I’ll be brief because I’m blogging this from my iPod.  Barack Obama finished a good-sized rally where he kind of lost the crowd in the middle but ended well.  It was pretty much the same stump speech we’ve heard; I’ll elaborate later.  But as we were leaving, we spied Obama campaign manager David Axelrod and asked him about Bill Clinton’s very odd comment that he personally saw Culinary Union bosses threatening to stop workers from voting for Hillary.  

Axelrod lost it.  He said, “I don’t believe it, and if Bill Clinton actually saw that, he can take it to the NLRB.  This is the rankest form of voter intimidation I’ve ever seen.”  And with that, he stormed off.

It felt like being on Hardball for a second.

(for my money, if Clinton does claim he saw a union supervisor threatening to violate voter rights, then he should take it to the NLRB.)

So we’re in the Obama press area awaiting his arrival (in about an hour, I’m told), and I had some time to write, and elaborate on what I told our Northern Nevadaticians over the phone.  

We just got back from a Bill Clinton event in North Las Vegas at a local YMCA.  There were about 150-200 people there, which seemed small to me.  Bill came out and said he mostly wanted to take questions, and then proceeded to talk for about 45 minutes (hah!).  It was a solid speech, completely extemporaneous, talking about the challenges we must face in the next four years and how his wife is best able to face them.  But there was one glaringly strange moment.  

over…

Specifically he honed in on subprime mortgages and the trouble with Big Shitpile (“people who have never missed a mortgage payment will lose their homes” because the banks will need to refinance to recoup their losses from bad investments), America’s stature in the world, and building a clean energy future (“Nevada is perfect for this – the wind blows and the sun shines, and we can capture all of that”).  He highlighted Hillary Clinton’s “consistent record in public life of making positive changes,” including school reform in Arkansas, improving foster care and increasing adoptions as first lady, and the creation of SCHIP (“You need to know how the President responds to failure – with Hillary, it was SCHIP.”)  It was a substantive, reasoned, and worthy case for his candidate.  Here’s a paraphrase from my notes:

Obama says we need to turn over a whole new leaf, we must begin again.  He has explicitly argued that prior service is a disability in picking the next President.  Hillary wants to put the country in the solutions business.  We must come together by doing.  The purposes of politics is to live your hopes and dreams by making changes in people’s lives.  Vision and inspiration is important, but so is perspiration and delivery.  The ultimate test of our service is who’s delivered for the American people.

Which is an excellent case to make.  He also said that he claimed he was in his hotel in Vegas last night, and a bunch of members of the Culinary Worker’s union came up to him and said that they weren’t going to listen to their union and they would caucus for Hillary.  Which is fine.  Then, he claimed, a shift supervisor or someone in a position of authority came up and said, “If you do that I’m going to change your schedule so you can’t be there to caucus tomorrow.”  It’s a pretty amazing allegation (a union boss is going to threaten and intimidate the voting rights of workers in front of a former President?), and Todd from MyDD and myself have some calls in to Hillary’s press people to get some clarification.  There’s no way to really independently verify it, but it strains credibility to believe that it went down the way President Clinton said.  And he said it TWICE, so it wasn’t a slip of the tongue.

I do want to highlight this other moment.  Among the mostly substantive questions that he eventually took from the audience, Clinton was asked where his favorite places were to travel.  He took this softball, began a meandering audio travelogue of all these different places he’s been, rambling like an old uncle telling a story with seemingly no end, and then he told this amazing story about this woman in Rwanda who met the man who killed her son and how she forgave him, and he wrapped it up by saying we can all learn some lessons from every place we visit, and he went back over every place he named and gave some vital lesson that came out of it.  It was like watching Michael Jordan do some behind-the-back, double-reverse, doesn’t-even-know-where-the-basket-is, eyes-closed and it goes in anyway bank shot.  It was almost poetic.  That’s Clinton’s real gift, to weave what he called “the story of America” and bring these arcane policy issues into some kind of immediacy for people, making it real to their lives.

While everyone’s still in shock about N.H., I wrote this for today’s Beyond Chron.

The polls in the final days showing Barack Obama with a double-digit lead in New Hampshire were not wrong, and I was not unreasonable – though a bit cocky – to gloat that the Clintons were history.  Instead, what happened was 17% of New Hampshire voters made up their minds on Election Day.  And Hillary Clinton’s huge gender gap suggests that last-minute media attacks on her “crying” swayed women to her side.  Just like Iowa, New Hampshire voters said that change was more important than experience – which continues to be her Achilles heel as the race moves to Nevada and South Carolina.  Last week, the New York Senator was in danger of losing because voters saw her as “Clinton” – the establishment candidate who will carry on a political dynasty when voters want something new.  But on Election Day, enough came to view her as “Hillary” who would create change by becoming the first woman President.  This explains the unexpected result, and the tide of public opinion can still shift back.

It’s hard to remember now (since in politics a week can be a lifetime), but two months ago Hillary Clinton was the prohibitive front-runner – who was supposed to grab the Democratic nomination by “inevitability.”  Despite efforts by progressives to show that she is truly not one of us, people were just buying her campaign line.  Women were flocking to her candidacy as a historic first, and attempts to re-invent herself as an “agent of change” were actually working.

But in late November, while campaigning for his wife in Iowa, former President Bill Clinton lied that he had always opposed the War.  This moment reminded everyone what they didn’t like about the Clintons: their disdain for the Left and their efforts to minimize Iraq, and became a turning point in the campaign.  Bubba’s visible presence on the campaign trail – and his inability to avoid the limelight – became the issue, as voters started seriously wondering whether they really wanted to start a dynasty.

On the day before the New Hampshire primary, right after her humiliating 3rd place finish in Iowa, two things events that could have had an enormous impact on the race.  One was when Bill Clinton told a group of supporters that he “can’t make [Hillary] taller, younger, male” – debunking the notion that her status as a woman would make her a “change” candidate.  It also exposed the former President as a jerk who only cares about himself, his legacy, and is delusional enough to think he can save her floundering campaign.

But not enough people heard about this – and the other campaigns never made it an issue.  It had no impact on the result, which could have sealed the deal for Obama.  What instead dominated the news coverage was the famous incident where Hillary Clinton cried.  When asked by a reporter “how do you handle it,” she choked up and gave an emotional speech in a New Hampshire diner – which is very unusual for her to do while campaigning.

The media didn’t know what to make of this.  Some compared it to the Howard Dean scream and said it made her look weak.  Others questioned her sincerity, calling it a calculated, cynical move to make her look human.  I had a different interpretation: it was real, and to suggest otherwise would be tasteless and cold.  The Clintons were just cracking under pressure – after building their dynasty without standing for anything, the Democratic voters were rejecting their agenda.  And Hillary was at a loss on what to do.

But the media’s reaction had a huge effect on women – especially middle-aged women – who generally felt that it was sexist and unfair.  How dare you question whether her crying was sincere, they felt, and women did not appreciate the suggestion that it made her look weak and vulnerable.  For months, my sister had complained to me that Clinton gets attacked in the media in a way that they would never attack a man.  Enough came to see her as Hillary – not Mrs. Clinton – and decided that her status as the first woman president embodied “change.”  So they voted for her as an “agent of change.”

Obama won Iowa by eight points, and beat Clinton among women by a 5-point margin.  For women under 25, Clinton got a pitiful 11%.  But in New Hampshire, women picked her by a 47-34 margin.  Among older women, the gap was even wider — while she still lost women under 30.  It would be way too simplistic – and sexist – to conclude that women voted for Hillary “because she cried.”  But they voted for her because the media attacked her and questioned her about it, which backfired.

In what will go down as one of the stupidest moments in campaign history, John Edwards chose to respond to the crying incident.  “I think what we need in a commander-in-chief is strength and resolve,” he said, “and presidential campaigns are tough business, but being president of the United States is also tough business.”  You do not run against a female candidate – especially one as formidable as Hillary Clinton – and play that card.  Someone should have told Edwards to just shut up.

Barack Obama was wise enough to stay above the fray, which hopefully means that he can pick up support among women.  But Edwards took a hit from what happened, based on his poor third-place showing.  While not all women were swayed to vote for Hillary Clinton, enough did.  My hunch is that her last-minute support came from undecided women – or those who were supporting Edwards.

You know that Edwards really screwed up when Amanda Marcotte, an ex-blogger from his campaign, reacted like this: “Completely unacceptable amounts of sexism. It’s bad enough that the media plays the game with Clinton where if she shows any emotion, she’s too feminine or too scary, but if she’s more stoic, she’s a scary ballbuster, but to have her own party members (if political rivals) play that cheap sexist card is too much.”

But despite the surprising result, it’s naïve to assume that last night changed everything and voters will stay with Clinton as a “change” candidate.  Just like Iowa, exit polls showed that 50% of New Hampshire voters picked change over experience.  Enough women may have rallied to Hillary’s defense for now, but voters are still not comfortable with the idea of “another Clinton.”  Especially if the former President keeps on drawing attention to himself.

Yesterday in New Hampshire, the ex-President again put his foot in his mouth.  When asked about “judgment” at a campaign event when choosing a candidate, Clinton went on a three-minute rant that was defensive, angry and hostile.  He again implied that he had always opposed the Iraq War.  His contempt for Obama was visible, like his infamous interview on “Charlie Rose” last month.  Bubba just can’t help making himself the issue, and it will hurt his wife.

Obama can still take the race to Nevada, South Carolina and Super Tuesday on February 5th – and a narrow defeat in New Hampshire could help him come back.  The Culinary Workers Union is expected to endorse him today – which would make him competitive in Nevada.  Blacks in South Carolina will still turn out for him.  What could stop him is the media rushing to crown Hillary Clinton as the “inevitable nominee,” just like they do for every establishment candidate who gets an upstart challenger.

“Clinton should thank her lucky stars that the race didn’t end tonight,” said a friend of mine who had flown to New Hampshire to help get out the vote.  An Obama victory would have done exactly that, for two back-to-back victories would have ended the Clinton dynasty.  But Clinton’s narrow victory in the Granite State, though unexpected, will not.  We’ll just get tired of hearing she’s the “Comeback Kid.”

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Granted, he meant it as a joke to pump up partisan Hillary supporters at a campaign stop.  But seriously.  The guy is a jerk, and he simply can’t help being part of the story.  When people ask me why I hate Hillary Clinton so much, I tell them that 85% is due to the fact that Bill Clinton betrayed everything the Democratic Party stands for.

(not totally local, but I mentioned the Empower Change Summit yesterday, so I thought I’d update)

So I spent Saturday on the campus of UCLA, at the American Democracy Institute’s “Empower Change Summit,” a gathering of aorund 3,000 young people, to interact and discuss the ways in which they can be a force for social change.  The ADI describes itself as a nonpartisan organization built on shared values (though they are, to be honest, typically progressive), dedicated to being a leadership gateway, inspiring people to create change on their own in a bid to make democracy more relevant to people’s lives.  The desire for a new model of political engagement, one that exists both within and without the electoral sphere, which foregrounds values and principles and encourages public citizenship and the change we can make in our daily lives, is noble.  But it was unfortunately turned briefly into a world-class spin session during the closing speech by former President Bill Clinton.

John Hart, the CEO of the American Democracy Institute and a former official in the Clinton Administration, has put together several of these summits around the country.  They feature speakers and small-group “workshops” where peer leaders discuss the opportunities for involvement on a variety of subjects.  One of the workshops I attended concerned voter empowerment, where ADI members unveiled “I Vote, You Vote,” a social networking tool for voter registration and engagement that essentially brings peer-to-peer mobilization to the online sphere.  Considering that 54% of all voters in the youth demo, according to one poll, actually went out to vote because they were asked by a friend or family member, this is an exciting effort.  I was happy to see thousands of young people giving up their Saturday, united by their willingness to make a difference in new and innovative ways.

Obviously, the relationship between Hart and the Clintons (Hillary was the founding honorary chair of ADI) gives him the opportunity to add a real draw to the event.  So Bill Clinton’s closing address was heavily anticipated by those who files into Royce Hall.  The last time I saw Clinton speak was at a campaign event in Ann Arbor in 1992, so I shared this anticipation.

There’s a rough transcript here.  First of all, Clinton is an exceedingly brilliant man.  Without notes, he delivered a statistic-heavy speech about the challenges facing America and the world and how the next generation can help solve them.  It was a speech focused on big change, about the need to deal with persistent, enduring national and global inequality; to reverse unsustainable energy patterns and resource depletion; and to understand the fact that citizens are now more interconnected than any of us can manage, yet also prone to identity conflicts.  These are some of the topics that the Clinton Global Initiative seeks to counteract, through managing and “operationalizing” charitable giving into effective projects, like delivering AIDS drugs to the developing world, or green building and retrofitting projects in urban environments (there was a LOT about clean energy in the speech).  But he was adamant that citizen action and nongovernmental organizations cannot supplant the need for effective government.  He cited the example of Denmark, “governed by a conservative coalition,” who grew their economy by 50% with no additional energy use, and a reduction in greenhouse gases, while also having the lowest inequality in the developed world, because their focus on green jobs became an economic engine.  He discussed Ron Suskind’s book The One Percent Doctrine and the famous blind quote about “the reality-based community,” saying as a rejoinder “I spent my childhood in an alcoholic home, trying to get into the reality-based world, and I like it here.”  So it was a speech that was open about the challenges we face, but passionate about how we can leverage the energy and engagement of the next generation to meet them.  That requires being a good global citizen, by participating both in the political sphere and through civil society.

I give that much detail about the whole of the speech so you can understand how completely out of left field this next segment came, as I quote the rough transcript:

And one last thing: we’re working toward a presidential campaign.  But what you need to do is make sure the election is not taken from you by triviality.  I watched the debate for 2 hours.  And I didn’t mind Hillary being asked the immigration question, I minded that none of the other candidates were asked about it and had 30 seconds to respond.  And if we turn immigration into a 30-second sound bite, the politics of fear and division will win.  We have 12 million people here undocumented and most of them are working.  Nobody wants to discriminate against people who have come here legally, but you can’t throw out all those people either.  This is a mind-boggling problem.  And don’t you let them turn it into a 10-second soundbite.  And no president gives drivers licenses.  The states do that.  But that soundbite allows people to fulminate.  It’s a serious issue.  And climate change is a serious issue.  But I didn’t learn anything about climate change, education, healthcare, the most urgent domestic problem that most families face, about wage stagnation, about how our young people can afford college after deliberate government policies making it harder to afford college-right now, you have a better chance of going to college if you’re at the top 25% of your income group and the bottom 25% of your class than the other way around, and less if it’s vice versa.  No matter who you are, this is your life, and there will never be a time when citizen action can supplant the need for effective government.

The transcript misses one incredibly crucial part of that.  Before President Clinton said that he didn’t learn anything in the debate about climate change, education, etc. (which is a legitimate critique), he said that “I learned something in the debate about Iran.  I learned why to vote for the Kyl-Lieberman resolution, and I learned why not to vote for it.  I learned that from Senator Biden, by the way, not from any of those who said that it could authorize the President to go to war.  It doesn’t authorize that, and everybody knows it.”

Let me again set the scene.  This was a speech at a nonpartisan event, given to a group of young people who obviously have a lot of enthusiasm for Bill Clinton, and look up to him as an authority figure.  I found it completely inappropriate for him to turn what was an interesting speech into what you might hear on a conference call with Mark Penn.  Furthermore, note the “listen to your elders, I know better” tone here.  After citing voluminous statistics throughout the speech, Clinton waves away legitimate concerns about the Kyl-Lieberman vote with a dismissive “It doesn’t authorize that, and everybody knows it.”  No reasons, no citation of the actual text, just a nod to “what Senator Biden said” without explicitly stating what it was.  Here’s the first thing Biden said.

Joe Biden: Well, I think it can be used as declaration.

Biden went on to talk about how the vote caused a ripple effect of rising oil prices, driving moderates underground in Afghanistan and Pakistan, perpetuating the myth that America is on a crusade against Islam, but also about emboldening Bush to “make a move if he chooses to do so.”

There’s also the factor that Clinton’s position reflects a continued naive view of the machinations of George W. Bush.  Indeed, one of Bush’s key talking points during the Iraq debate was that the Congress voted 98-0 for regime change under the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998.  What the Congress says obviously matters, and calling a sovereign nation’s Army a terrorist organization is unnecessarily combative.

But that’s a bit besides the point.  The fact is that Bill Clinton used his platform to very subtly and cleverly turn a nonpartisan speech into a campaign event.  Clinton is an asset that no other candidate has, someone who still holds the trust of the American people, particularly those for whom the absence of true Presidential leadership has made the heart grow fonder.  If he’s going to advocate on his wife’s behalf, which is absolutely his right, he should at least do it with some intellectual honesty, and he shouldn’t wrap a critique of the media as a whole into what he really explains as a critique of the media’s treatment of his preferred candidate.

David Dayen and I attended the EmpowerChange summit at UCLA today, put on by the American Democracy Institute.  Bill Clinton gave an address, which I transcribed (rather roughly) and am pasting below the fold.

I didn’t get the chance to attend any significant portion of any of the workshops that were offered at the summit; I caught the tail-end of the ecology workshop, but that was just about it.

I will say that this was probably the only speech I’ve attended as media in which the media got the worst seat in the house.  We were shunted all the way to the back corner of Royce Hall for the speech.

Remarks below.

You know, for most of my life, I was the youngest person doing what I was doing, and then once I was the oldest guy in the room, and I trace the journey from there to here.

I’ve been briefed on what you’ve been exposed to and I want to talk about the world beyond this auditorium-the world of your future.  I’ve been to about 90 countries since I left the White House.  I’ve gotten AIDS drugs to 71 countries, and my foundation has operations in Latin America and Africa.  I’ve worked on Tsunami relief and now I’m working on greenhouse gas emissions.  I raise money from the wealthiest, but my office is in harlem, the epicenter of the child obesity problem.  So I see the world in a way that’s more fully than I did when I was president.  I have my meetings, but I might be out in the country talking to people who have never been elected to anything.  I was in a rural area of Malawi, and we were building a 100 bed hospital.  And we got construction jobs to people who had never drawn a paycheck.

I look at America and think about what it will be like for you.  Obviously there are a lot of good things about the modern world.  You have opportunities through your own efforts and the encouragement of others.  And this crowd is so much more interesting than if we had had a meeting like this 30 years ago.  It’s more diverse in terms of religion and culture, and there are more women.  But the world beyond here has three challenges:

1) persistent, enduring inequality.  Half the world’s people live on less than $2 a day, and 130,000,000 never go to school.  Just that many more don’t have teachers.  1 in 4 deaths will be from AIDS, TB, malaria, or dirty water.  We have people with AIDS in America, Europe and Japan, but with the drugs you can still lead a normal life.  There is persistent inequality.  After 6 years of economic recovery, you take President Bush’s line to Iowa, you might get roughed up before you left because the gains have gone to the top 1%.  Median incomes have declined by $1000 this decade.  4% of Americans have fallen below the poverty line working full time.  Half of bankruptcies are from healthcare.  And we have lousy programs at keeping people well.  I’m the oldest of the baby boomers.  We will be ranked first in one category: the oldest senior population on earth.  Male life expectancy is 83 years, female is 85.  But if we use the same medical services, we will impose an unconscionable burden on your ability to raise kids.  And if these obesity rates and diabetes continue, this generation will be at risk of having a shorter lifespan than their parents.

2) The energy use patterns are completely unsustainable.  Because of global warming (and thank goodness Al Gore won the Nobel Prize) and because of resource depletion, we are losing forest cover, potable water, topsoil at substantial rates-only Brazil and Argentina substantially increased grain production.  We’re extincting species at the fastest rate in human history.  According to some geologists, we only have 50 years of recoverable oil.  And the world’s population is projected to grow to 9 billion by mid-century.  Putting this in perspective, the first person on the African Savannah 150,000 years ago was in Tanzania, and our predecessors wandered around Africa for 90,000 years.  By 8,000 years ago, there were 5 great civilizations-Iraq, China, Middle East, Mexico and Peru.  And then India.  It took us 150,000 years to get from 1 to 6 ½ billion, and we’re going to 9 billion in 43 years.  Gives us a new perspective on immigration, doesn’t it?  All these people will be born in the countries that can least support them.  And by that time all these people will be praying to take us back to 2007 when there are no problems.

3) We’re more interconnected than many of us can manage.  We have a cluster of identity conflicts.  The most severe is represented by Al-Qaeda-a global anti-cosmopolitanism.  They want everyone to agree with their version of Islam, which got them in trouble.  But if you see the conflict between Tamil and Sinhalese Buddhists, between Israel and Palestine-the Tamil conflict is taking twice as many lives as the conflict in Irsael.  And more Israelis will die from organized crime than from Palestianians.  And then there is the Muslim population in France.  Or the British-when they had their terrorist attacks, they were homegrown British citizens whose Muslim identity was stronger than their British identity, and even stronger than the identity with other Muslims.  Same thing with immigration in the US.  It’s based on interdependence.  We can’t just stay with our crowd.

In that environment, there are three great responsibilities, particularly if you want to exercise a leadership role.  First is, be the best you you can be.  You live in a time and circumstance with a luxury nobody else has had in the last 50 years.  You can choose what you want to do with your work.  Throughout most of human history, people worked to stay alive.  You have dreams and ability, and don’t denigrate what you will wind up doing with the waking hours of your life.  Find joy in your life and your work when you have the option to do so.  That’s what makes the global economy work.  The second thing is, be a good citizen.  It’s unconscionable, with the depth and complexity of the elections, with the issues facing the world, that voter turnout is so low, especially with young people who have more tomorrows than yesterdays.  And I would argue that the third thing you have to do is find some way as a private citizen of advancing the public good through citizen service.  There will never be a time with the market economy will solve all the world’s problems, which is why the Gates foundation is making such a difference, or why my foundation by spending only 10% of what the government spends, accounts for 30% of new additions to drug programs.  And this is sweeping the world.  There are 1 million foundations.  Half of them are formed in this decade.  When I became president in 93, there were just about none in Russia, but now there are 400,000.  China has 200,000 registered NGOs, and there are at least 500,000 in India.  But there’s something everyone can do.  I recently wrote a book designed solely to show why there is an explosion in citizen activity and how everyone can take a difference now matter who they are or how much time they have.  We need to change the definition of being a good citizen to do something all the time to contribute to civil society in America and all around the world.

Just one example-I just recently came from the US conference of mayors in Seattle and announced that my foundation, working with the 40 cities around the world, had brokered discounts for green technology.  And that I was helping every city in America do the same thing.  When Gore and I concluded the Kyoto treaty, the Congress believed it would ruin the economy.  Nobody believes that any more.  People know that we caused global warming and we need to fix it.  But there was little thought about operationalizing it.  So very few of those who signed it  will meet or beat the targets.  But look at those who did.

Tiny Denmark, governed by a conservative coalition, has beaten its Kyoto targets and grew the economy 50% with no extra energy use and reduction in greenhouse gases.  The result is that their unemployment rate is the same as ours but their median wage is going up.  They took the opportunity to generate jobs.  And there’s the United Kingdom, the country most close to ours.  Their wages are rising and inequality is going down, and they’re meeting Kyoto targets too.  They thought about how to operationalize it.  You know how to use technology, you know the options available.  Goldman Sachs commissioned a study that says that if the United States reached Japan’s efficiency level, and China, Russia and India did too, it would reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by 20%.  But we need to reduce 80% by 2050.  But the point is, you can all be a part of that.  I organized these cities and we’re going to start with energy efficiency by retrofitting buildings.  Many cities couldn’t afford it, so we got the banks to sponsor it, and the utility savings will pay off the financing.  And if it doesn’t, the bank guarantees will kick in.  But that 5 billion-if you double it-there are three square block areas of Los Angeles that are worth more than  5 billion.  So the amount of money available is way lower than it ought to be.  And doing something is one thing, but knowing how to and having the infrastructure is another thing.  But people like you can lead the way.  And with oil at $80 a barrel, it’s economical.  India has dedicated 500 million to clean energy.  We have to have a successor to Kyoto and sign onto it in a hurry.  It is the key to your economic prosperity in the future.

And one last thing: we’re working toward a presidential campaign.  But what you need to do is make sure the election is not taken from you by triviality.  I watched the debate for 2 hours.  And I didn’t mind Hillary being asked the immigration question, I minded that none of the other candidates were asked about it and had 30 seconds to respond.  And if we turn immigration into a 30-second sound bite, the politics of fear and division will win.  We have 12 million people here undocumented and most of them are working.  Nobody wants to discriminate against people who have come here legally, but you can’t throw out all those people either.  This is a mind-boggling problem.  And don’t you let them turn it into a 10-second soundbite.  And no president gives drivers licenses.  The states do that.  But that soundbite allows people to fulminate.  It’s a serious issue.  And climate change is a serious issue.  But I didn’t learn anything about climate change, education, healthcare, the most urgent domestic problem that most families face, about wage stagnation, about how our young people can afford college after deliberate government policies making it harder to afford college-right now, you have a better chance of going to college if you’re at the top 25% of your income group and the bottom 25% of your class than the other way around, and less if it’s vice versa.  No matter who you are, this is your life, and there will never be a time when citizen action can supplant the need for effective government.

Right now, my life isn’t in politics.  If Hillary wasn’t running, my life would be in the non-governmental world.  And you can get a lot done.  But our most effective work is done when poor countries ask us to do things and rich nations help us finance them.  There is no country that has solved healthcare by relying on the market model.  It won’t work.  You need public involvement and a public framework.  This is your life.  Whoever you’re for, whatever your party, don’t let this election be taken away.  You may not have a more important election.  The choices made by the next president and the next Congress will decide whether in the future, you have a world that likes America, or whether they’ll see us in a much more negative way, and whether we can reach across these divides, or continually bumping up against each other.  Whether we will slowly let the American dream die by giving tax cuts to my income group and borrowing money to pay soldiers, or whether everyone will  play their part in making it stronger.

These are huge issues.  And regardless of politics, just ask that the candidates and their interlocutors in the media give the issues they attention they deserve.  Don’t make artificial fights.  Make reasoned judgments.  Have your feelings, but don’t escape the reality-based world.

Ron Suskin co-wrote the memoirs of Paul O’Neill.  He then wrote a book about the neocon foreign policy choices, called the one percent solution.  They lamented that we’re of a lower order because we are all trapped in the reality-based world, whereas they understood that if America had the guts, they could change reality.  And presumably, Iraq has changed that.  And I say, I was raised in an alcoholic home.  I spent a long time trying to get into the reality based world, and I like it here.

Escaping from it is something that we do at a hazard.  You need to have your feet on the ground.  Wish the world as it could be, but understand the facts.  And in order to live a fulfilling life, you need work that you can be proud of and do it as best as you can.  You will need to be a voter, activist, someone who cares.  Someone concerned about public problems and advancing the public good, even if you’re not in office and it’s not election season.  Being a citizen in the 21st century can be demanding, but it can be the most exciting, diverse time in human history.  And if so, it’ll be because of the visions of countless millions of people.  And I hope you’ll lead the way.

Thank you.

I’ll be checking in periodically (Wi-Fi permitted) from UCLA at the Empower Change Summit, an event sponsored by the American Democracy Institute, a new-ish organization dedicated to youth engagement.  We know that the youth vote turned out in record numbers in the past two elections, and their activism and empowerment is crucial to creating a truly progressive society.  Today’s event includes a bunch of workshops and speakers, including a keynote from former President Bill Clinton.  I’m in as media, so hopefully I can realize my dream of yelling out at the press conference “Mr. President, Mr. President!” and being called on, and continuing to yell “Mr. President, Mr. President!”

Anyway, both Dante (hekebolos) and I will be there, so we’ll let you know what’s going on.

She continues to hold big leads in the primary race here, but that might change depends on what happens in Iowa and New Hampshire.  Field Poll (PDF) results here. You’ll find all the typical numbers there, she has  45% to Obama’s 20 and Edwards’ 11. (Dem Race Field Poll) But today’s Field Poll release was slightly different, more focused on Hillary, and uses data from back in the Clinton era to track her.  There’s some interesting points there.

Most pointedly, Bill Clinton is really, really popular here. Always was, and always will be. Even during the dark days during the impeachment era, he was still clocking in at 54, 55 percent overall, and today he’s still at that 57% mark. Hillary, occasionally strays below that magical 50% mark. She’s at 48-39 Favorable now, but her peak was only at 55-39 in October 1999. More over the flip.

In the Chronicle, Carla Marinucci takes an interesting tack, questioning her ability to win the state:

That means Clinton, in order to carry the state, has “a more limited playing field than other candidates would have … she almost has to write off at least a third of the voters who are unlikely to vote for her,” DiCamillo said. “No other candidates have this kind of solidification of negative votes.” (SF Chron 11/1/07)

One thing is clear, however, it would take a minor miracle to defeat Hillary, or frankly, any Democratic presidential candidate in November 2008 in California. As much as Rudy thinks he puts California in play, he’s wrong. California is not in play, especially with the scary group of neocons that Rudy is surrounding himself with these days.

But the Clinton name still means something for people on both sides. It means there is a clear third of people that will never vote for her. But a third does not an election win. Hillary has a lot going for her; she’s a formidable candidate. The question in my mind is are we willing to settle for more of Joe Lieberman’s games or can we finally turn the page towards a brighter, non-dynastic, future?