obama with credibility as a candidate.
Not to mention, she's allowing him to frame the debate on this issue as: Bold Approach vs More of the Same.

Flash forward to May, 2008.

Bush, with a follow-up by McCain, has just made the identical mistake. On the identical issue. And in doing so, he has indicated that Barack Obama is the presumptive Democratic nominee for President, and his own heir-apparent.

In his thinly-veiled swipe at Obama from the well of the Knesset, the President of the United States directly engaged the Senator from Illinois, raising him up as an equal to the Commander in Chief in the foreign policy debate. A sitting President is supposed to eschew these types of actions, especially overseas. He showers Obama with gravitas on an international stage.

Not to mention, he's centering the debate on Obama's strongest issue: Bold Approach versus more of McSame.

Once again, George W. Bush has misunderestimated history.

Sandy Kaczmarski: Undecided KY Superdelegate: Race Is A Good Thing, Of Course

2008-05-16T18:05:39Z

The last time I talked with Nathan Smith, a Kentucky superdelegate, he was not about to commit his support to either candidate.

With Kentucky's primary coming up on Tuesday, I asked him again whom he supports.

"I'm still uncommitted," he said. "I'm interested to see what the voters in Kentucky would like for me to do. That will weigh on my decision."

As vice chair of the Kentucky Democratic Party, Smith says he has talked with both campaigns.

"I met with Senator Clinton, President Clinton, and I met with Chelsea Clinton," Smith said. "I met with Barack Obama. I've had calls from other people in his camp.

"They've all been persuading me both ways."

His wife Mary Lee supports Hillary since she would like to see a woman in the White House. But that hasn't persuaded him yet, at least not publicly.

Smith said he's delighted his home state is on the national stage for this election. Kentucky offers 51 delegates, with 9 superdelegates. Three have committed their support for Clinton, two for Barack Obama, with the remaining four uncommitted.

Kentucky was the 15th state to join the Union in 1792 and originally was part of Virginia. With a traditionally late primary, Smith said usually nobody takes notice of the results.

"It's a great opportunity for Kentucky and the people here to have a say in this election," Smith said.

CNN Politics reports that no Democrat has moved into the White House without the support of Kentucky voters in 48 years. Recent polls show Clinton ahead so far with a wide margin.

While some have criticized the long campaign season, seemingly endless number of debates, and the battle for the Democratic nomination, Smith sees it in a positive way.

"This primary has been the greatest thing for the Democratic Party," he said. "It has gotten people involved.

"People say, well you know, do you think this is weighing hard on the party and this and that," he continued. "I will tell you today this is one of the best things that has happened to the Democratic Party because the number of new registers has been unbelievable. The excitement has been tremendous."

Smith said he believes people understand this year more than ever that every vote counts. And he knows, because he's been hearing from them.

"Believe me, they've all got opinions," he said. "I've been more surprised by the number of regular Democratic voters who have contacted me that either know me or don't know me.

"Everyone has their opinion."

Smith is looking forward to the Democratic National Convention in Denver, August 25 through 28. He was asked if he would be willing to come early to cast his ballot, and he said "if that's the will of the party, I would be open to that."

"I would say it's not over yet," Smith said. "Everybody deserves a chance to vote. I think the best situation right now is that every state goes and votes.

"We need to vote this out and everybody get their say in."

Elaine Hopkins: Thinking About Hillary In The Heartland

2008-05-16T14:41:46Z

PEORIA, ILLINOIS -- Duh! Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton wins overwhelmingly in West Virginia, even as the pundits are trying to shove her out of the race while they ridicule her on television and in their columns.

Why do they hate her? Is it old fashioned sexism? Probably.

No one has told Sen. Barack Obama to "park my car" or "shine my shoes," while Hillary is told to "iron my shirt" and worse.

But the facts are the facts. Hillary wins where it counts. That's amazing, given the media hostility against her.

If the Democratic nomination system were the same as the Republican system, Hillary would already be the nominee today, since she has won most of the big states.

The proportional system gives Obama lots of delegates in the smaller states which likely will go Republican anyway. So he's ahead.

Superdelegates, who are supposed to correct problems in the nomination process. have been jumping on the Obama bandwagon, no doubt hoping for favors from Obama's administration if he wins.

That's a big IF.

As dogs and bodies are walked for exercise, I have been asking my neighbors, in the white, middle class suburb where I live in Peoria, Illinois (IObama's home state), their thoughts on the election.

Earlier this spring I found some supporting Hillary.

True, Hillary came in way behind Obama in the Illinois primary. And in Peoria. Nevertheless on my quiet, spacious, tree-lined street, people are mostly conservative, and some have been Republican voters in the past. No longer.

They hate the war and the corruption, and are ready to vote Democratic. But not for Obama.

McCain is looking good, two neighbors told me separately last week. One asked if it's true that Obama won't salute the flag. The other just said no way will he vote for Obama. He may write in Hillary.

These are not intellectuals or young people They're middle aged men, the kind of voters Hillary has won over elsewhere. The kind that make up the majority of the US electorate.

They're not thinking of the Supreme Court appointments under McCain, and they don't read the New York Times on line. They're more likely to watch Fox News.

And they're very suspicious of their own US Senator, Obama. They probably didn't support him for the Senate, the seat he essentially won in the Illinois Democratic primary out of a large field of candidates.

My intellectual friends at universities, including many women, swoon for Obama. He's different, they say.

(Wait until I tell them that he's started wearing a flag pin in his lapel, as the New York Times reported today. What? Will he do anything to win? Just like Hillary?)

As a former newspaper reporter, I've met Obama a couple of times. He's a bright, charming guy. I've also seen Hillary in person, where she was brilliant and charming, definitely the better of the two candidates, as she typically proved in the debates.

I went to work on my neighbors with the usual arguments: Obama is bright and capable, and he'll do fine as president if he wins. He's a quick learner. They listened politely.

That doesn't mean I don't prefer Hillary. She's a decade ahead of Obama in experience. Her health care plan is the only one that will work financially. End of story.

Sure my 19-year-old grandson and his girlfriend say they voted for Obama, after their mothers dragged them to the polls. Would they vote on their own? Who knows.

My son reports he was just too busy working to vote in the primary.

My daughter voted in the Republican primary because her friend was running for a local office. She's Obama's age but would have voted for Hillary.

So what ARE the national Democrats thinking?

Will they really throw the nomination to Obama, the black intellectual, to run against a white war hero?

I tremble for my country, as Thomas Jefferson once said.

Deanie Mills: Not My G-G-Generation

2008-05-16T14:02:13Z

Like Pogo said, we have seen the enemy, and it is us.

We boomers never thought we'd become the establishment.

When I was a teenager, back in the '60s, every household I knew was in turmoil between the young people and their parents. They hated our music, our hair, our clothes, our attitudes.

Some families split apart, say, between a son protesting the war and his WWII vet father who thought such actions desecrated the flag he'd fought for. Mothers and daughters clashed over matters of sexuality, once the birth control pill became widely available and women were no longer chained to marriage; their virginity no longer their greatest prize. Black and white parents alike recoiled in horror at inter-racial dating and friendships.

We tested every boundary, challenged every convention, rebelled against every conformity, fought the status quo, and protested injustice. Our sheer numbers forced "the establishment" to pay attention, and the transition from the powerbrokers of the World War II generation to the passionate young crusaders was messy and at times, violent.

And now, here we are. We are the parents. We are the establishment we fought against.

We still have trouble accepting it. We love to rock! We love our Harleys! We still climb mountains and kick ass! We're not old! Our kids think we're cool!

Hell, we ARE cool!

We're oldER, yeah, but not old--NOT LIKE THEY WERE! Not like those old white guys, The Man, who sat in corporate palaces and ivory towers and ran the Orwellian machinery of government, the machine that squelched all creative thought and fresh ideas.

But we are.

We came of age in a passionate struggle against a generation we found corrupt and inert, and we bombarded "the establishment" with our energy and our passion and our idealism and our egocentric certainty that we really could change the world.

And we did, but it was not always pretty.

What a long, strange trip it's been, indeed.

We didn't always have flowers in our hair, for one thing.

Our big ungainly argumentative opinionated generation has accomplished a great deal to be proud of--we were at the vanguard of ending a war, bringing about civil rights for minorities and equal rights for women, drawing attention to environmental cataclysms--but we've also made some drastic and terrible mistakes by that very idealism.

It is, after all, a cabal of baby boomers who started the Iraq war, made an emperor out of a president, stripped all of us of Constitutional rights, and other travesties. And those baby boomers have as much blood on their hands as Bob McNamara or Tricky Dick ever had.

But I've seen these people before.

Back in college, you had the hippies and you had the frat rats; you had the war protesters and you had the G.I.'s who'd served or were serving. You had the radicals, both black and white, who wanted a revolution, and the peacemakers who thought we could find a solution somehow if we'd all just listen to one another. You had the cynics who thought the world was shit and the innocents whose biggest problem in life was what to wear to the big dance. You even had the Jesus Freaks and those who looked for spirituality in less conventional places, like ashrams or out in nature.

I see those simple college-campus wars taking place all over again, between the religious right and the secularists, between the neo-cons and the progressives, between the media-corporate hacks and the independent journalists and bloggers, between the feminists and the home-schoolers, between the flag-wavers and the activists against the Iraq war.

We're still fighting those same battles that we did back then--and that's how we tend to look at things. After warring to make so many changes in the world, we don't seem to know when to quit fighting. As W so famously said, "You're either with us or against us."

It's very ironic, I think, that a generation who vowed never to trust anyone over 30, who completely rejected the conventions and conformities of our parents' generation, and who created an entire youth culture to be courted and pursued by Madison Avenue...somehow failed to realize that a new generation was coming up behind us, striding boldly down the trails we'd blazed, grateful that we'd cleared the brush and burrs from the path but determined to make the journey their own.

In other words, another revolution happened, and most of us missed it.

What I see taking place right now in our culture and society as reflected in this heated political race, is not so much a battle over race or gender--although there have been unmistakable racist and sexist undercurrents.

What is happening instead, I think, is a titanic upheaval that is, simply put, generational.

I see this generational struggle taking place not just in the Democratic party, but in the Republican party as well, and I also see it happening in the world of media and in the hallowed halls of the Sacred Talk Show and all across the spectrum of society--much as it did before, only in more subtle ways.

Though we don't want to admit it, the stark truth is that we baby boomers are aging.

Our children are growing up; we've chased our dreams and dealt with our disillusions and tried to think what to do next--or maybe, more prosaically, how to best survive this third phase of life we're facing. Some lost a lifetime of retirement to an Enron or Worldcom or our careers to downsizing or outsourcing or some other Katrina event in our lives, and we're not sure how to rebuild. We're old enough to have lost old friends to disease or accident or war. Some are trying to keep the life alive in a long-term marriage, some just trying to find one that works. Some defy the physical effects of aging and some lost the battle long ago to chronic illness or pain.

Some hold positions of great power, social position, and wealth.

And they don't wanna let go.

It pains me to say this, but we've turned out to be as blind and bull-headed as our parents' generation. I see this straight down the line.

In the military establishment, for instance--a stressed-out junior officer corps who have fought through multiple combat deployments in an ill-planned and ill-managed war, are defying the generals who hurled them into it in the first place.

They're getting out; leaving beloved military careers behind, forcing the Pentagon to pay attention as their ranks are depleted.

In the women's movement, "shoulder-pad feminists" who came of age in the 70's and 80's and put up with an unimaginable degree of sexism in the early years angrily face down young feminists as upstarts who fail to appreciate all the sacrifices that were made for them.

They don't seem to notice how bright and sassy and smart and sexy and kick-ass the younger feminists really are.

Similar generation gaps exist in the civil rights movement, as well. Aging fire-and-brimstone movement leaders who knew the humiliations of Jim Crow and marched with Martin sometimes don't seem to recognize the sleek and successful African American titans of business that their struggles spawned.

They still carry anger in their hearts that isn't always shared by the younger generation.

In the evangelical world that was so rent through the past decade with hateful campaigns against gay rights and reproductive choice for women, a younger generation of Christians don't see the world in such black and white stark morality. They don't think that gays in love are nearly as evil as the rape and pillaging of God's creation and heedless ignoring of climate change. They oppose abortion, but are far more interested in feeding the hungry than in hanging out around abortion clinics brutalizing terrified young patients.

The death of Jerry Falwell was, I think, a symbolic death as well. The Pat Robertsons and others of their generation who ramrodded an entire political agenda through from school boards to the Supreme Court are losing their grip on power.

In the media-world of punditry and pontificating--almost all the major op-ed writers, columnists, news anchors, and talk show bloviators are of boomer age. And they are looking at this election through that prism, and like the generals, the old-school feminists, and the hate-mongering preachers--they just don't get it.

Time and again, for instance, they boast that, "I don't read the blogosphere."

Any commentator who says that is revealing a willful ignorance. They fail to understand that the younger generation does not get its news from newspapers or network broadcasts. They get their news online and read their opinions from political blogs--most of the biggest of which (Huffingtonpost.com, Talking Points Memo, Daily Kos) did not even exist, say, five years ago.

Blowhards like Rush and O'Reilly and, to a lesser degree, Chris Matthews--those types of shoot-from-the-hip loudmouths whose sole reason for living is just to be able to shout people down on T.V. or on the radio...are losing their audiences. Ratings are falling. Their demographics are aging. Their domination of the airwaves is fading. Their bloated contracts are being bought out.

Young people are getting their opinionating from hip, smart, razor-sharp-funny cynics like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, and smooth, thoughtful operators like Keith Olberman.

The Democratic and Republican parties have both been slow to catch on to the young assault on their power-grip. Hillary Clinton was presumed to be the Democratic party's nominee because she and her popular husband had a complete lock on the old Democratic party apparatus, from big donors to party-boss connections to labor unions.

And Hillary was a fighter--way more than Bill. She knew how to fight; she LOVED to fight, and she was ready for the Republican machine. Every vote she's made in the Senate--including the fateful one to authorize the war in Iraq--was done with an eye toward a general election campaign, based on our generation's matrix that had been put in place in the 80's and cemented in the right-wing dominated 90's: embrace the religious right; prove yourself tough on national security; and pretend that you don't know what the word "liberal" means.

On the Republican side, even though they'd lost the congress in '06, they were convinced that the only way to regain power was to be even MORE conservative than they already were, and to grasp for power with every nasty low-life Rovian tactic they could think up--while ignoring, completely, what the
American people really wanted. Even their so-called "maverick" presidential nominee has embraced this mindset.

Both parties, in their own ways, settled into the ruts they'd found tried and true over the past few decades.

And NONE of them saw it coming.

The new revolution.

They still don't seem to get it.

As Frank Rich said, in the New York Times,

it's not 1968, after all. It's not even 1988.

It's a whole new world.

The genius of Barack Obama is not that he is superior over all the other fine candidates who have run on the Democratic ticket. It is that, quite simply, he GETS it.

By setting up a groundbreaking, sophisticated, streamlined Internet campaign from the very beginning, he tapped into that great ocean swell of energy, interest, and excitement just biding its time, waiting to be noticed.

The "Millennials," as Bob Herbert called them in the New York Times, are not all in-your-face fighter types like the boomers. But they're not slackers either. They had already stacked the kindling, but were just waiting for someone to light the match.

The Internet not only put Obama in touch with literally millions of restless and frustrated people ready to work for him--not all young, mind you, but those hip to the power of the online community--but also made available to him a virtually unlimited supply of small-dollar donors who were used to setting up payment plans online, and had no hesitation in doing the same for a campaign they could believe in.

With an online community of like-minded souls ready to give money, it was easy, then, to ask for their time as well, which enabled him to jump-start an excited and energized base of supporters ready to knock on doors and make phone calls and caucus for him.

Obama's speeches, you see, they just provided the inspiration. Those empowering words lit the match and touched it to the dry kindling. And the fire leapt to life.

This is what critics--most of whom are boomers--don't seem to get, when they complain about "empty eloquence," and speeches that are "just words."

(How soon we forget, that it just took one speech, "just words," for an energetic young president to launch an unprecedented and ultimately successful effort to put a man on the moon. And that doesn't even touch the power of words by Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, among others.)

Clinton's campaign was old-style: bloated, top-heavy, and expensive. Thousands--even millions--of dollars were wasted on four-star hotels, luxury car rentals, and ridiculously high-priced campaign consultants.

Obama's was classic start-up: desks crammed into warehouses lined with computers and overworked, underpaid, and dedicated staff. Mark Penn, Hillary's main guru, was paid more than $10 million at one point for his services; David Axelrod, Obama's counterpart, made $1.5 million in that same time frame.

Volunteers, tapped by the vast Obama online network, fanned out to join the campaign in all 50 states, putting to shame the Clinton party-boss structure. This same organization is now involved in a voter-registration drive that should bring even more new Democrats into the fold--it is a ground-up campaign, not a top-down.

And this is something that even many top political correspondents still do not seem to grasp.

Even the Clinton base of older working-class women represents that percentage of aging boomers and their elderly parents, who are suspicious of the Internet--many still do not know how to use a computer--and who seldom have the time to read newspapers because they're working so hard just to survive. They get their news from the old-school sources--talk shows and network broadcasts, and are therefore much easier to manipulate with soundbites and attack ads.

John Lennon once said that he didn't think the Beatles had actually caused the cultural upheavals of the 60's. "It was more like a wave came along, and we caught it," he said.

In a political memo for the New York Times, Adam Nagourney seemed to acknowledge this. He called it, "a party in transition...a different generation (that) promises a very different style of politics."

The Republicans recently got their faces smacked by two crushing losses in the deep South--congressional seats in solid red districts. They had campaigned with Rovian right-wing nasty tactics, linking the Democratic candidates to Obama and his controversial pastor with repetitive attack ads and soundbites.

And yet even after they lost those seats decisively to the Democrats, the chairman of the RNC says they intend to continue to campaign through the general election in that same old way.

We've seen this before, too: An older generation, holding tight to power, to the old ways, to the tried-and-true...standing defiantly on the shore slathering on sunscreen and bracing for the wave that will surely knock them off their feet...while the cool kids are hanging ten and cruising the crest all the way home.

Read more by the author at: Deanie's Blue Inkblots.

Peter Dreier: Terminator Budget Cuts Spur Protests Across Calif.

2008-05-16T00:00:49Z

Like many students in the Pasadena Unified School District (PUSD), and across California, my daughters Amelia and Sarah, 11-year old twins, have been making posters opposing Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's draconian budget cuts for public schools: "We Like Our Schools." "Arnold: Don't Terminate Our Teachers." "Cuts Hurt Kids." "Fund Schools, Not War." (That last one is really intended for George Bush, not Gov. Schwarzenegger.)

The signs will be displayed Friday afternoon at protests in front of every school in the 20,000-student PUSD system. Parents, students, teachers, office staff, administrators, school board members, and concerned residents will be out in force, waving banners and alerting passing motorists about the looming cuts that will devastate public schools in the state. The protests are a warm-up for a big march through Pasadena on Saturday, May 31. Similar activities have been happening across the state. More than 4,000 teachers, parents and students packed the stands of affluent Mission Viejo High School's outdoor stadium in Orange County. Hundreds of their counterparts in working class Alhambra held a rally at the school district headquarters. At San Jose's Overfelt High School, students handed out postcards urging the governor, "Please don't kidnap my dreams." The Angry Tired Teachers, a rock band from Hayward, are taking a statewide "Cuts Hurt" bus tour.

In many years of activism, I've rarely seen such an outpouring of genuine grassroots anger and mobilization. Many of the parents engaged in these protests have never been politically active before. Some are involved with their school's PTA or as boosters for their kids' sports teams, but many of the protesters have been recruited by word-of-mouth and by email through other networks -- churches, soccer leagues, and neighborhood groups. The protest planning meetings focus on nuts-and-bolts but are also full of spirit. The parents, teachers, students, and community allies -- who reflect the district's racial and income diversity -- got their juices flowing coming up with slogans and chants for the rallies and May 31 march. One parent suggested they steal an idea from protesters in Alameda, in northern California, who lined the city's main streets with trash cans, got students to stand in them, and held up signs: "My future is too valuable to throw away." (Readers who want to learn more about the PUSD protests should contact Tracy Mikuriya at tracymikuriya@earthlink.net)

Protesters at the Scanlon Center in Alhambra Wednesday.
(Walt Mancini/Pasadena Star News)

Like many urban districts, the Pasadena school system has been traumatized by forces beyond its control. Middle class "white flight" from the public schools began in reaction to busing in the late 1960s. In the 1980s, immigration brought an influx of Latino students. In the past few years, gentrification and skyrocketing housing costs have pushed many low-income families, particularly Latinos and African Americans, out of the area, resulting in declining student enrollment, which damaged the district's budget and forced the closure of several schools. Even so, about two-thirds of PUSD's students are low-income, many of them from families where English is a second language.

Despite these trends, the Pasadena schools have started to make a turnaround. Test scores have increased, exciting new programs for both gifted and disadvantaged students have been put in place, and a growing number of middle-class families are returning to the public schools. Under Superintendent Edwin Diaz, hired last year, day-to-day management has improved, restoring confidence in the public schools among local business leaders, city officials, and parents.

But like every school district in California, Pasadena schools are still suffering from the shock waves produced by Proposition 13, the statewide initiative passed in 1978 that put a ceiling on local property taxes. Since then, school districts have been totally dependent on the state for school funding. Once among the best public education systems in the nation -- from kindergarten through college -- California has now sunk to one of the worst.

California ranks 46th in the nation in per-student spending, according to Education Week -- $7,081 compared with the national average of $8,973. It ranks 49th in the number of students per teacher, resulting in large average class sizes. It is at the very bottom in the ratio of counselors, librarians, and school nurses to students. It ranks 37th in school spending as a percentage of state taxable resources.

Now, to make matters even worse, Gov. Schwarzenegger has proposed about $4 billion in inflation-adjusted cuts for the state's public schools. School districts around the state have already sent lay-off notices to thousands of teachers and other personnel. Morale among teachers, who are frustrated by the chronic job insecurity that comes as a result of the state's fiscal instability, has suffered a huge blow. School districts in Texas, Nevada, Virginia, Hawaii, and other states have put up billboards, taken out newspaper ads, and sent recruiters to California to lure teachers away.

Anticipating the state cuts, school administrators in Pasadena have been forced to plan to slice $14 million from the district's $120 million general fund budget. This comes on top of more than $10 million in cuts over the past few years. Long-term district employees have already received pink slips. Parents and teachers worry that arts and music programs, sports, special math, literacy and other programs will soon be gone.

As word of these pending cuts spread at local school sites, parents began talking to each other, and with teachers and administrators. Joan Goulding, who has two kids at Don Benito, a PUSD elementary school, has never lobbied state officials or been involved in any protests before, but last month she started working on a letter-writing and petition campaign to Schwarzenegger through her school's PTA. In the mornings, she's been collecting signatures on a petition from parents as they drop off their kids at school. But she wanted to do more and suggested that the PTA organize a demonstration to protest the budget cuts. Nora Schneir has a son in second grade at Longfellow School, where she's been a member of the School Site Council. After discussing the potential impact of the budget cuts at the Council meeting last month, Schneir -- who has participated in protests against the war in Iraq, immigrant rights and other issues, but never on school issues -- decided to help circulate petitions and organize a protest in front of the school this week.

Goulding and Schneir will be traveling to Sacramento on Monday to join other parents, teachers, and school board members from across the state at a rally at the State Capitol building. They were selected because their schools won a competition for collecting the most signatures on petitions protesting the budget cuts.

At the state level, the California Teachers Association, the California School Board Association, and the PTA are coordinating the lobbying efforts in Sacramento, although the local protests have resulted from indigenous activism. Although both the state Senate and Assembly have Democratic majorities, a two-thirds vote in both houses is needed to pass a budget. As a result, the school protesters need to identify two (out of 15) Republicans in the 40-member Senate and six (out of 32) Republicans in the 80-member Assembly who will go along with some combination of cuts and increased taxes -- a difficult goal given the hard-line conservativism of the state's GOP legislators. The CTA, CSBA and PTA strategists have yet to identify which Republicans they believe are most vulnerable to pressure and seek to mobilize parents, teachers, and other school employees in those districts.

In other words, a handful of right-wing GOP legislators, plus the Republican governor, are standing in the way of my kids' schools getting the funding they need.

Schwarzenegger wants to broker a deal but has been reluctant to propose any significant tax increases, despite a $15 billion deficit due to both a weaker-than-anticipated state economy (caused in large measure by the mortgage meltdown and declining housing prices) and the state's inefficient tax system. The core of Schwarzenegger's budget is a gimmick to ask voters for permission to borrow $15 billion from Wall Street against future earnings of the state lottery, but even that plan -- which simply postpones the budget crisis rather than solves it -- won't restore the funds being slashed for public schools, much less bring California even close to the national average in per-student spending.

Misguided state tax policies have exacerbated the state's current fiscal crisis. According to the California Budget Project (CBP), a nonprofit policy group, tax cuts enacted between 1993 and 2006 cost the state $12. billion this year. The largest reductions included the cut in the motor vehicle license fees (Schwarzenegger's ploy to get elected in 2003) and cuts in the corporate tax rate reduction. Corporate income taxes have declined as a share of the state's general fund revenues and as a share of corporate profits. If corporations had paid the same share of their profits in corporate taxes in 2005 as they did in 1981, corporate tax collections would be $7.3 billion higher, according to CBP calculations. As the state's economy has shifted from goods to services, the state's tax system hasn't adjusted - for example, the rise of the internet sales that escape taxation. If taxable purchases accounted for the same share of personal income this year as they did 40 years ago, the state would collect an additional $15.9 billion in sales tax revenues. In addition, the phase-out of the federal estate tax -- President Bush's give-away to the very rich -- will cost California over $1.1 billion this year.

Like many parents, I'm tired of going to silent auctions and bake sales at my kids' public schools to make sure there's enough money to keep the art teacher, purchase musical instruments and library books, and install computers in classrooms. But meanwhile, I'll be taking out the Magic Markers and helping my daughters design more protest posters, realizing that this isn't just about saving our schools, but teaching them a lesson about democracy.

Peter Dreier is professor of politics at Occidental College in Los Angeles.

Chip Collis: Two Key Obama Endorsements Come Under The Radar

2008-05-15T21:17:44Z

Lost amid the chatter of the Edwards endorsement and the brouhaha over yet another idiotic President Bush remark were two very important superdelegate declarations of support for Barack Obama. Rep. Howard Berman (CA-28) and Rep. Henry Waxman (CA-30) both declared for him, adding their voices to the significant shift that has included superdelegates crossing over in the wake of the endorsement announcement.

But these two are arguably the most important. Nestled against one another, the 28th and 30th California Districts are both within Los Angeles County, the most populous county in the most populous state in the Union. Clinton won California on Super Tuesday by 9 points, and won LA County by 13 points. Fully 14% of her current pledged delegate total is from California.

More significant, perhaps, than the state of origin for these two Representatives are the roles they play within Congress.

Waxman is one of the most influential and liberal members of the House. He is the Chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. This committee is the main investigative arm of the House. So it is only fitting that he endorse Obama, the candidate who has spoken the most about reforming government.

Berman is also the Chairman of a committee, in his case, Foreign Affairs. His southern California district is over 55% Hispanic. Although the biggest minority in the country, their importance has been glossed over since the Texas primary. Due to demographics, most of the recent primaries have focused more attention on the black-white divide. Berman's endorsement should go a long way towards reassuring his Latino constituents about Barack Obama for the general election.

Finally, the symbolism of these two endorsements on the day that Bush stood up before Israel's Knesset and compared Obama's foreign policy approach to appeasement of Hitler should not be lost. In addition to Berman's foreign policy expertise, Waxman and Berman are two of the most prominent Jewish members of Congress.

The messages sent to George Bush and Hillary Clinton by these two endorsements are slightly different but equally clear. To Bush: your time is over. To Clinton: your time is not now.

Linda Hansen: Hell's Belles! NARAL Enrages The Clinton-Or-Die Contingent

2008-05-15T18:31:53Z

NARAL, just because you're officially Pro-Choice America doesn't mean you have one. A choice, that is. Just because you've served as a powerful voice for the reproductive rights of American women for forty years doesn't mean you deserve a little respect from your membership. Or that, just maybe, you know what you're doing. Sheesh.

What were you thinking?

Well...NARAL's political action committee chose to endorse pro-choice Barack Obama. Nancy Keenan made the pro-choice choice public and then came the blowback--well, let's call it Hurricane Hillary and have done with it. No matter that the announcement praises both Clinton and Obama. No matter that Ms Keenan makes clear how valuable both Clinton and Obama are to NARAL and to American women. No matter that Ms Keenan quotes Barack Obama on choice:

A woman's ability to decide how many children to have and when, without interference from the government, is one of the most fundamental rights we possess. It is not just an issue of choice, but equality and opportunity for all women.

No matter that Obama supports and defends Roe v. Wade.

It's not enough. The fact that both Democratic candidates are adamantly pro-choice is not enough. Raging Clinton-backers stormed NARAL's Blog for Choice site in droves. Bottom line? NARAL is a traitorous organization which betrayed Hillary Clinton--and all women, for God's sake, are Hillary Clinton. And Barack Obama is a MAN.

Hell hath no fury and all that. Hundreds and hundreds of women (and not a few men) blasted NARAL on-line. The Clinton-Or-Else bloc is canceling their membership in droves. To be fair, there were comments from rational women on both sides of the primary fence. But there were too many she-wolves, fangs bared, howling at the moon. A sampling of the feral fury:

"Senator Clinton, is a woman for pete's sake... [sic]"

"...an insulting slap in the face to [Hillary's] career and to all women..."

"...women support women!"

"You made your bed--now go sleep in it with B Hussein O."

"...are you a bunch of stupid ignorant women...a bunch of rich bitches..."

"You'll be remembered as part of the howling mob who tried to tear apart the woman who dared reach for the highest office in the land."

"Since when did Barack Obama get a uterus and ovaries? NARAL SUCKS! I will vote for McCain if Obama is nominated, we might as well get used to being barefoot and pregnant right away..."

"You guys suck. Obama sucks. I'm so pissed off."

"An local astrologer [sic] did a current-trend chart on Obama & it was very similar to HITLER'S chart. This is scary!"

"The liar is not even black! He's half black! Hillary is not half woman!"

Obama, according to this Clinton faction, can't prove he's really pro-choice. In New Hampshire the Clinton camp proved he's soft on women's reproductive rights--because they said so. And she's a woman. So what if he is pro-choice? Hillary's been pro-choice longer. And she's a woman. NARAL should have waited it out until HRC says it's over. And she's a woman. How could they--especially after the Clinton landslide in West Virginia changes everything? And she's a woman. Good Lord! As West Virginia goes, so goes the nation! And 70 percent of women in WVA voted Hillary! Because she's a woman. And they know a real woman when they see one.

There are nut cases involved in every campaign, supporting every candidate. Certainly, there are flakes among Obama supporters. But let's be honest: Barack Obama does not fuel that fire. He doesn't write an "I'm a victim because..." script for them. He is who he is--and neither the man nor his message has changed since that first February day of his candidacy in Springfield. He hasn't had his surrogates whine that "those other guys are ganging up on me" following debates. He hasn't claimed his spouse's experience as (miraculously) entirely his own. He hasn't wept for the camera when "It's hard...". He hasn't embellished his history with tales of gunfire. He hasn't belted down Canadian whiskey with a beer chaser or hugged his gun and waxed sentimental about his huntin' days. He hasn't said something like, say, she's unelectable because reports show "Her support is weakening among working--hardworking Americans--black Americans..."

NARAL endorsed a candidate based on his character, his record and, I suspect, to signal us--we women who have been conflicted about this primary--that Obama is most likely to win this nomination and it's okay. He's one of us. Being a staunch advocate for women's reproductive rights is a matter of character and of spirit. No uterus required.

Peter Dreier: Edwards Poverty Campaign Met With Media Blackout

2008-05-15T13:47:28Z

On Tuesday, the day before he announced his support for Barack Obama, former Senator John Edwards launched a campaign to cut the nation's poverty rate in half in the next ten years. You can be excused if you hadn't heard about it. Only one major daily newspaper -- the Philadelphia Inquirer -- covered the event, which took place at a Baptist church in North Philadelphia. (Larry King on CNN, Matt Lauer on the "Today Show" on NBC-TV, and Michele Norris on NPR interviewed Edwards about the topic in recent days, but they were more interested in whether he was going to endorse Obama or Clinton).

On Wednesday, of course, Edwards' presidential endorsement lead the nightly news, rocketed through the blogosphere, and landed on the front pages Thursday morning. Once again, "horse race" journalism prevailed over policy ideas aimed at addressing serious problems.

Edwards' endorsement of Obama, which took place in Grand Rapids, Michigan, is certainly major news. But the complete failure of the media to cover Edwards' anti-poverty event tells us a great deal about what the journalistic establishment considers important.

When Obama and Hillary Clinton made their pilgrimages to Edwards' home in North Carolina in February to solicit his endorsement, he told them he wanted to see their campaigns pay more attention to poverty. At the Philadelphia event, Edwards -- along with representatives of the community organizing group ACORN, the Center for American Progress, Coalition on Human Needs, and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights -- launched what they called the Half in Ten campaign. Edwards said he wanted the candidates to commit themselves to the goal of reducing poverty in half within ten years. (At the endorsement event the following day, Obama embraced the Edwards proposal.)

Edwards in Philadelphia Tuesday with Maud Hurd (left),
national president of ACORN, and John Podesta, head
of the Center for American Progress and former
Clinton chief-of-staff (back right).
Sharon Gekoski-Kimmel / Inquirer Staff Photographer.

In 2006, 36.5 million Americans -- 12.3 percent of the population -- lived on incomes below the official poverty line -- about $20,400 for a family of four. Few media stories point out that among the world's affluent nations (primarily Canada, Japan, Australia, and the countries of Western Europe), the U.S. has the highest poverty rate (more than twice that of many European countries) and by far the widest gap between the rich and poor.

The number of Americans in poverty has increased by almost 5 million since George Bush took office. And if the poverty threshold was raised by 25 percent -- to $25,555 for a family of four -- which many economists think is a more realistic figure, the number of Americans in poverty would increase to almost 50 million, about 17 percent of the population.

More than a third of America's poor are children under 18. A growing number of the poor are working in low-wage jobs. A declining proportion of those jobs provide health insurance.

After his defeat as John Kerry's running mate in the 2004 election, Edwards created a center on poverty and work at the University of North Carolina. He began criss-crossing the country speaking at union rallies, joining picket lines and campaigns to raise the minimum wage and visiting homeless shelters, low-income housing developments and emergency food banks -- hardly the typical path to the White House.

When he announced his campaign for president, he did so in an impoverished area of New Orleans, a neighborhood hard hit by Hurricane Katrina. During his presidential campaign, which ended nearly four months ago, he tried to shine a spotlight on poverty. As one of the leading candidates for his party's nomination, Edwards was able in July to get reporters to follow him on a three-day, eight-state, 1,800-mile poverty tour that included stops in New Orleans, Kentucky, Mississippi, Cleveland and elsewhere.

Many of the stories that came out of that tour focused on the human side of poverty, and on the candidate's policy ideas. But others reflected journalistic cynicism, viewing Edwards' anti-poverty crusade as simply a political gambit to grab attention. They failed to mention that none of the eight states on Edwards' poverty tour were among the key early primary states that would make or break his bid for the White House. Newsweek reporter Jonathan Darman wrote that Edwards' calls to reduce poverty "sound like more empty promises from a politician."

No longer a politician, Edwards this week called poverty "a moral cause facing every single one of us" in the United States. "What we do for each other says something about who we are," Edwards said, speaking at the Thankful Baptist Church. "It says something about our character."

The Half in Ten campaign will focus on policy solutions identified in the Center for American Progress' poverty task force report (pdf) issued last year. These include expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit; raising both state and federal minimum wages; increasing the number of low-income families receiving child care assistance; increasing eligibility for unemployment insurance; and preventing predatory lending practices and preserving home ownership.

The last time the U.S. committed itself to dramatically tackling poverty was during the early 1960s.

At the time, progressives like Rev. Martin Luther King and United Auto Workers union president Walter Reuther advised Presidents Kennedy and Johnson to champion a bold federal program for full employment that would include government-funded public works and the conversion of the nation's defense industry to production for civilian needs. This, they argued, would dramatically address the nation's poverty population, create job opportunities for the poor and the near-poor (including blacks living in America's ghettos), and rebuild the nation's troubled cities without being as politically divisive as a federal program identified primarily as serving poor blacks. We often forget that the theme of the 1963 March on Washington-- at which King made his famous "I Have a Dream" speech and which the UAW backed with both money and marchers-- was "jobs and justice."

Johnson's announcement of an ''unconditional war on poverty'' in his 1964 State of the Union Address was, in reality, a patchwork of small initiatives that did not address the nation's basic inequalities. Testifying before Congress in April 1964, Reuther said that ''while [the proposals] are good, [they] are not adequate, nor will they be successful in achieving their purposes, except as we begin to look at the broader problems [of the American economy].'' He added that ''poverty is a reflection of our failure to achieve a more rational, more responsible, more equitable distribution of the abundance that is within our grasp.''

Despite these valid criticisms, the programs Johnson and Congress put in place in the 1960s bore fruit. Indeed, the nation's War on Poverty, which President Johnson launched in 1964, was making steady progress until it was detoured by the other war-- in Vietnam. In 1960, when Kennedy was elected, 22 percent of Americans lived below the official poverty line. By 1968, that number had dropped dramatically, to 12.8 percent-- a result of a combination of general economic prosperity and anti-poverty policies like raising the minimum wage, creating public works jobs, providing job training programs, raising Social Security benefits, and launching Medicare and Medicaid. By 1973, the nation's poverty rate had fallen to 11.1 percent, an all-time low.

Since then, poverty has increased, but now the dilemma of poverty is linked to the broader problem of widening inequality and declining living standards for the middle class. In contrast to the 1960s and early 1970s, when the rich, middle class and poor all shared in the nation's prosperity, America today has the biggest concentration of income and wealth since 1928. Headlines about outrageous compensation packages for corporate CEOs have focused attention on the concentration of wealth at the top. The share of income going to the richest 1 percent of families has doubled since 1980, while their federal tax burden has fallen by a third. Meanwhile, a growing number of working families are now in debt, while the number facing foreclosure has spiraled. American workers face declining job security and retirement security. College tuition is increasingly out of reach, while government aid has shrunk. The cost of housing, food, gas, health care, and other necessities is rising faster than incomes. Between 2000 and 2007, median weekly earnings increased by 0.6 percent, while the cost of a typical home grew by 72.2 percent.

Starting in the 1970s, an effective business-sponsored rightwing attack on "big government" social spending, and efforts to stereotype the poor as lazy welfare cheats, undermined support for policies to help lift people out of poverty. Americans are now tired of Bush's noblesse oblige prescriptions for addressing poverty -- like encouraging people to donate to charity and volunteer at homeless shelters and soup kitchens. They want a new social compact that requires people to work, corporations to act responsibly, and government to protect people during tough times with a stronger safety net.

Americans are more receptive than they've been in decades to a new effort to address the widening economic divide, including poverty, according a recent report, Trends in Political Values and Core Attitudes: 1987-2007, from the reputable Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. The study found that 69 percent of Americans-- including 58 percent of Republicans-- now believe that "government should care for those who can't care for themselves". Also, 69 percent of Americans -- including 83 percent of Democrats, 71 percent of independents, and 47 percent of Republicans-believe that the government "should provide food and shelter for all." According to the Pew report, more than half of Americans-- including 68 percent of Democrats, 57 percent of independents, and 34 percent of Republicans-- believe that "government should help the needy even if it means greater debt." These are all significantly higher figures than during the mid-1990s.

Polls also show that support for labor unions has reached its highest level in more than three decades. Since welfare reform was enacted in 1996, Americans have viewed poverty primarily through the prism of working conditions. A few years ago, surveys revealed that a vast majority of Americans wanted to raise the federal minimum wage, which had been stuck at $5.15 an hour since 1997. After they won a majority in Congress in 2006, the Democrats hiked the federal minimum wage to $7.25, still below the poverty line, but an improvement.

The popularity of Barbara Ehrenreich's book about the working poor, Nickle and Dimed, and TV shows like The Wire, as well as the growing challenges to Wal-Mart for its low-wage policies, and the remarkable growth of the "living wage" movement (about 200 cities have now adopted such laws) reflect an upsurge of concern that America is in the midst of another Gilded Age-- a concern bubbling up from the grassroots, and just now surfacing in our national political life. But most of the media are entirely out of touch with these sentiments and with a burgeoning activist movement for reform.

Until Obama gets elected -- and perhaps appoints Edwards as his poverty czar-- it appears that the new grassroots war on poverty won't be televised.

Peter Dreier is professor of politics at Occidental College in Los Angeles and coauthor of Place Matters: Metropolitics for the 21st Century and The Next Los Angeles: The Struggle for a Livable City.

Mayhill Fowler: Obama's Key To The Blue Collar Vote

2008-05-15T13:36:42Z

The Saturday before the North Carolina primary, Joe Klein of Time and I separately spent a long time talking to Tammy, an army veteran and mother of four standing next to the press rail before the Rotary Centennial Pavilion in Gastonia. Senator Clinton was, unusually for her, very late to her rally (some snafu with air traffic control not recognizing Gov. Easley-- a harbinger of just how much his stumping for Clinton was going to count in the end). What Joe and Tammy discussed I don't know, but she and I, along with her second daughter Casey, got into the subject of education. I had asked Tammy if she was from around Gastonia originally, and the answer was no-- Niagara Falls.

"You have to understand," Tammy says, "the only way out of Niagara for people like me is the military. I've got college, too-- but the education wasn't much good. I'd've given anything for the schools they [Clinton and Obama] went to." Tammy regards me fiercely. An intelligent woman, she knows what she has missed. And now her sense of loss is focused on her gifted daughter Casey, whose middle school, a magnet school for science and math, is soon to close. As it is, Tammy says, because of No Child Left Behind, Casey's teachers teach to the dumbest kids in the class. Tammy is aggrieved. From what I've heard on the campaign trail, people are concerned not nearly so much about the loss of jobs, or the war in Iraq, or the price of gas, as they are about their children's education. Tammy wants opportunities like Wellesley, Columbia, Harvard and Yale for her daughter, but already those colleges are receding from seventh-grade Casey into the far distance.

After listening to Clinton speak on her education plan (universal pre-K, scrapping NCLB, better support and salaries for teachers, college tax credits and government-backed low-interest student loans), Tammy decided to give Hillary her vote. I point out that Senator Obama is making much the same proposals--and if anything, his education plan is more ambitious. But Tammy has not had a chance to hear Senator Obama. Nor have many of the other concerned parents in lower-middle-class neighborhoods, small towns and outlying commuter hamlets like Gastonia across the country.

If Barack Obama can talk about education to enough Tammies and Caseys, he will have his blue collar vote. In one way, it's as simple as merely showing up in Gastonia. Really he needs to follow the Bill Clinton itineraries--even though this may entail some campaign swallowing of pride--and hold front porch rallies across the battleground states. The Obama Campaign should adopt the Clinton modus operandi of last-minute announcements of town/neighborhood visits so that passionate loyalists don't show up in numbers that overwhelm the locals. Senator Obama is going to need his dedicated base in order to govern; but now he needs them to keep back so that he can reach out to other Americans.

Hillary and Bill Clinton have known where to find these reluctant Democrats. They also know who these folks are better and closer than Obama does. At most every rally and meeting for the last three months, for example, Senator Clinton early on has asked, "What interest rate are you paying on your student loans?" Always hands rise for twenty, twenty-three, twenty-five, even thirty percent. It's a misperception that less materially well-off--not to mention rural--white Americans don't have higher education, if not for themselves, then for their children. Somebody in the family has gone to college, taken some courses. It's just that they've had to pay more (relatively speaking) and to work harder for less-- in education, as elsewhere. Knowing this, Hillary Clinton has zeroed straight in on these folks' educational hardships and their desires that their children and grandchildren have better.

Returning from another Clinton North Carolina town hall meeting, I turn on the TV to find the Huff Post's own Hilary Rosen discussing the Democratic race on a cable news show. Rosen is surprised that Senator Clinton has gotten 45 percent of the youth vote in Pennsylvania. "Tell me what your problems are" is the Hillary Clinton approach, Rosen says. "But young people have no problems!" Rosen adds with a laugh. If I hadn't been out on the campaign trail, likely I would think the same. In Fayetteville that afternoon, however, Senator Clinton had taken the most dispiriting and heart-breaking questions from twenty-somethings that I've witnessed in many months. These were military, husbands and wives of military, struggling with the reality that veterans' benefits no longer cover or even begin to cover the cost of a college education. These were young women juggling children and college while worrying about husbands on third tours of duty. These were young vets who, as is increasingly being reported in the North Carolina press, aren't getting the psychiatric and logistical support they need in order to make it in college.

Not all college students are the jaunty and saucy but idealistic set Barack Obama has attracted from day one. If Senator Obama can speak to the rest, not only the parents like Tammy or the Fayetteville veterans, but also people like the young woman at his own rally in Beaumont, Texas, who asked Obama what could be done for students like her sister-- a college drop-out who discovered she didn't have the preparation she needed to stay there-- then he has an opportunity to reach their hearts and minds. But doing that requires getting to know people and sitting with them for a spell.

A universal rule of human nature is that desire is inversely proportional to need. Therefore, Americans who have the most always need more while those who have less ask for less. Michelle Obama perfectly understands this, for in her speeches she often uses her father's life as an example of the fact that "folks don't want all that much." The Clintons understand this, and in their small-town stump speeches they try--against the grain of their far-ranging policy interests--to get into only a few issues for more than a sentence. Therefore, speaking to small-town America on the subject of education alone-- if he understands where people are coming from on that subject-- would garner Senator Obama votes.

This is the mistake--addressing too many issues--that Obama made with the various Hispanic populations in Texas. Rhetorically, the way to look people in the eye that conveys "I understand you" is to focus remarks. Spanish-speaking Texans are not a monolithic group. Families whose Tejano roots pre-date the Civil War don't share the outlook of Central American immigrants. Not all Hispanics are Catholics; many now are charismatics or Protestant evangelicals. But Hispanic Texans together are bewildered that their children don't do better in school. Like all Americans, they want a better life for the next generation, and therefore it is education, and not health care or immigration or jobs, that is their number one concern.

Tuesday in a press conference call, David Plouffe, Obama's campaign manager, said that education is "the key to our country's future." Likely his comment was a graceful tribute to the achievements of former Colorado governor Roy Romer, whose endorsement of Senator Obama was the purported subject of the call. But Plouffe's remark, if incidental to the occasion, is true. Just as I'm writing this, John Edwards is endorsing Barack Obama. Minutes ago, Edwards sent out a fundraising email targeted at helping Greene County, North Carolina, send its high school students to college. At this point in time, the solicitation for young people in Greene County is much more important than the endorsement. I think even David Plouffe would agree.

The Uptake: Oregon Voters: Long Campaign Good For Democrats

2008-05-15T06:08:41Z

From The UpTake

Contrary to what you might hear the legacy media say, voters in Oregon don't think the long campaign has hurt the Democratic party's chances in the 2008 Presidential election. For the first time in recent memory, Oregon's May 20th primary actually matters in Presidential politics. The UpTake's Cliff Etzel talked to Democrats who came to hear Barack Obama's recent campaign swing through the state.

adrienne russell: Knight Journalism Award Stokes Denver Indie-Media Community

2008-05-15T04:51:43Z

The Knight Foundation announced its News Challenge Award winners today at the Interactive Media Conference in Las Vegas. Sixteen projects will share various portions of this year's $5.5 million prize. With the News Challenge, Knight aims to fund new-media innovations that "transform community life." This year's winners include digital culture all-star Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the World Wide Web, and ten "young creators" or applicants who are less than 25 years old.

Also among the winners was Denver Open Media, a two-year-old independent public access broadcast project. (disclosure: I am a recent addition to the DOM board.) The organization won a two-year $380,000 grant to help share its open-platform business model with stations nationwide, connecting public access stations across the country to create a new-style broadcast network. The small DOM staff trains people to film and edit their programs and upload them to the Web. The programs then play on three local TV stations and on the internet. Viewers can text in ratings and comments on each show. The rating and comments appear onscreen in realtime. Programs that garner the most votes move into the best time slots. Program quality, styles and purposes vary wildly.

News of the Knight award heightened buzz among the Denver independent media community, which has been ramping up in advance of the Democratic National Convention to be held here in August. IndyMedia Colorado reformed in the spring and national players such as Google, YouTube and Daily Kos have begun laying plans for Convention coverage, working together to set up a "Big Tent" space for bloggers to work at while the delegates convention in the city's Pepsi Center. According to a report at Kos, the space will be well-rigged with wifi and digital equipment.

Free Speech TV is hosting Democracy Now! and deploying their cameras and crew to report on convention protests. Denver is also hosting Dialog:City, a public art project that will feature ten digital media instillations in neighborhoods throughout the city.

I spoke briefly with DOM executive director Tony Shawcross yesterday.

How does the award money change what you can do at DOM?

The main thing [the money] enables us to do is replicate our model at other public-access stations and begin to realize the promise of networking in a way that lets the stations share content, share best-practices and cooperate the way other media networks do. As we hope to increase viewership, we want to collectively leverage the best community media across several stations and begin to offer programming of a different level of quality. Bringing multiple stations together will increase the amount of quality programming for all.

How will it influence public access TV? What's your goal?

Our plans are about getting a wider audience for citizen journalism and aimed at making it clear that the tools and skills required to get your work seen by a large audience are not reserved for the privileged few.

What's changing right now in your community of independent media makers in preparation for the convention?

I would say that the real story of the DNC this year will be the non-commercial perspective. Community perspectives from everyday people will be more accessible this year than at any convention before. The real story will not happen inside the Pepsi Center.

Dan Treul: Turning Tables In The Temple: Obama In Grand Rapids

2008-05-15T04:45:00Z

If Grand Rapids, Mich., were Jerusalem (and some have suggested it's not far off), its temple would be Van Andel Arena. The 12,000-seat venue is named for the late Amway co-founder and Republican heavyweight Jay Van Andel and it is home to all manner of beasts and beauties-- hosting hockey Griffins and football Rampagers as well as national minstrels Carrie Underwood, Bruce Springsteen, and Tom Petty.

Last night, Barack Obama rocked the house in both categories, dazzling the crowd with an ambitious preview of the general election campaign and delivering what may be the critical knockout punch to the dizzied Clinton camp in the form of a John Edwards endorsement.

The beauty (and political genius) of the event lay, appropriately enough, in its sheer audacity. Grand Rapids, but more importantly, West Michigan, is not historically friendly to Democrats. DeVos, Van Andel, and Secchia-- these conservative icons have worked (and spent) tirelessly to earn the region its reputation as a leading GOP and evangelical stronghold in an otherwise consistently bluish-purple state.

Monday's announcement, then, that the Obama campaign had rented out "the temple" for the Wednesday evening rally was both audacious and mysterious. How would the young, idealistic Democrat survive in the lions' den?

Obama, freshly reinforced by Edwards, delivered his answer to an electric, capacity crowd:

"This isn't just the America of yesterday," he said, "this is the America of tomorrow...This is our time to answer the call that so many generations have answered before.

"Hope is spreading all across America," he said, bringing the crowd to its feet.

As Ted Roelofs of the Grand Rapids Press noted, "The first public appearance of Barack Obama in West Michigan was one reason for partisans to cheer: Their man was ready to do battle in the heart of GOP country."

Edwards' surprise appearance alongside Obama -- deftly orchestrated just in time for the evening news cycle -- bolstered that sentiment. In his fifteen-minute introductory remarks, Edwards injected the Obama campaign with a much-needed (and doubtlessly much appreciated) dose of "ordinary folk" populism.

"Democratic voters have made their choice and so have I... Join me in helping send Barack Obama to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue," said Edwards to thunderous applause, clearly glowing to be back in the bright lights.

Obama later told the press that Edwards is "somebody who I greatly respect and to have his endorsement I think will help consolidate the party around a real change agenda."

The headline of Roelof's Press piece? "Edwards endorsement of Obama in Grand Rapids could be final blow to Clinton."

Despite Tuesday's 40-point loss to Clinton in West Virginia, that certainly seems to be the way Obama sees it. True to post-North Carolina campaign strategy, Tuesday's script at times played like a eulogy, referencing a primary campaign in the past tense and repeatedly praising and then quickly skipping over Clinton.

"That was the central tenet of this campaign," said Obama at one point in reference to his "one America" theme.

"This campaign is not about me, it's not about John [Edwards], it's not about Hillary, it's not about John McCain. This campaign's about you."

His Republican adversary didn't get off that easy, however, with Obama continuing to challenge McCain on the point of mental fortitude, reasserting a now famous line: "Since this war in Iraq started, we have lost our bearings."

"Eight more years of you're-on-your-own politics... that is the politics of the past and we are the politics of the future." John McCain, said Obama, promises a "can't-do-won't-do-won't-even-try kind of politics."

Obama's visit to Grand Rapids, then, was as much a calculated slice for the Clinton jugular as it was a prophetic warning to the Republican establishment:

"We are going to compete everywhere," the senator told reporters. "That's my theory of this election, and that's how we have gotten where we have gotten.

Obama's message in Grand Rapids resonated throughout the evening: this is my house, too, and the tables have turned. "It turns out when you show up, people respond."

Allison Fine: NARAL Sticks a Finger in Our Eye

2008-05-15T02:54:53Z

The emails started to fly around yesterday in the late afternoon with the urgent subject line, "NARAL ENDORSES OBAMA!" In pained tones the senders, my circle of Hillary supporters, expressed their shock that one of the preeminent pro-choice organizations, one that they have supported in good times and bad, had double-crossed them in the eleventh hour of the presidential campaign.

I live in Westchester County, NY, this is Hillary country. I am an ardent Hillary supporter but nothing like many of my Hillary friends here who are often fifteen, twenty, thirty or more years older. They built the feminist movement in this country, and they fought for my right to choose, or what's left of it, today. Hillary's campaign is as much about them as it is about her, and today NARAL betrayed them as much as they did her.

One of the most frustrating and shocking aspects of the reporting of Hillary's campaign has been the cynical reporting of what Hillary means to her supporters. How is it possible that she raised so much money from small donors when she asked in March and April? The answer is simple, because they believe in her and in her campaign! In begrudging fairness to the media, Hillary's own campaign didn't seem to understand or appreciate the depth of these feelings either until it was too late. But the depth of pride and ownership that women across demographics feel for Hillary are very real. And now, here were my Hillary friends, with tens of their friends copied, surging into my inbox with their messages:

"Disgraceful!" Barbara

I want to crawl up in the fetal position but instead I have to go report as chair of the League of Women Voters Nominating Committee. I just tried calling NARAL and the office is closed." Alisa

"I will never give another penny or any support or advocacy to or for the organization." Hannah

In her announcement on Huffington Post yesterday, the president of NARAL, Nancy Keenan, wrote that the decision to announce their endorsement while the primary competition between two pro-choice candidates is ongoing is because, "for the sake of the reproductive-rights movement, we need to put any perceived differences behind us, and get to work putting Sen. Obama in the White House."
Really, the entire future of the pro-choice movement rests on spitting in the eye of the strongest woman candidate in the history of the country, rather than waiting three more weeks to put whatever organizational muscle it has left after today to work for Obama, that this sliver of times will make the difference between winning and losing in November? It is unimaginable that the NAACP would have pulled the rug out from under it's own constituency like this if the roles had been reversed. African American supporters of the NAACP have waited a lifetime for a presidential nominee who looks like them - and so have women.

Many last century membership organizations are in a panic as they watch their donor bases age and flail around trying to attract young people with newer causes to support. NARAL may be feeling this heat as well. I would be happy to tell you about far more graceful ways to enter the Connected Age than scorning your core constituency.

I am old enough to know that your fight is important but young enough not to have laid the cornerstone of organizations like yours - but I promise you that just as you're not there for me today, I won't be there for you tomorrow. My friends Hannah and Alisa and Barbara, their sisters, girlfriends, mothers, daughters and cousins have volunteered, donated money, made calls, marched, worn buttons, buttonholed their friends and family, fought valiantly against the relentless attacks of the far right, and are the constant stalwarts of every woman's right to choose, and they deserve so much more respect than this.

M.S. Bellows, Jr.: Edwards' Endorsement Frees Obama In Picking Running Mate

2008-05-14T23:27:27Z

The day after Hillary Clinton won a solid victory in West Virginia but lost 7 percent of the vote to a candidate who wasn't even running any longer, that candidate -- John Edwards -- has come off the fence and endorsed Barack Obama.

This endorsement is huge, not just in itself -- a white man, with solid rural support, who still has a strong following in the most recent primary state and nationally -- but also as a huge reality check -- "check" as in hockey -- to Clinton and as a hint of the direction Obama's Vice Presidential choice might go.

On racism: 20 percent of West Virginia Democrats voting yesterday said that the candidates' race played a role in their decision. And of those, 85 percent voted for Clinton -- ie, this is not black voters supporting the first serious black candidate (or female voters supporting the first serious female candidate), but white voters intentionally voting AWAY from the black candidate. That's 20 percent of West Virginia Democrats admitting they're at least somewhat bigoted -- meaning at least another 20 percent more actually are, since pollsters have long known that people are reluctant to admit to socially unacceptable views, even anonymously.

On the veep slot: pressure's being put on Obama to consider Clinton for a running mate -- and Clinton isn't closing that door; her campaign spokesmen refused to rule that possibility out (or, admittedly, in) during a telephone press conference this morning. But Clinton doesn't help Obama with his electoral map in November, which (as Roy Romer explained yesterday) is very different than Clinton's "one state solution" map. (Obama's path to the White House involves winning states like New Mexico, Colorado, and the Dakotas, whereas Clinton simply wants to win the states Democratic Presidential candidates have always won, plus either Ohio or Florida. That's why there's so much infighting between them on the "kinds" of states each one wins: Obama has won twice as many states as she has, indicating his ability to win his map, while Clinton has won the "big states" of Ohio and Pennsylvania, proving her ability to win her map. But the two maps don't really intersect.)

And, of course, it would be galling -- and look weak to voters -- for Obama to curry favor with what Clinton's campaign openly calls "the white electorate" by tapping the very woman who, far more than Rev. Wright did, has destroyed his standing with the boilermaker-drinking class of whites.

What Obama needs is a running mate who can help him win his map -- or who can help repair the (fairly recent and definitely not fundamental) rift with white voters -- or both. And in those regards, two names pop to the top:

Bill Richardson: helps Obama court the West, including his home state of New Mexico and the adjacent states of Colorado and -- taking the fight right into McCain's backyard -- Arizona. Plus, Richardson would draw the Latino vote throughout the West and in many Northern cities as well, and he has tremendous foreign policy credentials. (A more thorough explanation of why Richardson would rock as a veep here.)

John Edwards: strong in the South, strong with precisely the rural voters Clinton has been baiting, superb on healthcare (blunting any harm Clinton's done to Obama there), well-respected on both sides of the aisle. And Edwards was the first candidate to clearly connect the war with the economy, an equation that helps Obama and blunt's Clinton's claim to be better than Obama is on the economy.

The other option for Obama is to choose a Clinton acolyte, perhaps Evan Bayh, who could help him win Indiana. That might appease some of Clinton's backers and lure them back into the fold. But contrary to how it might seem on some blogs, Clinton's supporters are fervent, not rabid; upset, not petulant and self-destructive; grieving, not suicidal; and most of all, progressive, not conservative. Obama can't take their support for granted, the way Hillary has said she CAN take black support for granted, and he'd be wrong to neglect to mend fences. But Obama can assume that nearly all Clinton supporters are reasonable, open to logic and persuasion, and more interested in the common weal than in nursing their own disappointment. They don't have to come around, but Obama will reach out to them in a meaningful way, after which they will come around. The alternative is to allow the remaining two Democrats on the Supreme Court to be replaced with Scalito clones, and for all privacy rights to go away -- not just abortion choice, but all Constitutional privacy rights including the right to be gay, the right to have oral sex with your spouse in private, and the right of married couples to buy condoms, all of which would be stricken under the judicial philosophy of Alito, Scalia, Roberts, Thomas, and the kinds of judges McCain recently promised to appoint. Seriously: these judges want to reverse Griswold v. CT (1965), the basis for all these rights. States could make gayness, oral sex, and condom use illegal again, along with abortion. No kidding.

Clinton's supporters won't let that happen. Which means that while Obama needs to take concrete steps to make peace with the "Clintonistas" (said with fondness), and will do so, he doesn't need to bribe them to support him with something as precious as the running mate slot. Reach out to them, yes. Bribe them, no. They're better Americans than that. He's free to pick a running mate who he honestly wants to work with and thinks will help him win, which could be Clinton or one of her supporters, but doesn't have to be.

So now Obama not only has the nomination locked up mathematically, but with Edwards' endorsement has now also made up a lot of the demographic ground he lost in recent weeks. And possibly, quite possibly, this also may be the beginning of a beautiful friendship -- an example of what a "dream ticket" would really look like.

Visit the author's blog, VichyDems