by David Bachman, UW professor of international studies

The Dalai Lama, in his simple robes, stooped shoulders, and in his discussion of peace, compassion, and healing, presents a compelling figure. As the leader of the Gelugpa sect of Tibetan Buddhism, and the head of the Tibetan government in exile, he also embodies a number of messages. Many of those messages were on display during his visit to Seattle and the University of Washington.

For those who have seen him in the past, and those who had never seen him in person before (me) and who have open minds, he leaves a powerful impression. He is engaging, funny, self-deprecating, energetic, and to use the overused word, charismatic. The message he repeated in many of his public appearances, sponsored by a group called Seeds of Compassion, was not surprisingly, compassion. His lectures on the subject were powerful, but in many respects, they weren’t all that different than what the “cosmopolitan” versions of many religious faiths argue for today, at least in regards to secular behavior and attitudes. In terms of content, it seemed to me that the Dalai Lama’s message was quite similar to that of the Pope’s when the latter spoke to the UN today. We are all part of one humanity, we are all hurt when others are hurt, and we hurt ourselves when we hurt others. Were we all to live and act by these beliefs, the world would undoubtedly be a better place.

"Perspectives on the Dalai Lama's visit," by David Bachman, UW professor of international studies, posted Monday, April 21, 2008, to blogs.uwnews.org. UW news blogs is a service of uwnews.org, the University of Washington Office of News and Information.

by James K. Wellman Jr., UW associate professor of American religion and chair of the comparative religion program in the Jackson School of International Studies

The visit of the Dalai Lama to Seattle has struck me as both full of innocence and naivete. Many have commented on the power of his message of compassion. They have been drawn to it primarily because it is a spiritual way and not a religion. It is a quintessential Northwestern distinction, one can be spiritual but not religious. The implication is that spirituality is good and kind, and religion is perverse and corrupt. This strikes me as innocent and naive. 

The Dalai Lama from all that I know is a very good man, compassionate and kind, but he is a distinctively religious and political figure. That is, he embodies a metaphysical tradition that is more than 2,500 years old, representing a philosophy of relating to a power that is bigger than the self and group, representing a tradition of belief, practice and ritual. In the Western academic study of religion this is a religion. As for politics, the Dalai Lama represents the interests and concerns of a people; he heads a government; he speaks about the need for autonomy for a people; he asks for China to be kind. What else is this than a political act, seeking to influence interests, protecting a people from incursion by another political power?

Religion and politics, from my research, can never be separated. They are always tangled together; think of the Christian Right in recent American politics; think of the Religious Left in the campaigns of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton; think of any number of examples in various forms of political religion in the Islamic, Hindu, and Buddhist worlds. Religion creates, establishes and mobilizes individuals and groups to seek influence, and it often does so with enormous power--for good and ill. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Baptist preacher who helped to move a nation to civil rights for African Americans; Bishop Desmond Tutu, an Anglican bishop, helped reconcile the nation of South Africa following apartheid. Religion, whether one likes it or not, plays a huge role in politics.

The Dalai Lama appears to be a spiritual and compassionate man, but he has importance because he has political power. The two go hand in hand. Not to see this seems to me innocent and naive. 

"Make no mistake about the Dalai Lama," by James K. Wellman, UW associate professor of American religion, chair of comparative religion program in the Jackson School of International Studies, posted Monday, April 14, 2008, to blogs.uwnews.org. UW news blogs is a service of uwnews.org, the University of Washington Office of News and Information.

By Christopher Parker, UW assistant professor of political science

Obama’s speech in March about race relations demonstrates genuine patriotism.

The senator used Rev. Wright’s comments to highlight African Americans' continuing struggle for the American dream. He discussed slavery, how through segregation and discrimination it ultimately foreclosed on the chances of African Americans. In fact, all blacks have ever wanted is for America to honor its values. Even during World War II, when Jim Crow was vigorously enforced in the South, black southerners were fiercely allegiant to American values (if not practices).

Obama said that even among members of the black middle class, who managed to escape the hopelessness of the inner city, race continues to shape world views, likely through everyday slights in the workplace and other places such as restaurants. Blacks, understandably, remain angry at the persistence of racism.

Obama then turned to class and the resentment harbored by working-class whites who remain angry at blacks’ perceived advantages. For whites, it’s a zero-sum game in which black progress comes at their expense.

In short, Obama suggested, blacks resent whites for continuing racism, and working-class whites resent blacks because they perceive themselves unfairly disadvantaged by programs designed to close the racial economic divide.

True patriots rail against oppression and corruption. They are committed to the common good, not the welfare of a few. In this light, Obama’s speech must be considered patriotic. He addressed anger and resentment of both blacks and working-class whites by emphasizing the promise of America.

Ultimately, Obama’s speech was about working to perfect a union by drawing upon the ideals on which the union was founded. What’s not patriotic about that?

"Obama's Patriotism: Towards a More Perfect Union," by Christopher Parker, UW assistant professor of political science, posted Thursday, April 10, 2008, to blogs.uwnews.org. UW news blogs is a service of uwnews.org, the University of Washington Office of News and Information.

By Michael K. Honey, UW Haley Professor of Humanities

Sen. Barack Obama, in his books and in a recent speech, explains why Americans have been pitted against one another by race, and how to get beyond it. He asks us to "break out of the racial stalemate we've been stuck in for years."

He also offers ways to get beyond race to a greater degree of social and economic justice. He calls on ethnic minorities and white Americans to recognize that we all need the same things -- better health care, better schools, better jobs -- and can get them only by joining to find solutions to our common problems.

Obama calls on us to build a new movement "to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America."

The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. would be proud. Forty years ago, he called for a multiracial coalition to end poverty, racism and war, and called it the Poor People's Campaign. King said our dire situation called for a "planetary movement" for social and economic justice. Above all, King believed in the power of love to transform the individual, and society. "Someone," he said, "must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate."

In the spring of 1968, many of us hoped that a new president and a movement would create new priorities. On April 4 in Memphis, an assassin took King's life. On June 5, another assassin killed Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy. Both men had called for withdrawal from the Vietnam War and for shifting the nation's spending from military pursuits to creating jobs and ending poverty. Their deaths shattered our hopes.

Instead of moving toward reform, Americans elected Richard Nixon as president. His "secret plan" for peace consisted of seven more years of murderous military escalation. That "surge" resulted in the loss of millions of lives. Nixon began the coded racial appeals that expanded the Republican Party in the South but divided voters along racial lines. His "southern strategy" has prevailed in politics ever since.

King's dreams of a labor-civil rights coalition, a peaceful foreign policy, mitigating racism and ending poverty were destroyed. Now we stand eerily at another crossroads. Our current government's priorities are even more skewed than in 1968. We face the devastating economic and moral consequences of a potentially $3 trillion war; a massive bailout of Wall Street companies and CEOs, and a trillion dollars in tax cuts for the rich that have swelled budget deficits. Government resources for our infrastructure, education, health care and basic human needs continue to dwindle.

Will a progressive reform movement fix what ails us, or will we fall back on another conservative leader who relies on military escalation and "free market" nonsolutions to problems of human need? Will we fall prey to racial slogans and sound bites intended to confuse rather than to clarify? Or will we move America and the world in a better direction?

Sometimes, it seems we have learned little from our history or from King. On the first day of class, I ask students what King was doing when he was killed. Almost none of them know that King died in the midst of a strike for union recognition. They don't know King was one of the labor movement's strongest supporters or identify him with demands for economic justice. They know nothing about his Poor People's Campaign.

On April 3, in his last speech, King said, "I may not get there with you, but I want you to know that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land!" Yet we are doing fewer of the things that he said could take us there, and more of those things that he predicted would lead us into a nightmare of violence and economic inequality.

Forty years later, we have a black man running for president, enunciating King's politics of hope for a better world. The challenge he raises is clear: We must create a multiracial coalition for a new kind of country and a new kind of world as if our lives depend upon it. Because they do. Forty years since Memphis, let's hope it is not too late.

"MLK's agenda remains unfinished," by Michael Honey, UW Haley Professor of Humanities, posted Tuesday, April 8, 2008, to blogs.uwnews.org. UW news blogs is a service of uwnews.org, the University of Washington Office of News and Information.

By Kathy Gill, UW senior lecturer in the Master of Communication in Digital Media Program

Most political action committees represent special interests: business, labor or issue/ideology. But a growing number are run by U.S. senators and representatives.

In the 2006 election cycle, 291 leadership PACs contributed $42 million to incumbents and challengers running for Congress. In the 1998 cycle, there were only 120 leadership PACs contributing $11 million. A four-fold increase in eight years -- yet the number of traditional PACs peaked in 1988.

In the 2006 election cycle, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) raised, and spent, almost $8 million but contributed a mere $356,000 (5% of expenses) to other candidates. Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) raised $4.4 million, spent $3.7 million and contributed $595,000 (16% of expenses) to other candidates. Finally, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) raised $2.9 million, spent $3 million and contributed $297,000 (10% of expenses) to other candidates. Her PAC ended the cycle with only $31,000 on hand (like McCain, at $33,000, but not like Obama, who ended with $678,000).

That's about $15 million raised (ostensibly) to help get your party elected or re-elected to Congress. It's almost enough to have given $5,000 (the limit per campaign cycle) to every congressional (Senate and House) race. But that's not how the money seems to be spent.

According to a 2006 report in the Washington Post, one of the reasons leadership PACs are controversial is that they are so unregulated: for example, the "personal use" prohibition that applies to campaign committees is absent. Does that explain all the travel expenses in McCain's and Obama's PAC statements?

Under Federal Election Commission rules, a leadership PAC is known as a "nonconnected PAC" -- after all, it's not connected with an organization; it's associated with an elected official. The only restriction on spending is that the senator or representative cannot use the funds to directly support his or her personal campaign. Indirect support through polling or consulting? Sure.

But as we can see from looking at the campaign contribution to expenditure ratios for the three presidential candidates, not a lot of money is going to other campaign funds. It's going into travel (charters and limos), polling, direct mail, other political consultants.

PACs have been around since 1944. The FEC limits how much they can contribute per candidate per election cycle ($5,000) and how much an individual can contribute to the PAC per election cycle ($5,000).

And although PACs symbolize the problem with money and politics to many people, a 2007 report by the Congressional Quarterly noted that the PAC issue has become secondary to concerns over special interest monies through other channels (pdf). The number of PACs peaked in 1988 at 4,268. However, in 2004, incumbent members of the House received 41% of their campaign contributions from PACs, suggesting that they still have influence. In presidential elections, however, they are inconsequential.

"Should Senators Operate PACs," by UW Senior Lecturer Kathy Gill, posted Thusrsday, April 3, to blogs.uwnews.org. UW news blogs is a service of uwnews.org, the University of Washington Office of News and Information.

By Walter Williams, UW emeritus professor of public affairs, and Bryan Jones, UW professor of political science 

As the United States teeters on the verge of recession, the emerging view is that the branches of government responded with notable swiftness to enact an economic stimulus package. Glowing accounts of the striking bipartisanship came forth from the president and congressional leaders of both political parties as well as mainstream analysts.

Quick, however, is not necessarily good. The stimulus package does not come close to bringing the biggest bang for the buck, despite widespread agreement among respected economists across the political spectrum about the most effective options.

One-third of the costs go for a business tax break that cannot help, while two options rejected by the Bush Republicans -- extending the unemployment benefits and increasing food stamps -- are actually six times more effective in stimulating economic activity per dollar of costs than the costly business tax break.

Rather than see the stimulus package as a political and economic success, we see it as a mark of the continued failure of the political system to face problems and design policies directed at ameliorating them.

First, the experience with the economic stimulus package shows clearly that the federal government now lacks the capacity to cope with the massive economic problems that are pushing the nation toward second-class economic status.

Second, the source of this inability is the unshakeable ideological belief of President Bush and the Republican Party that income tax cuts are the cure-all for the nation's economic problems. This core belief led to a flawed stimulus package, a repeat of the bad logic leading to the administration's 2001 and 2003 tax cuts.

Third, the 2008 legislation has many of the same flaws as the earlier tax cuts that put the U.S. on the path toward fiscal insolvency, left the middle class in the worst financial straits in the post-World War II era, and brought the widest income inequality since the 1920s-effects we document clearly in our new book, "The Politics of Bad Ideas: The Great Tax Cut Delusion and the Decline of Good Government in America."

We watched in horror as the president and Congress traveled the same road to pass the ineffective economic stimulus package. It seems like we are seeing the movie sequel titled TAX CUT DISASTER III.

As in the first two movies, the ideological commitment to the Great Tax Cut Delusion has been buttressed by Bush's refusal to look at plain evidence of how severely the 2001 and 2003 income tax cuts damaged the fiscal balance sheet of the nation and the health of its economy. This intransigence has been aided and abetted by the continuing reluctance of the congressional Democrats to take a stand against Bush's destructive tax cuts.

A stimulus package similar to the final bill had been negotiated in the House by Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and the House Republican leader John A. Boehner of Ohio. It provided full rebates for most tax filers of $600 for individuals up to $75,000 of income, $1,200 for couples up to $150,000 and $300 per child.

Those earning at least $3,000 a year but paying no income taxes receive $300 per individual and $600 per couple. The main business tax cut allows for "accelerated depreciation."

There is widespread agreement among respected economists of different political persuasions on the impact of available options for stimulating the economy.

Mark Landi, the chief economist of Economy.com, has assessed various tax and spending changes by determining the increased economic activity per dollar of cost. The greater the increase in economic activity for each $1 of outlay, the greater will be the effectiveness.

Landi found the most effective option to be a temporary increase in food stamp benefits that yields $1.73 additional economic activity per dollar of cost. A close second is extending unemployment benefits at $1.64 in increased activity for each $1 paid to the eligible unemployed.

The director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, Peter Orszag, observed: "Food stamp and unemployment benefits can affect spending after two months, rebates would affect spending at the end of 2008." The Congressional Budget Office rated options on three criteria: cost-effectiveness, timeliness and certainty of effect. Unemployment benefits and food stamps were the only options to win CBO's highest rating as an effective stimulus in all three categories. No other option received the top rating in more than one category.

Accelerated depreciation write-offs -- the main tax cut for business in both the House and Senate --yields $0.27 in economic activity per dollar of tax cut. Thus, its impact per dollar of cost generates one-sixth as much economic activity as that of a dollar in food stamps or unemployment benefits. And the tax cuts cannot be implemented until late spring or summer at the earliest, while unemployment insurance and food stamps could have an effect almost immediately.

Democrats and Republicans made important trade offs in the House package. But the latter shaped the package both by forcing through the roughly $50 billion for business and blocking any benefits for food stamp and unemployment insurance benefits. The $50 billion for benefits to business that the Republicans demanded as the "price" for their support of the stimulus package rendered the $150 billion legislation marginally effective at best.

Senate Democrats lost in their fight for food stamps and unemployment insurance. The GOP won again in the case of a $300 payment to 20 million Social Security recipients and 250,000 disabled veterans after strong protests from the aged and veterans lobbies. The House quickly agreed to add a $300 rebate to the bill.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, sought to bluff the Republicans. He threatened to put up for vote only the Senate bill that included unemployment insurance benefits and the House legislation without the $300 rebates for Social Security recipients and disabled veterans. But he backed down and the Republicans added not only the $300 tax rebates but an amendment disqualifying illegal immigrants.

One can view the legislation as a victory over gridlock and partisan bickering. The stimulus package gained wide praise as a good bill mainly because it seemed to feature the kind of hard work and compromise by the two parties that had vanished in the Bush presidency. Yet the final legislation is an overwhelming victory for Bush's tax cut ideology over sane economic reasoning.

Why did the Republicans refuse to use the two most effective options developed by highly reputable experts? We can find no explanation in any of the usual suspects: The package was not sensibly designed to stimulate the economy, and, if politicians are held accountable for economic performance, it was not designed to help them stay in office.

In particular, Republican true believers refused to deviate from what the authors call "The Great Tax Delusion," in which tax cuts are the optimum fix for economic ills whatever the "facts on the ground."

Republican tax cut dogma rules out budget expenditures such as unemployment benefits or any other highly effective spending programs on ideological grounds alone. In contrast, the belief in the force of business incentives to stimulate investment is impervious to either economic reasoning or sound evidence showing how poorly this option works.

A September 2007 report by the major Wall Street investment firm of Goldman-Sachs made the point that companies invest money on hand if the expected returns are likely to exceed the costs of a new project, "and that usually requires growth in demand strong enough to put pressure on existing resources."

In the case at hand, it does not take training in graduate level economics, only a little common sense, to figure out that the declining demand in the current downturn makes investments unattractive even if funds are available.

Research gave the same answer. In their Federal Reserve study of the effects of the accelerated depreciation incentives initiated in 2002 and increased in 2003 to stimulate the weak economy, the researchers found "only a very limited impact" at best on new investment.

The Democrats did force the Republicans to improve the economic stimulus package somewhat, but The Great Tax Delusion still dominated the final legislation. Despite this, the economic stimulus package -- a replay of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts that warrants the label TAX CUT DISASTER III --won praise as the kind of bipartisanship needed in the federal government.

Putting the business benefits in the final legislation is the opposite of real bipartisanship. Bush intransigence and the Democrats timidity produced a bill that had none of highly effective stimulus options and wasted one-third of the total funds on business benefits shown to be ineffective by economic reasoning and research on a similar earlier effort.

The almost-uniform praise by the chattering classes and the press of a process that led to a flawed economic stimulus legislation as exemplary bipartisanship is deeply disturbing, bordering on a national delusion.

Rather than coming to praise this process, we'd like to bury it. It is just one more depressing example that the federal government lacks the will to cope with the major economic problems that threaten the United States.

For seven years, the Bush's tax cut ideology has trumped reality, harmed the nation's economy and its governing institutions, and pushed the middle class into the worst financial mess since the Great Depression.

The Great Tax Cut Delusion and its false promise of a free lunch for the American people must be cast aside as a patent medicine dangerous for the nation's health. If not, we risk speeding rapidly toward a second tier economy and a vanishing middle class.

"False Promise of Free Lunch," by UW Professors Walter Williams and Bryan Jones, posted Friday, March 21 to blogs.uwnews.org. UW news blogs is a service of uwnews.org, the University of Washington Office of News and Information.

by David Domke, professor of communication and head of journalism

A week ago, a group of University of Washington students traveled to Texas for five days to cover the "primacaucus" — a complicated combination of primary voting and caucusing that had the potential to end both the Democratic and Republican presidential contests on Tuesday, March 4. We thought it would be a grand learning experience, perhaps even a historic one. It was that and more: We saw the future of political journalism in America.

Along the way, we burned a shoe, were embraced by the Houston gay and lesbian community, went to church several times, met feminist icon Gloria Steinem and watched her words get twisted, saw the Clinton campaign literally turn things around overnight, experienced moments of mountaintop exhilaration as well as sleep-deprived exhaustion, and, on the final day, I — the professor on this wild ride — landed in the hospital, from which I am writing via wireless connection.

This is Journalism 2025. And it is good.

The trip to Texas was part of a last push of reporting on the presidential campaign for 16 students who, in recent weeks, had also covered contests in Idaho and Washington. Our forum has been a Web site called Seattlepoliticore, and we've sought to mix traditional reporting practices of verified facts and vetted sources with the kind of first-person commentary common among Internet bloggers.

When we created our site in early February, the students wondered if anyone would read it. A month later, they've posted hundreds of stories, photos, and videos on our site and also been invited to provide material to The Seattle Times, the Idaho Statesman, The Huffington Post, Crosscut, the popular "Texas on the Potomac" political blog of the Houston Chronicle, Texas' largest newspaper, and on the election section of KIRO-AM's Web site. The volume of output by the students has surpassed anything I envisioned and propelled them to become markedly better journalists.

Further, countless others began linking to Seattlepoliticore, and we found our content picked up by bloggers and traditional news outlets from New York to Miami to San Francisco to even Europe. Traffic increased so much and so fast that the site crashed twice within the span of a few days — both times engendering a mixture of unabashed joy and anxiety among the students. More than once while in Texas, the students interviewed people who said they had read things we had written, which made even their prof proud.

In today's politics and media environment, one can be part of the conversation within minutes and on a shoestring budget. We're proof of that.

For example, by the time we stepped off the plane in Texas, we were equipped with a web of contacts — aided by campaign staffers' always-on availability via cell phones and Blackberries, social networking sites such as Facebook, numerous blogs, and the online presence of news organizations. We split into teams and spent days traveling between Austin, San Antonio, Houston, Waco, and other points. The students took with them cell phones, laptops, pocket-size digital cameras, and wireless network cards (the latter have been the envy of several traditional reporters over the past month), which allowed me to talk with them roughly every few minutes, give or take a minute. I may not have been standing next to them, but I was with them every step.

One of those steps burned a hole in student Will Mari's shoe. He and two classmates were in East Austin, interviewing people at an Obama neighborhood event. While talking with the evening's burger-flipper, Obama volunteer Rudy Malveaux, Mari smelled burnt rubber. He looked down and noted that he was standing on a red-hot barbecue coal. He calmly stamped it out and kept reporting. When you've been in a van going 100 mph to get to a caucus in Idaho and now traveled across the country into the heart of Texas, you don't let a little shoe-fire stop you. But you don't disregard it entirely, either. Instead, Mari wrote it into his coverage of the event, providing a personalized, on-the-scene report that typifies journalistic blogging.

The following day, three other students headed to Houston to cover some campaign door-knocking. En route, they called a local contact (developed through a blog forum prior to arrival in state), who suggested the trio head to Montrose, a gathering place for gays and lesbians. The students found the community via GPS, walked into a coffee shop, and started asking about the locals' political leanings.

Soon they were talking with an out-of-state volunteer who was a former Montana state representative who had opposed gay rights and now was an Obama delegate living in Bellingham. Interesting stuff.

But wait, there's more: The volunteer had been Tom Lee when he lived in Montana but now identified as Rebekah Lee. For student journalists down from Seattle, this was like manna from heaven. But it also required sensitivity and top-to-bottom reporting. Time on the Internet verified some claims, and then the students went old school. They called the Montana Legislative Services Division in Helena and had the librarians fax information about the former representative. They tracked down other sources in Montana. Their initiative got them a first-rate story, which is now being picked up around the Web.

The students talked to so many people in Montrose — what the locals called "the gayborhood" — that by the time they left, they were honorary members: The coffee shop packed them food for the road, and there were hugs all around.

For good or for bad, this wasn't detached, objective reporting. But the end result was journalism featured in the mainstream San Francisco Chronicle's blog and alternative outlet The Advocate. Hitting the sweet spot of both is unusual these days but will be common in tomorrow's political journalism.

Hoping to feel similar Houston love, five other students spent Sunday morning, March 2, in church there. Actually, it was multiple churches. Some went to Joel Osteen's mammoth Lakewood Church — just missing Bill and Chelsea Clinton, who had come unannounced to an earlier service. Some went to hear Republican Party candidate Mike Huckabee at a nearby church, and yet others went to Antioch Missionary Baptist Church, a predominantly African-American congregation. The Houston Chronicle featured two of these pieces (here and here; the third is here), and its Washington, D.C., bureau chief, Richard Dunham, told me, "I think you have more people covering the primary than we do." That's what's possible in a new-media environment in which institutions are no longer as important as initiative, and costs are lower than ever.

Meanwhile, in Austin, a contact tipped us off that Gloria Steinem would be speaking, without fanfare, at a local eatery. Two of the students joined a word-of-mouth crowd of 200 or so. Both students took the cue and wrote about it in introspective terms (here and here).

The institutional press took an entirely different approach: It focused on a couple sentences and then offered a misreading of them.

Specifically, the only other reporter (apparently) in the room, from The New York Observer, reported that Steinem had said, "Suppose John McCain had been Joan McCain and Joan McCain had got captured, shot down and been a POW for eight years. [The media would ask], 'What did you do wrong to get captured? What terrible things did you do while you were there as a captive for eight years?'" The words were correct, but the headline over-reached and triggered a firestorm in which Steinem — and by extension the Clinton campaign — was portrayed as mocking McCain's military history.

But then one of the UW students in attendance, Devon Mills, found something interesting when unpacking her gear upon return to Seattle. She had shot three minutes of video during Steinem's address — and she just happened to catch the pivotal words. When she watched the video, she saw that media and pundits had badly misread Steinem's comments. I agreed. So we jointly posted a piece on Seattlepoliticore in which we do what online journalism and bloggers uniquely do: offer a forum in which anyone, anytime, from almost anywhere, can correct the public record. Don't believe us? Fine. Read what we say, watch the video, and join the conversation. That's the future of political journalism.

It's a dynamic that the Clinton campaign has seemingly come to realize, late but perhaps just soon enough. For almost a month, across Idaho and Washington, the campaign's on-the-ground staffers had kept Seattlepoliticore's student journalists at arm's length. Never dismissive, just not welcoming. In contrast, the Obama campaign and the Republican candidates took our phone calls, returned our e-mails, invited us to see their shops. It was a potent contrast that I wrote about on Crosscut. When we did our advance mapping of contacts in Texas, the pattern remained. And on day one, when we were on the ground in the state, the story was the same. But then, just before we wrote the "They Simply Don't Get It" story, the Clinton campaign got it.

On Friday morning, Feb. 29, the Clinton campaign headquarters in Austin had no time for the students, while the Obama office fed us local story angles. But that evening, at dueling rallies in San Antonio, the Clinton campaign treated us with the same respect and access as the Obama camp. The following morning, staffers at the Clinton H.Q. in Austin greeted the students warmly, invited them in, introduced them to people who came through the doors, fed them story ideas, fed them literally, and invited us to see the campaign through their eyes. The shift in posture toward us was astounding — and it stayed like that through the March 4 voting.

Something profound had changed. Perhaps it was a genuine change of heart, a sense of optimism in the campaign's progress against Obama, a renewed energy, a belief that Tuesday really was Hillary's last stand, or a recognition that how one treats the press actually shapes how the press covers the candidate. Regardless, if it continues, I think it's a shift that opens up possibilities for Clinton's candidacy that were unthinkable just a few weeks ago. And it also points to the realities of the new media landscape.

Everyone who walks through the door today is a journalist. She or he might not be driving a news van or carrying a shoulder camera and, indeed, is far more likely to carry a MacBook than a reporter's notebook. It is unlikely to be someone who is 60, white, and male; instead we will see a rainbow of ethnicity, gender, age, and sexual orientation. Video storytelling will be as important as — perhaps more than — written words. Digital media are the new printing press. They allow people to tell stories 24/7/365.

That's what I'm doing as I write this in a hospital room in Austin, which is where I arrived on the morning of March 4 after realizing I had contracted a nasty-but-treatable bacterial infection in my leg. From my hospital bed, with my trusty cell phone and laptop, I went to work with my students covering the day's primacaucus. They were out talking to people, and I was not standing next to them, but I was with them every step. This piece is dedicated to them. They have boldly brought this 40-year-old, old-school reporter into the 21st century of political journalism. The future belongs to the fearless.

"High Tex: A new generation covers the campaign its own way," by UW Professor David Domke, posted Monday, March 10 to blogs.uwnews.org. UW news blogs is a service of uwnews.org, the University of Washington Office of News and Information.

by David Domke, professor of communication and head of journalism and Kevin Coe, doctoral student at the University of Illinois    

On Tuesday, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee finally gave up on his bid to win the GOP presidential nomination. Let us be among the first to say good riddance.

Huckabee’s long-shot campaign should be remembered for what it was at its core: an unprecedented and dangerous implementation of “the God strategy.” Again and again, Huckabee showed he was willing, even eager, to use religious faith as a political weapon.

Early in the campaign, Huckabee mobilized supporters in Iowa by running an ad touting himself as a “Christian leader” and saying “faith doesn’t just influence me, it really defines me.” The implied contrast to Mitt Romney, a Mormon, was hardly subtle.

Then, as he gained ground on Romney, Huckabee ducked and dodged when reporters asked if he thought Mormonism was a religion or a cult. He eventually affirmed in a New York Times story that Mormonism was indeed a religion—the one that “believe[s] that Jesus and the devil are brothers,” right? Huckabee apologized to Romney for the remark, but the desired damage was done.

So distasteful were Huckabee’s tactics that several prominent commentators, even some within the conservative fold, voiced criticism. Peggy Noonan questioned whether Ronald Reagan could survive the de facto religious test being imposed on candidates, and Charles Krauthammer correctly labeled Huckabee’s “exploitation of religious differences for political gain” as “un-American.”

Perhaps Huckabee just couldn’t help himself; maybe he truly believed that he was an agent of God. When he finally gained ground in the polls, after struggling for the first several months of the campaign, he suggested his rise was due to divine intervention:

“There’s only one explanation for it, and it’s not a human one. It’s the same power that helped a little boy with two fish and five loaves feed a crowd of five thousand people.”

Even as his hopes of winning the nomination dimmed, Huckabee kept the faith. In February he told the Conservative Political Action Conference that he would continue his campaign, saying: “I didn’t major in math, I majored in miracles, and I still believe in them.”

There is an uncomfortable and all too familiar arrogance in a politician who believes that God is on his side. In a world where millions are denied sovereignty, where poverty and disease are widespread, where people regularly kill each other because of their differing religious views, one would like to think that God has more important things to worry about than getting out the Huckabee vote.

Huckabee’s insistence on making his run for the presidency a faith-based crusade was all the more disquieting because of its implications for policy. In January, Huckabee called for the U.S. Constitution to be changed to conform to his own religious views:

“[Some of my opponents] do not want to change the Constitution, but I believe it’s a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God, and that’s what we need to do is to amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards.”

Altering the Constitution based on one narrow interpretation of the Bible is, of course, exactly what the Founding Fathers sought to avoid.

And, after all of this—after doing absolutely everything possible to make religion the centerpiece of his campaign—Huckabee still had the gall to criticize those few journalists who actually scrutinized what his religious views might mean to his presidency. In February, he had this to say to the Christian Science Monitor:

“There has been an attempt to ghettoize me for a very small part of my biography. The last time I was in the pulpit was 1991.”

Last in the pulpit in 1991; last in a political campaign in 2008. God willing, it will stay that way—for the good of faith and the good of the American experiment in democracy.

By Bryan Jones, UW professor of political science

Back again is that successful Seattle company, Washington Mutual.  I noted here not long ago that WaMu paid its executives bonuses even though they lost almost two-thirds of the company's value (assessed by its stock price) during the year.  Today a Wall Street Journal article reports that the company has devised a new strategy for giving its executives bonuses that holds them harmless for losses involving the bad mortgage loans they authorized. 

Socialism for the rich, free enterprise for the poor....

By Kathy Gill, UW senior lecturer in the Master of Communication in Digital Media Program

Super-Delegate System By Design
If I were an elected Democrat -- governor or other statewide officer, senator or representative -- I'm not sure what I'd make of the current nomination competition between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

But I'm pretty darn sure that this contest is almost exactly what the Democratic Party leadership was thinking of when it established the super delegate system in 1984. The Party had come off of bruising battles, internally (1968, Humphrey v McCarthy; 1980, Carter v Kennedy) and in the general election (1972, McGovern v Nixon), and had survived the nomination of a little-known-outsider (1976, Carter v Ford).

The super-delegate system was designed so that party leaders -- those people with Democrat beside their elected name -- would have some control (not as much as initially proposed) over the nominee that they would be supporting by virtue their being in the same party. Their only other option would be to quit the party (a la former vice presidential candidate Joe Lieberman, D-CT).

Most media reports aren't providing any context or explanation for the super-delegate system. And fewer yet note the differences in the Democratic party proportional allocation of delegates and the Republican winner-take-all system (in most states). By the way, if the Ds used those ("un-democratic") rules, Obama would have the nomination wrapped up.

1984 versus 2008
After the 1980 battle, congressmen, stung by the lack of impact they had been able to have on the 1980 process, and fearing that 1984 would be a repeat, banded together to ask that 2/3 of the Democratic members of the House be elected by the House Caucus as uncommitted voting delegates to the 1984 Convention." (emphasis added)

However, in the current contest, independent and first-time voters are overshadowing Democratic party regulars, at least at the state level. For example, in the Wisconsin primary, first-timers and independents accounted for an astounding 40 percent of those voting in the Democratic contest.

This phenomenon is being touted as "democratic" -- and to the extent that it means more voters participate in the nomination process, that may be true. But it is disenfranchising to those who were party members and leaders before 2008, and it was an unintended consequence of the first reforms in 1968. The use of the "democratic" label reflects general election values (open to all). How many non-political organizations would let just anyone walk in the door and vote on important organization issues? This is why some state parties (Florida's Republicans, for example) require party affiliation long-before the primary.

A Little Democratic Party History : 1968
For those not alive in 1968 -- or those of us who, by virtue of age or interest, don't remember,here we go: back 40 years, to the 1968 convention. Remember, 1968 was marked by the assassination of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy. The Vietnam War was dividing the country, and war protesters fought Chicago police in the streets outside the national convention. Images of the fighting were broadcast into the nation's living rooms.

The two main contenders were Vice President Hubert Humphrey and Sen. Eugene McCarthy (D-WI). McCarthy,the anti-war candidate, had the better grassroots organization and had challenged then-President Johnson in the New Hampshire primary. (McCarthy took 40+ percent of the vote; Johnson later pulled out of the race. This is the first race where primaries were pivotal.) Humphrey had the support of established party leaders and his Vietnam policy mirrored that of Johnson. He won the nomination on the first ballot but lost to Nixon in the general election.

If you don't see the parallels between McCarthy and Obama -- an the primary vote in Wisconsin -- I don't know how I can draw you a better picture.

McGovern Leads Reform Effort
One legacy of the convention: an overhaul of how delegates are selected. The McGovern-Fraser Commission (Commission on Party Structure and Delegate Selection) was charged with recommending how to improve delegate representation for minorities.

Among the recommendations: "registered (emphasis added) Democratic voters should have 'the maximum feasible opportunity to participate in the delegate selection process'." In addition, the Commission recommended that women and minorities be better represented in the delegate mix and that state delegate allocation would be based on a combination of population (the congressional districts) and the Democratic vote in the prior Presidential election (rewarding states that voted Democratic).

The Commission effected change: in 1968, only 13 percent of the delegates were women but in 1972 they added up to 40 percent. Some of those women had defected from the Republican Party.

Perhaps it's not surprising (I feel jaded tonight) that McGovern (SD) would win the 1972 nomination after he led the rules change. Washington's Henry M. (Scoop) Jackson was a distant second. The 1968 election (McGovern v. Richard Nixon) was one of the biggest landslides for Republicans in the 20th century. Nixon carried 49 of the 50 states (but only 60% of the vote).

One unanticipated outcome of the rules change was that states began to shift from the caucus system to the primary system. Open primaries further diluted the influence of party regulars. Another change was a shift from pragmatism (party leaders pick a candidate who might win) to popularity. In 2003, Mark Stricherz wrote this for the Boston Globe:

A final effect of the McGovern commission was to change the rationale of the party's presidential nomination process. The old boss system focused on selecting candidates who would win. As John Bailey, DNC chairman from 1961 to 1968, often said, "I go with the bird that can fly, not with the pigeon that can't get off the ground." But the new primary-based system ends up producing candidates who appeal not only to primary voters but also to various ideological interest groups, not to mention the TV camera.

Flash Forward to 1984
In 1980, Kennedy (MA) challenged incumbent Democratic president Jimmy Carter (GA). The convention battle was nasty, as the Kennedy camp tried to convince Carter's delegates to ignore "Rule 11 (H) that bound delegates to support the candidate in whose name they were elected." The rule was subsequently changed, and this is still the 2008 language: "Delegates elected to the national convention pledged to a presidential candidate shall in all good conscience reflect the sentiments of those who elected them." (emphasis added)

Elected Democrats -- especially those in the House of Representatives -- were concerned about the selection process. Congressman Gillis Long, Chairman of the House Democratic Caucus told the Hunt Commission:

We in the House, as the last vestige of Democratic control at the national level, believe we have a special responsibility to develop new innovative approaches that respond to our Party’s constituencies.

Gov. Hunt (NC) was one of those who felt party leaders should be allowed to exercise independent judgment:

An equally important step would be to permit a substantial number of party leader and elected official delegates to be selected without requiring a prior declaration of preference. We would then return a measure of decision-making power and discretion to the organized party and increase the incentive it has to offer elected officials for serious involvement. (emphasis added)

Who opposed the super-delegate system? Feminists, because they believed super-delegates would be inordinately white and male,and supporters of Kennedy, because the super-delegate system would favor Vice President Mondale.

Rep. Geraldine Ferraro (NY) brokered the compromise: she cut the number of super delegates in half and "left selection of the Congressional delegates in the hands of the House and Senate Democratic caucuses." Today, the congressional caucuses do not select all the superdelegates, but all are or were elected Democratic officials. In the 2008 contest, there are 3,253 delegates and about 796 super-delegates; 2,026 delegates are needed to win.

Whew! There you have it -- 40 years in a nutshell. I feel like a minority voice, but not only do I understand the rationale for the super delegate system, I don't think it's a bad thing. I agree with Gov. Hunt, and I don't think the super delegates have an undue amount of power. I do, however, dislike the candidate and media pressure on super delegates to declare early.

 by David Domke, professor of communication and head of journalism

Editor's note: David Domke,a UW communication professor and head of journalism, is teaching "Online Journalism and Politics" to a group of undergraduates. Read below about their experiences, and check out their work at http://seattlepoliticore.org

Journalists love to write about the rise and fall of politicians in America. The scribes watch candidates get built up, then chronicle them getting torn down. And, as often as not, journalists don’t just write these storylines — they contribute to them and cement them as well.

Hillary Clinton’s presidential aspirations today are in descent mode — or at least they seem to be so — and news media post-mortems for her campaign are getting churned out faster than newspaper copies. It was Bill’s fault. It was the lack of planning for a post-Super Tuesday campaign. It was poor allocation of campaign funds. Hillary was too wonky, not enough Bubba. The campaign couldn’t match the grass-roots prowess of Obama’s organization.

My students saw some of these elements up close and personal.

SeattlePoliticore.org
Since early January, a team of 16 journalism students at the University of Washington have been covering the 2008 presidential campaign. We’ve gone new media, adopting a mode of blogging that combines traditional reporting, insights from other news outlets, and first-person commentary. It’s somewhere between the voice of the Seattle Times’ David Postman and the rancor of the blogosphere: part journalism, part pundit, part political-newbies. Altogether, we have presented the campaign through youthful eyes. I’m the students’ prof and head of journalism at the UW.

Our forum has been http://www.seattlepoliticore.org, and our material has gotten play at huffingtonpost, the Seattle Times, the Idaho Statesman, and a number of blogs for which my students write. We’ve covered Democratic Party caucuses in Idaho — the state’s Republicans don’t use this method to select delegates — and the caucuses and primaries of both parties around King County, including Seattle proper and the Eastside. Later this week we head to Texas for our grand finale: coverage of the March 4 primary and caucuses (yes, Texas has both too, challenging Washington’s delegate process for most-screwed-up status). It just might be the last big contest for all of the campaigns.

It’s been a powerful experience, both as students and citizens.

We spent two hours stuck at Snoqualmie Pass working via cell phones and wireless network cards, and then sped to Couer d’ Alene to see Northern Idahoans brave ice and freezing weather to give Barack Obama 80 percent of their caucus votes. We were barred from entering the Republican caucus in the 37^th Legislative District in Rainier Beach — until the Seattle City Library and a sheriff’s deputy intervened — and scored an on-camera interview with governor Christine Gregoire at a Democratic caucus in Magnolia. We saw Mercer Island and Sammamish Dems and Repubs conduct themselves with calm and citizen pride.

And along the way we learned some important things about the Obama and Clinton campaigns. We didn’t set out to learn these pieces — but the campaigns taught us loud and clear.

The Worth of Youth
In our coverage of the Idaho and Washington state caucuses, there emerged a lean toward Obama in my students’ writing about the Democratic contest. This pro-Obama frame occurred for three reasons:

• because some of the students have serious political crushes on him, even though they’ve tried to keep all this in check. He inspires them — and I haven’t sought to squelch this, being a prof interested in helping students become citizens.
• because the class is set up as a blogging class, in which politics meets alternative journalism. So their opinion shines through in places, and this was fine as long as they didn’t cross over into fan mail.
• because the Obama campaign treated us like pros — they called us back within minutes, set up interviews, got us press passes, went out of their way to make the campaign accessible. The Clinton campaign, in contrast, didn’t return a single phone call, didn’t provide press access, and did virtually nothing to encourage our coverage. It was either arrogance or disorganization on the Clinton campaign’s part.

Here’s one example: Jeff Giertz, the Obama team’s on-the-ground point person for the press, answered my phone call when I called to ask about press access to the Obama event on February 8 at Key Arena. He said he’d check on getting passes for my students. I figured I’d wait and see if he actually did.  Within 5 minutes he emailed me back saying it was a go, and he could provide four press passes for my students.  I was impressed.  Clearly he had a vested interest in getting college students into the press area — and he did what a campaign person should do: he treated us well and welcomed us to his candidate. He told me to call him anytime.

So I did.

Lots of my students wanted to cover this event, so I called Giertz back 6 hours later and asked for four more passes.  He said yes. The next day when some of my students arrived at Key Arena after the local police had locked the doors and weren’t allowing anyone in — including reporters from local TV and radio outlets — the students dialed up Giertz and he personally came and vouched for them. He followed up the day after the event with an email checking in on how I thought things went. I don’t for a moment think he did all this just to be a nice guy; he had motives.  Of course. 

Still, it’s telling that I made the exact same pitch about “access to college students” to the Clinton campaign, and they didn’t do anything to facilitate our coverage.  Here’s the voice of one of my students, Jennifer Ware:

I noticed a difference between Obama and Clinton when I first started calling their campaigns in the week before the caucuses. At that point Washington state seemed like an afterthought for the Clinton campaign. Hillary wasn’t anywhere to be found in Seattle, but Obama had a campaign office in the heart of Pioneer Square. He had for months, and everyone there seemed more than happy to help.

When I called the Clinton campaign to ask for a contact at their Washington state campaign office, one staffer tried to tell me that Washington was where their campaign headquarters is. “Yes” she said, “Washington, it’s right next to Virginia.”

Obama had the foresight to know he might need Washington state, whereas Clinton apparently never thought she’d have to reach this far. And a tiny part of me felt excluded.

Every single person I’ve dealt with from the Obama campaign was upbeat, positive and helpful. Even when the press couldn’t initially get into the venue on Friday for Obama’s speech, and a reporter from the Seattle Times was yelling at one of the volunteers, she handled it with poise and kindness. It was almost so good it looked staged, but she was real. She said, “I’m just a volunteer from Shoreline, I’ve never done this before, please bear with me.” Even as Obama volunteers managed mobs of people at Key Arena, they did it with purpose, not burden.

And I think it’s because they feel part of a movement.

John McCain spoke in Seattle [the same day] to about 500 people at the Westin Hotel’s conference room. Clinton spoke to a gathering of 5000 at a waterfront pier [on February 7]. Obama spoke at Key Arena, home to the Seattle Supersonics, it seats 18,000 and it wasn’t nearly big enough. People were sitting on the stairs, in the aisles. Seasoned reporters were smiling and nodding softly as he spoke. Some people had tears in their eyes when he came on stage. There’s all kinds of spin out there, but you simply can’t spin those numbers. Or the stark contrast to the others in the race.

When my students had trouble reaching the Clinton campaign in the run-up to the caucuses, I made a call to her national office. I figured that maybe they’d respond to a UW professor better than a student — which would be an error on their part, but still one that we might use to help our coverage.  I told them we were having trouble reaching people — anyone — on the ground in WA state with the Clinton campaign, and I implored them to make sure my request on behalf of my students for press access to Clinton’s event in Seattle received a response.  They assured me I’d hear from them. I emphasized my point a second time.  They kindly repeated that I would certainly hear from people on the ground here.

I’m still waiting for that call.

The Obama and Clinton campaigns weren’t the only ones to come to town. On the Republican Party side, Ron Paul held a rally on the UW campus. Janet Huckabee held a rally at Northwest College and her campaign team reached out to my students covering her husband’s candidacy — returning calls and making sure they had press access. McCain’s campaign aides went out of their way to let my students know about his press event at the Westin, and to get them in. For those scoring at home, five presidential campaigns came to town — and four reached out to my students, treating them like what they are: journalists and citizens.

It seems that the take-home point here is this: the Clinton campaign has made the case that Obama is nothing but rhetoric; he’s supposedly all words, while she’s all action. Our experiences showed us that their campaigns — at least in Seattle — were exactly the opposite. In their treatment of my students, Clinton’s campaign was all talk, while Obama’s was all walk.

It suggests to me that the Obama campaign’s appeal to younger people is not just because of Obama himself. It’s a campaign that treats young people like full adults. As a college prof, I’ve got to give them props. They got my attention — and my students, and the many young people who have been reading our website. And across Washington state, Obama crushed Clinton, defeating her in every county in the state. It’s been a pattern repeated in every contest since.

By Michael K. Honey, Haley Professor of Humanities

Northern Illinois University is my alma mater. That's where I got my PhD, and the buildings shown on the news are my old haunts. NIU is a small, almost intimate campus, with the main buildings in a cluster. My niece just went there to do research at the library for her PhD. DeKalb is a semi-rural, almost quaint town, built as the railroads moved west. The flying ear of corn along the roadside signals the hybrid DeKalb corn, and maybe some of you have seen that in the Midwest farm country. It is horrifying and deeply saddening that another college massacre would occur here. On April 8, 1968, after Martin Luther King was shot in Memphis, his widow, Coretta Scott King, wondered how long "before we can have a free and true and peaceful society...how long will it take?"

by Michael Honey, UW Tacoma professor of history and labor studies

Editor's note:  Julian Bond, long-time leader in the American civil rights movement, spoke at several University of Washington gatherings on Feb. 6.

I remember Julian Bond first of all as that eloquent advocate of the politics of hope elected to the Georgia House of Representatives in 1965. He and his comrades in the Student Nonviolence Coordinating Committee had begun breaking down white supremacy by putting their bodies on the line. Because of his outspoken opposition to the Vietnam war, Bond's constituents had to elect him three times before whites in the legislature would let him take his seat. It was SNCC that started the refrain, “Hell no, we won’t go.”

My long-time progressive Seattle friend, Lyle Mercer, reminded me last night that the Washington legislature refused to seat someone in the 1930s because they suspected him of being a Communist. Likewise, the schools and various employers refused to hire Lyle because he had been the co-chair of the UW students for Wallace during the Progressive Party effort of 1948. Radicals always have a hard way to go.

Julian Bond served 20 years in the legislature, was nominated for Vice-President in 1968, and has been a voice speaking truth to power most of my adult life. I think of him as a truth-telling, pragmatic radical, always looking for and finding some path to change. At his UW talk, he inveighed against the Republican Supreme Court which has shattered our commitment to desegregation and the 14^th Amendment by claiming that all operations of government must be color blind. “The ludicrous has become law,” he said. “There are no non-racial remedies to racial discrimination.”

In 1968, the Kerner Commission told us we are evolving into two societies, “one white, and one black, separate and unequal.” Things in some ways have gotten so much better, but most whites still don’t understand that due to the heritage of slavery and segregation, white privilege still counts, it is inherited whether you want it or not. Hence, “as long as race counts, we’ve got to count race,” Bond said.

He cited a litany of ways in which the life chances of the majority of African Americans have shrunk under the Bush regime, at the same time as new paths to prosperity have opened up to a significant group of better-educated African Americans. And while we spend $720 million a day for a fiasco in Iraq, poverty rises in America to the highest level in the developed world. In this dichotomous world, the future is one of both promise and peril, Bond said.

By 2050, Hispanics and African Americans will make up 40 percent of the U.S. electorate. In that context, we can all benefit from the movement’s combination of tactics, from litigation, organization, mobilization. The future is about what all and each of us will and can do to make a better world.

Bond gave a similar message to a group of about 50 graduate students earlier in the day, convened by the Graduate Opportunities and Achievement Program, or GOMAP, under the always delightful and able organizing of Yvette Moy.  James Banks, Nikhil Singh, the students and I joined in an earnest conversation about the future, and we found much to be hopeful about.

Should the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People change its name? When we say colored people, said Bond, we take into account that all people are colored, in our various hues, and that all people of good will are welcome. Everyone can do something, make some choice, to give hope. Yes, we can join together to dig out of the horrific, disastrous mess created in the last seven years by a fundamentally dishonest, militaristic, and wrong-headed regime.

He also said one problem we have is we are falling back on leaders, but what we need in addition is organizers, and mass movements. "Engage your body in social change."

It was a good message to hear in a year when it seems, at last, there may be something to be hopeful about in taking the national political apparatus back from extremist reactionaries who would like to turn government into a profit-making enterprise for their friends, and leave the rest of us to fend for ourselves.

Fittingly, Bond ended his public lecture with a grand quote from the Socialist Party labor advocate, Eugene Debs, imprisoned for refusing to support World War I. On the eve of political primaries and caucuses, Julian Bond gave us a moment to savor a few words of reflection from one of the masters of don’t-give-up, stay-in-the-fight, be-pragmatic, but-don’t-lose-your faith exponents of hope. It reminded me of the best ideals this country has to offer, which come deeply from the history of our own struggles for freedom.

by Christopher Parker, UW assistant professor of political science

Last week, the Chairman of the NAACP, Julian Bond, was on campus. He was here to discuss Dr. Martin Luther King’s legacy: where do we go from here? A founding member of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC),Bond served as its communications director from 1961 to 1966. SNCC, as the student-based arm of the civil rights movement, was instrumental to the success of desegregation in the South, fashioning sit-ins and freedom rides to contest Jim Crow laws.

Later, through voter registration drives, SNCC helped black southerners gain access to the ballot. Bond was so committed to the movement, and his post at SNCC, that he  took temporary leave from his studies at Morehouse College, where he majored in English, to devote more time to the freedom struggle.

Save for a select few who remain with us, with 48 years in the struggle and counting, there isn’t anyone more qualified comment on Dr. King’s legacy than Dr. Bond. He laments that the freedom struggle’s lost the “organizing tradition.” For him, it means engaging people, “going door-to-door…protesting, not just speech-making.” Having said that, he likes what he sees with Barack Obama’s campaign, the ways in which it’s inspired people—especially the young. Yet he wonders whether or not folks will remain engaged after the general election, especially if they don’t agree with the result.

In the final analysis, he seemed cautiously optimistic about what an Obama presidency would do for the country. From what I was able to glean, his words conveyed a sense that Obama has tapped into something, something unseen since the SNCC-sponsored events of 1964. Freedom Summer, an event designed to raise the consciousness of white student volunteers from non-southern states while teaching black southerners how to pass the “literacy exams” required for blacks to vote, brought blacks and whites together for a common cause: realizing the promise of American democracy. An Obama presidency, needless to say, offers the same allure, signaling that we, as a country, may have arrived.

by David Domke, UW professor of communication and head of journalism

Editor's note: David Domke, UW communication professor and head of journalism, is teaching "Online Journalism and Politics" to a group of undergraduates.

They're blogging at seattlepoliticore.org, but he's also blogged at dailykos.com, billed as a progressive community blog. Here's his Daily Kos posting from Saturday evening after the Washington state caucuses:

This is how a team of 16 students at the University of Washington saw Democratic and Republican caucuses around King County on Saturday.  King County includes heavily-blue Seattle and the purple Eastside of Lake Washington, which includes Microsoft-dominated Redmond.

We liveblogged the Seattle-area caucuses at seattlepoliticore.org. I'm the students' prof and head of journalism at the UW. The site's content is part journalism, part pundit, part political-newbies. Altogether, the site presents these caucuses through youthful eyes.

Along the way we learned something important about the Obama and Clinton campaigns. We didn't set out to learn this -- but the campaigns taught us loud and clear.

Know this when looking at the site: there is a lean toward Obama in the coverage. This occurred for three reasons:

1. because the students have serious crushes on him, even though they've tried to keep all this in check. 

1. because the class is set up as a blogging class, in which politics meets alternative journalism. So their opinion shines through in places.

1. because the Obama campaign treated us like pros -- they called us back within minutes, set up interviews, got us press passes, went out of their way to make the campaign accessible. The Clinton campaign, in contrast, didn't return a single phone call, didn't provide press access, and did virtually nothing to encourage our coverage. It was either arrogance or disorganization on the Clinton camapign's part.

Here's one example: Jeff Giertz, the Obama team's on-the-ground point person for the press, answered my phone call when I called to ask about press access to the Obama event Friday at Key Arena. He said he'd check on getting passes for my students. I figured I'd wait and see if he actually did.  Within 5 minutes he emailed me back saying it was a go, and he could provide 4 press passes for my students.  I was impressed.  Clearly he had a vested interest in getting college students into the press area -- and he did what a campaign person should do: he treated us well and welcomed us to his candidate. He told me to call him anytime.

So I did.

I called back 6 hours later and asked for 4 more passes.  He said yes. The next day when some of my students arrived at Key Arena after the local police had locked the doors and weren't allowing anyone in, the students called Giertz and he personally came and vouched for them. He followed up today with an email checking in on how things went, from my perspective. I don't for a moment think he's doing all this just to be a nice guy; he's got motives.  Of course. 

Still, it's telling that I made the exact same pitch about "access to college students" to the Clinton campaign, and they didn't do anything to facilitate our coverage.  When I talked to the press folks at the national office, I told them we were having trouble reaching people -- anyone -- on the ground in WA state with the Clinton campaign, and I implored them to make sure my request on behalf of my students for press access to Clinton's event Thursday night in Seattle received a response.  They assured me I'd hear from them.

I'm still waiting for that call.

My point here is this: the Obama campaign's appeal to younger people is not just because of Obama himself. It's a campaign that treats young people like full adults. As a college prof, I've got to give them props. They got my attention -- and my students, and the many young people who have been reading our website. And tonight, across Washington state, Obama is crushing Clinton, 68-31 with 96% of caucus precincts reporting.

UPDATE: On the recommended list???  You just gave my students another reason to think politics and their voices aren't a waste of time. Thank you.

Here's the voice of one of my students.  A couple weeks ago she wrote this. This morning she sent me these thoughts:

I noticed a difference between Obama and Clinton when I first started my project calling their campaigns. At that point Washington state seemed like an afterthought for the Clinton campaign. Hillary wasn't anywhere to be found in Seattle, but Obama had a campaign office in the heart of Pioneer Square, a Seattle centerplace. He had for months, and everyone there seemed more than happy to help.

When I called the Clinton campaign to ask for a contact at their Washington state campaign office, one staffer tried to tell me that Washington was where their campaign headquarters is. "Yes" she said, "Washington, it's right next to Virginia."

Obama had the foresight to know he might need Washington state, whereas Clinton never thought she'd have to reach this far. And a tiny part of me felt excluded.

Every single person I've dealt with from the Obama campaign has been upbeat, positive and helpful. Even when the press couldn't initially get into the venue on Friday for Obama's speech, and a reporter from the Seattle Times was yelling at one of the volunteers, she handled it with poise and kindness. It was almost so good it looked staged, but she was real. She said, "I'm just a volunteer from Shoreline, I've never done this before, please bear with me." Even as Obama volunteers managed mobs of people at Key Arena, they did it with purpose, not burden.

And I think it's because they feel part of a movement.

John McCain spoke in Seattle to about 50 500 people at the Westin Hotel's conference room. Clinton spoke to a gathering of 5000 at a waterfront pier. Obama spoke at Key Arena, home to the Seattle Supersonics, it seats 18,000 and it wasn't nearly big enough. People were sitting on the stairs, in the aisles. Seasoned reporters were smiling and nodding softly as he spoke. Some people had tears in their eyes when he came on stage. There's all kinds of spin out there, but you simply can't spin those numbers. Or the stark contrast to the others in the race.

And here's the voice of another student in my class, from a comment in this diary thread:

If [the Clinton campaign] cared, they could have done more...  Read my diary I wrote this morning. After covering the Obama press conference that morning, we rushed to Key Arena, but the doors were already closed. The police would not let us in, however one call to Jeff from the Obama campaign, and not only did we get in, but he personally came out and got us.  Hillary's campaign didn't even give us the chance. If she care[s] about youth, she could have done something...anything...seriously, anything...

by mrsellers on Sun Feb 10, 2008 at 01:21:01 AM PST

One other thing, to be fair to all in this race: there were three other campaigns that came to Seattle this past week -- all on the Republican side. Ron Paul held a rally on the UW campus. Janet Huckabee held a rally at Northwest College and her campaign team reached out to my students covering her husband's candidacy. McCain's campaign aides went out of their way to let my students know about a press event, and to get them in.

To summarize, then: 5 campaigns came to town -- and 4 reached out to my students. I applaud those that did, and scratch my head over the one that didn't.

By John Gastil, UW professor of communication

This Saturday, February 9, Washington voters will participate in Democratic and Republican caucuses to select delegates in each party’s Presidential election. The caucuses have potential to be a remarkable campaign event, in which people meet fellow citizens—neighbors, even—face-to-face to discuss the candidates and issues of the moment. It's a lively scene.

The only problem is, it’s deceptive.

The truth is that the caucus is just a complicated method of head-counting. At best, caucuses are a ritualistic exercise in counting where people’s shoes end up on a gym floor. At worst, they can devolve into shouting and intimidation competitions, as they did at times in Nevada.

The image of a reflective, careful electorate is as false for a caucus as for a primary. The dominant narrative in the Democratic election is “change” (Obama) versus “experience” (Clinton), despite the fact that either candidate would be a radical change, and both have only a modest amount of experience in government.

More striking is that younger voters and African-Americans are flocking to Obama while older voters and women are lining up for Clinton, suggesting more of a demographic-matching process than careful deliberation.

On the Republican side, the press have declared McCain the Republican nominee well in advance of his likely triumph, a fact that incensed Huckabee, who amusingly pled his case once again on the Feb. 7  edition of Colbert Report.

The dominant explanation for McCain’s reemergence as the frontrunner is the alleged recent “success” of the war in Iraq, which McCain had supported even when it was unpopular; this supposedly helped him win over the voters of New Hampshire one at a time. That sounds like a reasoning electorate, but McCain only had a narrow 5-point victory over Romney in the Granite State, with only 37% of the vote. Were the other two-thirds of Republican voters unreasonable? Moreover, does this make the Iowa caucusers irrational for backing Huckbee five days earlier?

All these explanations strike me as tortured, overwrought attempts to rationalize an electoral process that is anything but deliberative. This is the essence of the argument I make in my new book, Political Communication and Deliberation. 

I show some of the ways civic reformers are trying to change the way we hold public meetings. They're working for a new kind of community politics, journalism, and governance that encourage public deliberation. Groups like the November 5th Coalition promote a real kind of deliberation—not the sham deliberation that the caucuses represent.

To be clear, I consider it one’s civic duty to participate in elections. I will be among those  citizens trudging to the caucus on Saturday, in spite of a persistent flu, which I hope none of my fellow partisans catch. However, my being there makes me part of a very, very small percentage of Washington voters who will participate—roughly one-tenth as many can be expected to vote in a primary.

The caucus, particularly the Iowa Caucus, has built up a kind of credibility and “specialness” as a remarkable democratic (little “d”) event. Imagine a process where citizens carefully study their candidates then come together to compare one another’s choices. Imagine opposing partisan camps having the chance to make their case for their preferred candidate, hoping to woo both their counterparts and the clutch of still-undecided or independent-minded citizens who stand between them. I ask us to imagine the deliberation that could take place at these events because it is precisely that—imaginary.

So if you live in Washington, by all means attend the Democratic or Republican caucus. But attend expecting to stand around, tap into some party energy, and maybe bond with your like-minded partisans. Don’t go there expecting an education in democratic deliberation, or you’ll walk away disappointed.

By David Domke, UW professor of communication and head of Journalism

In winning contests in 13 states on Super Tuesday, Democratic Party presidential candidate Barack Obama displayed his ability to draw voters from all corners of America. Most notably, perhaps, he beat primary competitor Hillary Clinton in a large number of states that have tilted Republican in recent decades.

Such successes are intriguing for any Democratic candidate running for president. For an African-American man virtually unknown just a few years ago, there can be only one explanation: God must be involved.

In the politics, that is.

Transcending the chasm of race is difficult in the United States. For politicians in America, an effective way to do so is by accentuating religious faith. More than 90% of U.S. adults consistently say they believe in God or a universal spirit — prompting George Gallup Jr. to remark that it’s not even worth polling the matter. As a result, emphasizing that one is a “person of faith” has the ability to connect more Americans than any other campaign talking point.

This has become particularly so in recent decades. Analysis of more than 15,000 public communications by U.S. political leaders from Franklin Roosevelt’s election in 1932 — the origin of what scholars call the “modern presidency” — through the first six years of George W. Bush’s administration shows an astonishing increase in religious rhetoric beginning in 1980. That year Ronald Reagan ran a campaign shot through with religious themes and calculated outreach to newly mobilized evangelicals. The approach was so successful that subsequent presidents and presidential hopefuls have followed suit. My colleague Kevin Coe and I call this the God strategy.

This approach reaps rewards for any candidate, but for an African American politician it is essential. Faith provides a deeply felt connection that allows — perhaps even compels — many white voters to see a minority candidate as fully human. Yes, history shows that faith prompts some to be more prejudiced; but in the 21st century, far more draw from their sacred texts and traditions the message that God is colorblind.

As Americans struggle to overcome racial biases, invocations of faith by a black candidate go a long way towards appealing to the better angels of all Americans’ nature.

Obama  understands the political value of trumpeting a mainstream Christian faith — and the danger of having those beliefs questioned. His campaign reacted strongly to two e-mail whisper campaigns, one that accused him of being a Muslim and another that accused his church, Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, of being anti-white.

Obama turned both into opportunities, taking to the airwaves to discuss his faith and putting out a statement describing himself as a “committed Christian.” On Saturday in red-state Boise, before an audience of 14,000 — equivalent to one-tenth of all registered voters in the state — Obama directly addressed the anti-Muslim campaign and declared, “I've been going to the same church for 20 years, praising Jesus.”

All of this has helped Obama reach across demographic and ideological lines to attract voters. Consider that he was the first Democratic presidential candidate to visit Idaho since Harry Truman — an approach that paid off when he won 80% of the state’s caucus delegates, the largest single victory for any presidential candidate in the 2008 campaign.

To understand just how valuable Obama’s emphasis on faith is, consider an event Obama attended in December 2006 — an AIDS summit meeting of key religious leaders held at Saddleback Church in Southern California, home of prominent evangelical Rick Warren.

There, in front of an audience consisting primarily of white conservatives, Obama was gently chided by Republican Senator Sam Brownback — a favorite among Christian conservatives — for moving in on his territory. “Welcome to my house,” Brownback said.

When it was his turn, Obama took the podium and played his trump card. “This is my house too,” he said. “This is God’s house.” The audience gave Obama a standing ovation, accompanied by enthusiastic shouts of “Amen.” Two months later, the junior senator from Illinois announced he was running for president, opening his kickoff speech with these words: “Giving all praise and honor to God for bringing us together here today.”

As we move beyond Super Tuesday and into the rest of the primary season, Obama’s willingness to emphasize his Christian faith might well be his saving grace.

by Walter Williams, UW emeritus professor of public affairs

John Edwards has stopped his presidential run but he still has a critical contribution to make in the campaign and beyond. Like a latter-day Al Gore, he should continue his message that none of the major candidates have addressed.

Only Edwards has cried out, “Corporate greed and political calculation have taken over our government and sold out the middle class.” Only he has warned of “the iron-fisted grip that corporations have on American democracy.”

Edwards faces a Washington establishment that fears real change to the status quo. A Washington Post reporter wrote before the Iowa caucus that “Edwards continued to veer closer into alarmist territory.”

Is Edwards’ message “alarmist“? Definitely not. In our analysis of George W. Bush’s economic policies, The Politics of Bad Ideas, political scientist Bryan Jones and I found that the middle class is in dire straits, that a tiny super-rich elite reap most of the income gains, and corporate America controls the Washington government.

THE MIDDLE CLASS. Census data on income in 2006 (the latest available) shows that real median family income for working-age households fell $1,336, or 2.4 percent, from 2001, when that income level was $56,062.

The decline from 2001 to 2005 is by far the longest string of yearly decreases in the real median family income of working-aged families in the postwar era. Commerce Department data indicate that from 2001 to 2007, a smaller share of gains in income went to workers and a larger share to corporate profits than in any postwar economic recovery.

On average, the entire middle class experienced limited income gains and kept up its living standard by zero saving and massive borrowing. The middle class is hurting.

THE SUPER-RICH. The Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center estimated that in 2006, the 0.3 percent of families (three in a thousand) receiving a yearly income of at least $1 million got, on the average, $118,000 from George W. Bush’s tax cuts. That’s nearly 160 times more in tax benefits than the middle fifth of families that averaged $740 in benefits.

The New York Times’ David Cay Johnson wrote that 28 percent of the investment tax cut savings went to just 11,433 of the 134 million taxpayers, those who made $10 million or more in a year, saving them almost $1.9 million each. By comparison, the nearly 90 percent of Americans who make less than $100,000 a year saved $318 on average.

GOVERNMENT CONTROL. These immense disparities came about solely because of the Bush tax cuts. Such largesse from the Bush tax cuts that funneled benefits to a super-rich elite is a perfect example of control over the government by the rich and powerful.

An excellent case in point is the House of Representatives’ effort to offset the cost of fixing the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) so that it would not hit an added 25 million mainly middle- class households in 2007.

The House chose to offset the lost revenue from the AMT fix by removing certain tax advantages for investment fund advisors and hedge fund managers, some of whom earn over $1 billion a year.

Washington Post reporter Jeffery Birnbaum described what happened:”Dozens of lobbyists were hired to pressure lawmakers, and campaign donations were stepped up, especially from Wall Street executives.”

Wall Street wealth won. Members of Congress were bought. A handful of super-rich people, who are big campaign contributors, escaped a hefty tax increase. The cost of the AMT fix was paid for by borrowing so future generations will bear the costs.

No wonder the number of Washington lobbyists has increased threefold since 1996 to 36,000. That’s over 60 lobbyists per Congress member.

The greater prosperity and economic equality of the early postwar era that made the American Dream realistic to a broad middle class has vanished. John Edward’s notion of two nations now applies. Plutocracy—government by the wealthy—is the order of the day in 21^st century Washington.

Others, including this author, have warned of the dangers of plutocratic governance. So too have people in the case global warming -- without much impact until Al Gore took center stage.

It is as daunting a task to awaken the American people to corporations’ iron-fisted grip on democracy and the likely destruction of the middle class. John Edwards’ credibility and anger plus his honed-toughness as a trial lawyer make him the ideal choice to stay in the bully pulpit.

By Michael K. Honey, UW Tacoma professor of humanities

The legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. casts a shadow over events in our country, and never more appropriately so than in this electoral season of 2008. In a real sense, King paved the way for Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign of hope. Using the Bible and the Constitution, King argued and demonstrated that ordinary people can change history, by organizing themselves into a coherent force for change.

At the same time, many of the democratic advances of the 20th century are in jeopardy today, none more so than the right to organize unions, without which working people cannot raise their incomes and improve their lives. We have a long way to go before people at their workplace are afforded the constitutional and human rights that the civil rights and labor movements struggled for, and that King died for.

Barney Sellers / Courtesy The Memphis Commercial Appeal National Guardsmen on Beale Street, March 29, 1968

In Immokalee, Fla., immigrant fruit and vegetable pickers work six days a week, 12 hours a day, for about $13,000 a year, poverty wages by anyone's standard. Florida's growers have invested millions in a campaign to stop them from getting just one penny per pound more for the crops they pick. In Smithfield, N.C., black, Hispanic and white meatpacking workers get poverty wages while employers fire, harass and intimidate, and federal officers raid the homes of immigrant workers and deport them.

South of our border, Mexican authorities beat up teachers in Oaxaca; Guatemalan authorities kidnap unionists at Coca-Cola plants; Colombian death squads kill hundreds of union leaders. Elsewhere in the world, China too often crushes union organizing.

Repression in the United States is not as severe, but Americans are similarly challenged when it comes to guaranteeing people union rights. In Washington, Republicans in the Senate killed the Employee Free Choice Act last year, which would have allowed workers to unionize if a majority sign cards expressing their consent. President Bush's National Labor Relations Board has twisted labor law to make it almost impossible to organize. Tennessee's "right to work" law prohibits the union shop, allowing "free riders" to get union benefits without paying union dues. The laws are stacked against workers.

No wonder that only about 12 percent of American workers belong to unions -- 7.5 percent of those in the private sector and nearly 36 percent of workers in the public sector. Many in the private sector are especially scared to join unions, because so many people have been fired or blocked for promotions when they do.

Low union membership translates to poverty wages linked to high infant mortality and low high school graduation rates for the working and unemployed poor.

Wary of a possible return to the violence that had convulsed Downtown Memphis one day earlier, National Guardsmen blocked off Beale Street as striking sanitation workers protested on March 29, 1968. "All labor has dignity,"  Martin Luther King Jr. preached. "You are ... reminding the nation that it is a crime for people to live in this rich nation and receive starvation wages."

Jack E. Cantrell / Courtesy of Special Collections, the University of Memphis Libraries The Rev. James M. Lawson Jr. (left) and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

The Rev. James M. Lawson Jr. joined King at a press conference on March 28, 1968, where they vowed that the sanitation workers' protests would continue. "We know that it isn't enough to integrate lunch counters," King had told a crowd at Mason Temple days earlier. "What does it profit a man to be able to eat at an integrated lunch counter if he doesn't earn enough money to buy a hamburger and a cup of coffee?"

Workers in the United States and across our borders are not enemies. We have a common interest in enforcing the right of workers to organize, so that wages will rise, consumer spending will increase and our economies will move forward.

What does all this have to do with King and his legacy? A great deal.

'All labor has dignity': King's quest for labor rights
In January, AFL-CIO union members from all over the United States gathered in Memphis to remember King and honor sanitation workers Taylor Rogers, Joe Warren, William Ross, Baxter Leach, J.B. Trotter and others who stood up for their rights with union organizer T.O. Jones in 1968.

During a 65-day strike, the sanitation workers' families lived on very little. Memphis police clubbed people senseless and sprayed them with Mace, a blinding chemical made for use in war. Yet the workers kept marching. Until recently, their story was almost lost to history. But increasingly, others across the country want to hear it.

Americans are also coming around to seeing King as more than a civil rights leader who "had a dream." Most people know King died in Memphis, but many now want to know why. What was going on in this city anyhow? Most people don't know King died fighting for the right of workers to organize unions, in one of the most dramatic and significant battles of the 1960s.

King was far more than a dreamer. He said a union is the best anti-poverty program available to poor people with jobs, and he supported unions all his life. He knew most of the major union leaders in the country and recognized that unions had paved the way for the civil rights movement. He always had a black working-class constituency, from maids in Montgomery to teenagers without work in Birmingham to sanitation workers exploited in Memphis. Time and again, King gave voice to the voiceless, hope to the hopeless.

When King came to Memphis, he shone a beacon of hope, and media attention, on underpaid, overworked laborers for the city of Memphis. "King was like Moses," said striker James Robinson.

"It was just like Jesus would be coming into my life," said striker Clinton Burrows. "I was full of joy and full of determination. Wherever King was, I wanted to be there."

Five weeks into the strike, on March 18, 1968, King delivered an impromptu speech at Mason Temple of the Church of God in Christ. More than 10,000 people crammed the auditorium, many overflowing into hallways and stairways, creating the largest indoor mass rally of the civil rights-era South. "All labor has dignity," King preached. "You are reminding not only Memphis but you are reminding the nation that it is a crime for people to live in this rich nation and receive starvation wages. And I need not remind you that this is our plight as a people all over America."

After passage of the civil rights and voting rights bills in 1964 and 1965, he said, "One era of our struggle came to a close and a new era came into being. Now our struggle is for genuine equality, which means economic equality."

King came to Memphis in the midst of his Poor People's Campaign, whose goal was to organize the unemployed and desperately poor of all colors in America's ghettoes, barrios, Indian reservations and rural areas. He wanted them to go to Washington to demand that money allocated for the Vietnam war be spent instead to abolish poverty. King left Memphis to focus on the Washington campaign, but when he returned to lead a mass march on March 28, chaos occurred.

Black youth, street people and provocateurs broke out downtown windows with picket signs; the police attacked, randomly beating, Macing and shooting people; one youth died and hundreds went to the hospital.

It was a disaster for King, and the city of Memphis. He returned a few days later, planning to lead a nonviolent march, and gave a brilliant speech to a crowd on the stormy evening of April 3. Under immense pressure from multiple death threats, King called on people to be like the Good Samaritan going down Jericho road. Stop to help a stranger in need, he said, even if it imperils your own life. "The question is not, 'If I stop to help this man in need, what will happen to me?' 'If I do not stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to them?' That's the question."

King lived by that creed and died by it. The next day, an assassin cut him down.

The same cause: Labor rights, civil rights, human rights
We need to recall King's warning: "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." Instead of denigrating immigrants, we need to renew King's call to "planetize our movement for social justice" by helping workers in other countries organize to improve conditions so they don't have to emigrate. At home, we need to regain the right to organize at the workplace. We need to strengthen laws to allow organizing, and reignite our own multiracial coalition. We need to return to King's campaign to end war and poverty and support union rights.

This may sound hopelessly unrealistic to some, yet hope is born from large, idealistic goals. Public-sector workers organized effectively because King and others raised their hopes and eventually government became more accepting of their right to a union. King said that organizing is the only sure way for low-wage workers to raise their wages and change their lives. We can still hope that King's larger goal of a "beloved community" is possible.

But it won't happen unless we remember and understand our history. For most of those who lived through the epic 1968 strike, the lesson of the past to the present is clear: Labor rights, human rights and civil rights remain indivisible. "We can get more organized together than we can apart," King told Memphis workers and their supporters.

Rev. James Lawson, a key ministerial leader in the Memphis strike, called it a "watershed moment" that brought the plight of the working poor to the attention of the country. We should remember that moment and honor its legacy.

This article initially appeared Feb. 3, 2008 in The Memphis Commercial Appeal.

By Bryan Jones, UW professor of political science

Many (including me) have marveled at the support Obama draws from professed liberals, given his more conservative domestic policies in comparison to any of the other Democratic contenders, even those who have withdrawn.

One hypothesis is that they are generally better off and don’t feel the rising inequality that stalks America today. Another is that they applaud his staunch anti-Iraq record, but his stated position is more conservative than either Edwards or Richardson. Or perhaps they are not supporting on the issues.

In any case, Obama’s message of "one America" contrasts strongly with Edward’s "two Americas." It is of course possible that Obama is professing this notion for electoral reasons, but then that would make him a politician, wouldn’t it?

Katherine Sebelius, the governor of Kansas who just endorsed Obama, gave the Democrats' response to the State of the Union speech on Monday. Low key for sure, but far more confrontational in content than Obama, yet not in tone. While Obama touts the "one America'" Sebelius talked of a "new American majority"—clearly a progressive one, but one not based in the more confrontational rhetoric of Edwards.

Obama might study that speech in detail for a somewhat new direction in what I find a tired old reformist pitch in American politics.

Obama links his rhetoric to JFK, but I think that is the wrong link. The most successful insurgent campaign in the Democratic party in modern times was not John in 1960 (he was pure establishment) but Bobby in 1968. He excited the young, spoke eloquently of racial injustice, yet was enormously popular with working-class Americans. “Clean Gene” McCarthy was the classic reformer, but Bobby had working class appeal. Are there lessons for Barak here?

By Matt A. Barreto, UW assistant professor of political science
Gary Segura, UW professor of political science

An increasingly important narrative in the Democratic primary campaign has focused on the heavy preference for Hillary Clinton among Hispanics. This preference, the story goes, reflects a deep-seated and important social and political tension between Latinos and African-Americans. It's evidenced not just in Latino support for the Clinton candidacy but in a generalized aversion to African-American politicians among Latinos across the political landscape.

This narrative has been helped along by Clinton’s Hispanic pollster, echoed by progressive black authors angered by the increasingly racialized tone of the Democratic contest, and embraced whole-heartedly by conservative pundits in gleeful editorials commenting at length about a fractured Democratic coalition and new prospects for the GOP in November.

From a political science perspective, the principal problem with the central elements of this narrative is that there is little or no evidence for any of it. It is incorrect to equate Latino support for Hillary Clinton in 2008 with anti-Obama or anti-black voting patterns. In multiple national surveys in which we have participated, and in our own polling among Latinos in Nevada and California, we find that the Clinton advantage is driven primarily by her eight years as first lady and seven years as Senator from New York.

By contrast, in April of last year, a survey of 1,000 Latino voters nationwide found that 35% said they had no opinion of Senator Barack Obama in contrast to 8 percent of those asked their opinion of Clinton. So while Obama has become well known in a relatively short time among political observers, he did not rise to national prominence among Latinos until this campaign.

This name-recognition advantage for Clinton has been enhanced by a strong and aggressive advertising and outreach effort by her campaign and a string of high-profile endorsements. She has hired an independent Latino pollster and aired significantly more Spanish language radio and television ads.

In contrast, the Obama campaign’s outreach to Hispanics has been anemic and particularly ineffective. Even Congressman Luis Gutierrez of Illinois, a prominent Latino supporter of Obama, has criticized him for failing to reach Latinos. In short, there are many reasons why Hillary Clinton enjoys a large advantage among Latino voters, none of which has anything to do with racism.

The claim, then, that her support is somehow evidence of Latino unwillingness to support African-American candidates is wrong on its face, a point one of us made on CNN immediately after the Congressional Black Caucus Debate. Latino voters have demonstrated strong support for African American candidates in the past, across a variety of circumstances. Harold Washington, David Dinkins, Wellington Webb, and Ron Kirk were all elected as mayors of major American cities with Latino vote shares from 70 to 80 percent. In the U.S. Congress, eight African American members of the U.S. House represent districts with more than 25% Latino population, including Charles Rangel of New York and Maxine Waters of Los Angeles, whose districts are actually majority-Latino.

Even Obama himself has a strong record of Latino votes. In 2000, when Obama challenged incumbent Bobby Rush in the Democratic primary for First Congressional district in Illinois, he won more Latino votes than African American ones. In 2004, when he ran for the U.S. Senate Democratic nomination in Illinois, Obama received more Latino votes than Latino candidate Gerry Chico. Claims that Latinos will not vote for Barack Obama, or black candidates are clearly false.

This is not to say there aren’t moments of political rivalry between African-Americans and Latinos. They have much in common, including educational disparities and economic disadvantages. Though those commonalities should often result in political coalition, there will inevitably be moments, circumstances, and candidacies that pull the groups in different directions. This is the very definition of democracy and not at all surprising. The question is whether there is anything fundamentally preventing coalition of these two groups behind the eventual Democratic nominee. There is not.

In 1973, when Tom Bradley was elected mayor of Los Angeles, he lost among Latinos, and the punditry then, as now, speculated that Latinos would not vote for a black candidate. But Bradley’s political skills and the inherent shared interests of Latino voters and the Bradley coalition reversed this trend. By 1982, when Bradley ran for governor of California, he won an estimated 70-80% of the Latino vote.

The election of 2008 looks to be a good year for Democrats among Latinos. The failure of immigration reform and the nativist grandstanding of the GOP and its primary candidates, including the once-moderate John McCain, seem certain to drive the Democratic share of the Latino vote back towards 70%. The wealth of empirical research, not speculation, suggests this will be true whether Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama is the Democratic nominee.

Dr. Matt A. Barreto and Dr. Gary M. Segura are professors of political science at the University of Washington, Seattle. They are leading experts on Latino public opinion and voting patterns and have twice published their research in the American Political Science Review, the leading academic journal in political science.

by Walter Williams, UW emeritus professor of public affairs

However grim John Edwards’ chances may be in the race for the presidency, his message must be heard. As president or as a latter day Al Gore, Edwards must not stop shouting, “Corporate greed and political calculation have taken over our government and sold out the middle class.”

Edwards faces a Washington establishment that fears real change to the status quo. A Washington Post reporter wrote before the Iowa caucus that, “Edwards continued to veer closer into alarmist territory, warning of ‘the destruction of the middle class’ and 'the iron-fisted grip that corporations have on American democracy.'”

Is Edwards’ message alarmist? No, he’s on the mark. In our analysis of George W. Bush’s economic policies, The Politics of Bad Ideas, political scientist Bryan Jones and I found that the middle class is in dire straits, that a tiny super-rich elite reap most of the income gains, and corporate America controls the Washington government.

THE MIDDLE CLASS. Census data on income in 2006 (the latest available) showed that real median family income for working-aged households fell $1,336 from the 2001 level. The decline in 2001-2005 is by far the longest string of yearly decreases in the real median family income of working-aged families in the postwar era. Commerce Department data indicate that between 2001 and 2007, a smaller share of gains in income went to workers and a larger share to corporate profits than in any postwar economic recovery.

On average, the entire middle class experienced limited income gains and kept up its living standard by zero saving and massive borrowing. The middle class is hurting.

THE SUPER-RICH. The Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center estimated that in 2006, the 0.3 percent of families (3 in a thousand) receiving a yearly income of at least $1 million on average got $118,000 from George W. Bush’s tax cuts. That’s nearly 160 times more in tax benefits than the middle fifth of families that averaged $740 in benefits.

The New York Times’ David Cay Johnson wrote that 28 percent of the investment tax cut savings went to just 11,433 of the 134 million taxpayers, those who made $10 million or more [that year], saving them almost $1.9 million each….The nearly 90 percent of Americans who make less than $100,000 a year saved $318 on average.

GOVERNMENT CONTROL. The immense disparities just discussed that enriched the relatively small number of families with at least a million dollars in yearly income at the expense of the rest of the American population came about solely because of the Bush tax cuts. Such largesse from the Bush tax cuts that funneled benefits to a super-rich elite is a perfect example of control over the government by the rich and powerful.

An excellent case in point is the House of Representatives’ effort to offset the cost of fixing the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT), so that it would not hit an added 25 million mainly middle- class households in 2007.

The House chose to offset the lost revenue from the AMT fix by removing certain tax advantages for investment fund advisors and hedge fund managers, some of whom earn over $1 billion a year.

Washington Post reporter Jeffery Birnbaum described what happened: ”Dozens of lobbyists were hired to pressure lawmakers, and campaign donations were stepped up, especially from Wall Street executives.” Their 2007 campaign contributions in nine months exceeded the total for the previous two years. Hiring registered lobbyists cost $8 million in the first half of 2007, over twice as much as all of 2006.

Wall Street wealth won. Members of Congress were bought. A handful of super-rich people, who are big campaign contributors, escaped a hefty tax increase. The cost of the AMT fix was paid for by borrowing so future generations will bear the costs.

No wonder the number of Washington lobbyists has increased threefold since 1996 to 36,000. That’s over 60 lobbyists per Congress member.

The greater prosperity and economic equality of the early postwar era that made the American Dream realistic to a broad middle class has vanished. John Edward’s notion of two nations has come to pass. Plutocracy—government by the wealthy—is the order of the day in 21^st century Washington.

Others including the author have warned of the dangers of plutocratic governance. So too have people in the case global warming, without much impact until Al Gore brought his credibility to the cause.

It is a daunting a task to awaken the American people to corporations’ iron-fisted grip on democracy and the likely destruction of the middle class. John Edwards’ credibility and anger plus his honed-toughness as a trial lawyer make him the ideal choice, whether he is president or not, to stay in the bully pulpit and sound the warning.

By Bryan Jones, UW professor of political science

A few days ago, Washington Mutual, the nation’s largest savings and loan, announced bonuses for its top executives. During the year, the management team had managed to lose almost $2 billion and engineered a stock price drop that cost shareholders two-thirds of the value of the company. The bonuses were substantially less than the year before, but bonuses are bonuses—supposedly pay for exceptional work.

This happens all the time. There is a safety net for the paid managers of America’s companies—they benefit no matter how poorly they perform. Conservative economists are fond of saying that if you reward bad behavior, you’ll get more of it. So in effect, today’s crony capitalism in America is building in the guarantee that we will get more poor-quality capitalism.

I am really not sure why the issue of gross inequality has not come to the fore in the presidential campaign. All the Republican candidates save Huckabee think things are hunky-dory. Obama wants to avoid such talk because he fears making anyone mad, especially the independents and Republicans he courts. Hillary raises money from them. Only Edwards, who has found little traction, is courageous enough to talk about the class warfare that the rich have mounted against the rest of us.

By Bryan Jones, UW professor of political science

The Congressional Budget Office has just released its estimate of the Fiscal 2008 federal budget deficit—about $220 billion dollars. In August, the CBO estimated $155 billion, but the slowing economy has altered the equation. The Office of Management and Budget, based on slightly different assumptions, estimates a budget deficit of around $250 billion. Neither agency includes the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (almost $120 billion), nor the cost of the proposed stimulus package (estimated currently to be around $150 billion). This would yield an estimated budget deficit of around $500 billion.

These deficits add up to the national debt, what we as a nation owe. Along with explicit liabilities, such as military retirements, the government owed $10.4 billion in 2006, up 52% since Bush took office.

But wait! There’s more.

Comptroller General David Walker reports that the government’s fiscal balance sheet is in dire straits. In 2000, the government’s accumulated obligations were about $20 trillion; by 2006, that has ballooned to over $50 trillion—an increase of 150%. Much of this is due to the drug benefit that was added to Medicare; the rest is due to cost escalations in Medicare. Walker is so concerned that he has gone on tour to publicize the problem. A summary of Walker’s Fiscal Wake Up Tour may be found at: http://www.gao.gov/cghome/d08353cg.pdf .

There are two components to the balance sheet. The first is the national debt --what we have borrowed and owe to specific individuals, organizations, or governments. The second consists of promises the government has made for future commitments, particularly Social Security and Medicare.

So Social Security is one major component of the dismal federal balance sheet, but the Medicare (including the new drug benefit provision, Part D) accrued obligations are more than five times the obligations under Social Security.

In 1983, the federal government made a bargain with working Americans—those who pay payroll taxes and rely on Social Security for their retirements. At the time, the Social Security system was bankrupt, not able to make payments in literally a few months. President Reagan and Congress in effect told working Americans that if they would pay higher taxes and tolerate delayed benefits, we will make Social Security solvent forever. They actually came close; the system is solvent until 2041.

The bargain worked like this: Workers would pay enough in taxes to allow the Social Security Administration to pay retirees and save a lot of money--basically by buying US savings bonds--for the future, especially when the huge Baby Boom generation retired. When they did, the Social Security Administration would sell its bonds, and continue to pay its obligations. That will happen in 2017, according to the Report of the Social Security Board of Trustees. [I have reproduced the two key charts from this report below. You can read the full report at: http://www.socialsecurity.gov/OACT/TRSUM/trsummary.html].

If George W. Bush had run a responsible fiscal policy, this would be a non-event. Balanced budgets, continuing the fiscal policy established by Bill Clinton, would have provided the cushion when the Social Security Administration needed its money. Instead, he worked to undermine the bargain Government made with working Americans, basically blaming them for his fiscal irresponsibility.

President Bush preferred fiscal deception, claiming in 2005 that the Social Security System was somehow broken and would not be able to pay its obligations to future generations. Indeed, as Walt Williams and I have shown in our new book, The Politics of Bad Ideas, Republican economic policies in general have been built on a set of claims that, like the Social Security bankruptcy claim, are false. The Social Security claim is part of a pattern of deception on economic policies.

What has happened is that Bush borrowed the Social Security surpluses and spent it, mostly through his massive tax cuts. Then he blamed working Americans for simply acting responsibly… basically for contributing to their retirements through Social Security and planning to use it when they retire. Because of his irresponsibility, 2017 looms as a critical date.

What can we say about the Federal balance sheet? First, the Social Security system is sound. It has set aside enough money to pay retirees through 2041. It would be better if we made some modest adjustments to make the system solvent forever, but we have plenty of time for this.

Second, the debt the U.S. government owes the Social Security system is sound, unlike what some conservatives claim. The Social Security Administration simply holds U.S. government Bonds, as does the Chinese government, the Federal Reserve, your pension plan, and many British, Japanese, and American citizens. Why would the government pay the Chinese but not its own elderly? A debt is a debt.

Third, the Medicare system is not sound. It is in deep fiscal trouble. Two major reasons are the Bush prescription drug benefit and the Bush tax cuts.

Fourth, the federal government under Bush is out of control. It has shown an inability to control its balance sheet. It has promised grand new Medicare benefits, fought an incredibly expensive war, and passed out huge tax cuts, mostly to the well-off.

Blaming working Americans relying on Social Security was not only wrong factually, it was class warfare—with the working American as the target.

Social Security Trust Fund Balances

By Matt A. Barreto, UW assistant professor of political science

In 2008, the presidential nominating process could be over by February 5^th – a full eight months before the general election in November. Some pundits have argued that shortening the primary season is a disservice to voters, providing less time to get to know the candidates and become informed. However, the buzz among observers of Latino politics is that for the first time ever, Latino voters will have a meaningful say in nominating a presidential candidate.

Yet with such a short primary calendar, can voters – Latino or otherwise – make an informed decision on the leading presidential candidates? They are certainly no worse off than in the past. At the same time that parties have front-loaded the 2008 primaries, the campaign for president has started earlier, almost two full years before the actual presidential election. Indeed, candidates are busy hosting fundraisers and giving stump speeches from California to Iowa to New York.

The point that has been often overlooked in the recent debate about the 2008 primary schedule is the opportunity for more voters, and more diverse voters to weigh in on the potential candidates. In particular, many of the states that have moved their primary date up have sizable Latino populations.

In the 2004 presidential election Latino voters were among the most prized swing voters. More than $10 million was spent on Spanish language television commercials alone, a remarkable figure considering California, Texas and New York were out of play. Researchers have regularly noted that Latinos are not a monolithic group, holding both liberal and conservative viewpoints on important policy issues. When asked to report their political ideology, Latino voters tend to split into equal thirds among liberal, moderate, and conservative. What’s more, Latinos represent the fastest growing segment of the American electorate, growing from 5.9 million in 2000 to 7.6 million in 2004, an increase of 28%. In comparison the non-Latino electorate grew by 15% from 2000 to 2004.

Thus, it makes sense that both political parties could benefit by campaigning for the Latino vote in January and February. In all three of the traditional early primary states, Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, Latino voters account for less than one percent of the electorate. In contrast, Latinos were 8% of the vote in Nevada in 2004; 11% in Florida; 13% in Arizona; 16% in California; 7% in New Jersey; 33% in New Mexico; and 8% in New York. For the first time ever, candidates in the primary election would have to campaign for Latino votes, hire Latino staff and consultants, and air Spanish language campaign commercials. By increasing the diversity of the electorate in the presidential primary, we increase the diversity of ideas and issues that are discussed, and perhaps the diversity of the candidates (as is the case in 2008).

Furthermore, while a majority of Latinos live in non-competitive states such as California, New York, Texas, and Illinois, Latino voters in the southwest could prove pivotal to the 2008 general election. A recent book by Tom Schaller, professor of Political Science at the University of Maryland, has suggested that the Southwest and Mountain West are growing in importance to the presidential election because they are becoming more politically diverse and ethnically diverse. New Mexico has twice been among the most competitive states in the presidential election; in Colorado, Democrat Ken Salazar won the U.S. Senate election by 4 points even as Kerry lost the presidential contest by 5 points; and Nevada was decided by just 20,000 votes in 2004 has seen 20,000 new Latino registered voters in the last two years. Although the 2008 primary schedule will be frenzied and compact, it will nonetheless provide Latino voters an opportunity to evaluate and vote on the leading contenders for president, as opposed to only the finalists.

Early States and Latino Voters in 2008

Professors on Politics blog, (c) 2008.  Professors on Politics is a service of UW News and Information, http://uwnews.org.