This week we had the unusual opportunity to see the candidates respond to two crisis situations: Kosovo's declaration of independence and Castro's resignation in Cuba.  I believe the two events provide a look at just how differently the candidates might approach foreign policy once in the White House.

Earlier this week, I wrote in detail about the striking differences between Obama's and Clinton's responses to Kosovo.  Obama stressed, first and foremost, that Kosovo should be viewed as a unique situation, not as a new precedent --- a crucial position given an impending argument with Russia about the future of the Caucasus.  

Obama also took a more even-handed approach, acknowledging the suffering of the Serbian people, blaming Milosevic and not Serbia for the loss of Kosovo, and even more importantly praising the recent, narrow re-election of pro-Western president Boris Tadic.

What I find most striking is that one candidate is using the opportunity to pander to a domestic audience, and the other is aware that he is speaking to the world community.  One is presidential and diplomatic, the other not so much.  Obama is conscious that he is already a presence on the world stage, as witnessed by his willingness to play a role in limiting the violence in Kenya.  Clinton still seems to need to learn that the world is listening when she speaks, as witnessed by her ridiculous and pointless name-calling exchange with Putin.

The Castro resignation offered us another display of more of the same.  In her rush to express her enthusiasm for Castro's resignation, the Clinton campaign clumsily overstated the number of years he had been in power.  Ready on day one?

Emblematic of Clinton's embrace of failed American policy towards Cuba is Clinton's support of continued funding for Radio Marti, a $200 million pet project that does not actually do much of anything at all.  Year after year, we broadcast the signal, and year after year Cuba blocks the signal.  Nevertheless, out of spite, Congress continues to approve the funding.

Back in August, Obama spoke out for an easing of relations with Cuba, becoming the first to raise the topic in the Democratic primary.  As Obama wrote in an Op-Ed for the Miami Herald, addressing the Cuban-American community directly:

The primary means we have of encouraging positive change in Cuba today is to help the Cuban people become less dependent on the Castro regime in fundamental ways.  Unfortunately, the Bush administration has made grand gestures to that end while strategically blundering when it comes to actually advancing the cause of freedom and democracy in Cuba.

Enough with some of the grand gestures and failed policy that have for fifty years accomplished nothing.  Enough with the DC insider consensus that hasn't brought Cuba any closer to democracy.  Obama proposed easing restrictions on family visits and remittances to Cuba, as a first step.  And he has insisted that he would be willing to reopen bilateral talks, even with Castro, as a way to break the deadlock.

A month ago, both candidates filled out a questionnaire from the Cuban-American group CNAF that asked the direct question: "Do you believe that the United States should negotiate with Raul Castro once it is announced that Fidel Castro has died?"

The Clinton campaign answered "No" and left no explanation.  The Obama campaign meanwhile answered "Yes" and wrote:

A crucial component of the Obama plan to promote freedom and democratic change in Cuba will be aggressive and principled bilateral diplomacy. I will send an important message: if a post-Fidel government begins opening Cuba to democratic change, the United States is prepared to take steps to normalize relations and ease the embargo that has governed relations between our countries for the last five decades. That would be the best means of promoting Cuban freedom.

Under the next question --- "Should the United States require a new Cuban government to make concessions such as freeing political prisoners or allowing a free press before the United States moves to negotiate with them?" --- the Clinton campaign answered "Yes" and Obama answered "No."  In other words, Obama would not require preconditions before opening negotiations, indicating that he would be willing to leverage easing the embargo in exchange for democratic reforms.

In his statement welcoming Castro's resignation, Obama signals that he's ready to ease restrictions further in exchange for meaningful reforms:

If the Cuban leadership begins opening Cuba to meaningful democratic change, the United States must be prepared to begin taking steps to normalize relations and to ease the embargo of the last five decades.

While neither candidate's Cuba policy is particularly inspiring, we can at least see a willingness towards movement in Obama and a willingness to break with orthodoxy.

Instead of using this statements as an opportunity to look tough before the American electorate, Obama is already looking ahead, aware of the impact his statements can have abroad.  For all of Clinton's supposed experience in crafting foreign policy, we haven't seen much of it on display lately.

One unusual aspect of Super Tuesday that seems to have gone unnoticed is that despite the national popular vote splitting so evenly at 48%-48%, very few of the state primaries and caucuses were actually all that close at all.  

Of 22 Democratic primaries and caucuses, only six were decided by a margin of ten points or less, and only three were actually close, coming within a margin of five points or less.  Why?  Because most of these states simply weren't even contested.  The Clinton campaign had television ads running in only half the February 5th states, and there were numerous states in which they didn't bother to run an active field campaign.

The Clinton campaign made clear that it planned to win Super Tuesday based on a tight four-state strategy, focusing on California, New York, New Jersey, and Arkansas, which, they frequently cited, made up 40% of the delegates assigned --- a strange strategy in a system that isn't winner-take-all.  Clinton's name recognition and her general support level across the country would have to hold her up in the vast swaths of the country that she had already conceded.

This strategy of focusing hard on winning the biggest states turned out to be one of this campaign season's great blunders, and it is one that the Clinton campaign seems to make repeatedly.  The Obama campaign has repeatedly found ways to get ahead in the delegate count, out-organizing rural areas of Nevada to win an extra delegate while the Clinton campaign won Clark County, and then repeating that success to run a field campaign across 22 states that kept the delegate count close in states Clinton won and racked up the delegates in states Clinton did not bother to contest.

The Clinton campaign has responded by pleading that its financial resources were stretched --- despite raising over a hundred million dollars in campaign funds over 2007, and despite a loan of $5 million (nearly four times Obama's net worth, by the way) that topped her some $13 million cash on hand and $13.5 million raised in December.  That's some $30 million in funds.

It was not a lack of funds that led the Clinton campaign to ignore rural areas, to write off multiple states.  Rather, the Clinton campaign seemed oddly unprepared, clinging to a misjudgment, counting on national poll numbers, unwilling to run the expansive grassroots national campaign that the Obama campaign had been preparing for for months.

By the time Super Tuesday was over, it was clear that the Clinton campaign had done little to build organizations in the subsequent primaries and could do little to contest them.  Yesterday alone, they fell an additional fifty delegates behind.  Ignoring states you think you will lose only means that you lose them more badly --- instead of trying to even up the delegate count.

And that must be the most frustrating part for the Clinton campaign.  In many of these states, there is little doubt that they have probably left delegates on the table.

Despite Howard Wolfson's claims post-Iowa that the delegate count was paramount, the Clinton campaign never seemed to act like it, as Obama won a pledged delegate lead in Iowa and simply never let it go, adding a delegate here and a delegate there, slowly running up his count, patiently organizing future contests.  There's talk already that this lead in the delegate count is, or soon will be, insurmountable.

The Clinton campaign might just be learning its lesson:

In addition to focusing on the large states -- something Cecil admitted had been their focus -- they are "opening offices" and "hiring staff" in Wyoming, Montana and even Puerto Rico to try to get every delegate possible in "congressional districts where we can be successful."

Though you have to wonder if it might be too late.

Postscript: Actually, Maggie Williams seems to be making almost exactly the same point today, describing the campaign's mistakes:

- That they didn't plan aggressively for small states, which allowed Obama to rack up delegates and project momentum.
- That the campaign will use volunteers in a larger role in the remaining contests.

Can I point something out though?  It's great that the Clinton campaign has discovered grassroots campaigning, but its examples are a little scary: sure, Wyoming votes on March 8th, but Montana votes on June 3rd and Puerto Rico on June 7th.

As Micah Sifry, an editor at TechPresident, put it today, Barack Obama would never have accomplished so much without the internet.  He would just have been another Bill Bradley, another Howard Dean, another Gary Hart.  Another progressive, process-oriented, reformist candidate that in the end always seems to lose against the establishment candidate.  

Most of these candidates falter in the early primary states, where party loyalists reward long service, or on Super Tuesday, when vast numbers of voters speak at once and prevent all but the most well-known candidates from advancing further.  Obama has already passed these tests.

If Obama has come this far, if he has accomplished so much, it is because of the way the internet has driven his campaign.  By tonight, Obama's campaign is likely to have raised surpassed $5 million since the close of voting yesterday.  In the month of January, his campaign raised a staggering $28 million online, dwarfing Ron Paul's entire fourth quarter.

Progressive, creative-class, web-based organizations like MoveOn, with its three-million-strong email list, as well as communities like DailyKos, are now starting to fall in behind his candidacy --- most likely a crucial element behind his fundraising surge tonight.

Some campaign aides already believe that the campaign is on track to raise another $30 million this month.  A remarkable achievement, in the almost total absence of traditional, one-on-one fundraisers with major donors at fancy hotels.  Indeed, only 3% of Obama's 600,000 donors have given the maximum amount of $2,300, meaning that they can remain active contributors.

But the other big change, to finally circle around to my statement at the beginning of this post, is that we are now seeing the internet's role in politics in full flower. As Patrick Ruffini pointed out here recently, no candidate in American history has ever raised $32 million in a single month -- until Obama came along and hit that mark this January. $28 million of that, the campaign says, was raised online.

It isn't likely that Clinton will be able to match this pace, and the first sacrifice will likely be that she'll take time off from the campaign trail to go back to personally fundraising on the coasts.

But it's not just the fundraising.  The Obama campaign has used distributed online phone banks for volunteers to make at least tens of thousands to critical primary states, to allow supporters to set up local and national groups, create email lists, plan their own events, set up their own fundraising pages, create their own blogs --- in a way that other campaigns have attempted this cycle, but none have succeeded in generating the same activity.  For every massive rally that Obama has held, there's been a network of phone-bankers contacting supporters in the area to let them know about it.  

Perhaps most interestingly, the Obama campaign isn't just finding the energy and organization already online, but he's bringing traditional off-line supporters into the web community.  My first blog was set up on my.barackobama.com in February.  And they are also utilizing the existing internet habits of young people to spread their message --- with soaring YouTube views, massive Facebook and MySpace memberships, etc.  What's so remarkable is that these tools are actually working, actually being used for progressive, political action.

It is fitting then that Obama also have the most innovative, the most creative technology plan and the most expansive vision for the role that the internet can play in revitalizing our democracy.  And that his campaign has gained the support of prominent tech advocates.

As Sifry concludes:

The old winnowing process, which was mainly about wooing big donors and winning news cycles, is no more. Obama seems to be carving a new path to the nomination, one that has gotten him to parity, and maybe even given him the edge going forward. If he wins the Democratic nomination, there will be all kinds of reasons why. But if that happens, let's hope everyone gives the internet and all the campaign-driven and activist-driven organizing it has powered on his behalf a big share of the credit.

But could this be the beginning of a fundamental change in the way elections work?  The moment when a candidate used the internet to launch him farther than any candidate has before, to actually break past the strongest candidate the establishment has to offer?  Don't get me wrong, I don't think Obama not getting the nomination would diminish any of the above achievements, although he is perhaps in better position now than he has been at any point this cycle to succeed.  Regardless, it's been a remarkable achievement of the netroots community.

Update [2008-2-6 21:9:27 by psericks]: Currently stands at $4,673,457, with hours to go before midnight. The servers have been strained on the campaign website and going down occasionally from the donations flowing in. MoveOn did this. Update [2008-2-6 21:31:17 by psericks]: You can follow the total here. And indeed, you can contribute here.

Back in October, John Hutson, former Judge Advocate General and Dean of Franklin Pierce Law School, changed his registration to vote in the New Hampshire Democratic primary and endorsed Barack Obama.  Hutson, a life-long Republican, had grown increasingly frustrated with the Bush administration's treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

"We fight wars to uphold the rule of law," he said in 2004, "but then we don't uphold the rule of law in our conduct of the war."  Hutson eventually becoming a key leader among former military officials pushing back against Bush policies on Guantanamo Bay and torture, worried about the precedent it would set for future conflicts.  

"We are running the risk," Hutson said in announcing his endorsement of Barack Obama, "of historians looking back on the first few years of the 21st century and saying 'That's where America came off the rails, that's where we began to be the next former world power.'" Obama, Hutson argued, would be the candidate best able to bring about the changes we need.

And then on Monday, more than eighty attorneys volunteering their time on behalf of detainees at Guantanamo Bay collectively endorsed Obama for President:

The writ of habeas corpus dates to the Magna Carta, and was enshrined by the Founders in our Constitution. The Administration's attack on habeas corpus rights is dangerous and wrong. America needs a President who will not triangulate this issue. We need a President who will restore the rule of law, demonstrate our commitment to human rights, and repair our reputation in the world community. Based on our work with him, we are convinced that Senator Obama can do this because he truly feels these issues "in his bones."

We should accept nothing less than the utmost clarity and forcefulness when it comes to restoring the rule of law, ending for good our current administration's policy of tolerating torture, and rejecting the illegal detention of hundreds in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.  

Among the signatures on the letter were:

Washington lawyer Thomas Wilner, retired federal appeals court judge John Gibbons, Center for Constitutional Rights president Michael Ratner, and retired Rear Admiral Donald Guter, who was the Navy's top JAG officer from 2000 to 2002 and who is now the dean of the Duquesne University School of Law in Pittsburgh.

The group of lawyers felt moved to make an endorsement after hearing months of talk on the campaign trail that Obama had not acted during his time in the United States Senate:

When others stood back, Senator Obama helped lead the fight in the Senate against the Administration's efforts in the Fall of 2006 to strip the courts of jurisdiction, and when we were walking the halls of the Capitol trying to win over enough Senators to beat back the Administration's bill, Senator Obama made his key staffers and even his offices available to help us.

Senator Obama worked with us to count the votes, and he personally lobbied colleagues who worried about the political ramifications of voting to preserve habeas corpus for the men held at Guantanamo. He has understood that our strength as a nation stems from our commitment to our core values, and that we are strong enough to protect both our security and those values. Senator Obama demonstrated real leadership then and since, continuing to raise Guantanamo and habeas corpus in his speeches and in the debates.

When others were reluctant and cautious at taking on the fight, Obama stepped up, working with attorneys behind the scenes to organize opposition.  Despite their efforts, the Military Commissions Act of 2006 passed.  The Boston Globe writes:

The constitutionality of that law, which was part of the Military Commissions Act, is now being challenged before the Supreme Court in one of the most closely-watched cases this term.

As president, Obama would be a fierce advocate for restoring our civil liberties and carry with him that respect for human dignity that should underpin every decision made in the White House.

Indeed, one of the trademarks of Obama's time in the US Senate was his early alliance with Samantha Power, one of the most forceful advocates in academia for humanitarian intervention in refugee crises and genocides around the world, and whose brilliant book, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide documented a century of our government's studied indifference to human rights violations around the world.

As many of the foreign policy experts who opposed the war in Iraq have gathered around Obama's candidacy, so too have legal experts eager to turn the page on the Bush administration.

Due to a spectacular flame-out of my adapter cord, my post from a borrowed computer will have to be brief.  So I'll give merely an observation.  A number of commentators noted again today the peculiar way the Clintons have criticized rivals this campaign cycle.  Instead of defending their weaknesses, they either claim amnesia (on the Telecommunications Act at YearlyKos, on those funny charts of Perot's on NAFTA, etc) or, more often and more tellingly, the case made is that 'they're just like us.'  

Hillary Clinton, for example, has responded to charges that she was taking substantial donations from lobbyists mostly by claiming that her rivals were as well, just less conspicuously.  (We'll get back to that in a minute.)  Chris Bowers called it "the Blurring" here back in May.

Her recent attacks fit this mold.  Clinton's questions about fundraisers sounded particularly ironic to NBC's First Read:

It's also a bit ironic, too, given that the Clintons have had many more problematic donors than Obama (Hsu, Gupta, Chung, Denise Rich, those donations to the Clinton Library).

The tactic is, of course, clear: to try to prove that Obama is just like them.  

The spectacular crassness of the Clintons' recent fundraising schemes among Washington lobbyists would be hard to imitate: Her "Rural Americans for Hillary" fundraiser at the lobbying headquarters of Monsanto, or her selling defense contractors access to chairmen of the House Defense subcommittees would be two favorite examples.

Clinton's response?  Not to change her behavior, but to find any sort of kink in Obama's shut-out of lobbyists from his campaign --- highlighting a state-registered lobbyist in New Hampshire, for example, one who, obviously, isn't covered by either Obama's or Edwards' ethics policies because they're not, say, Washington defense contractors trying to buy favors with those who hold the purse strings.  I'll leave you to ponder for a couple seconds whether those things are commensurate.

She has taken to mocking ethics reform efforts using lobbyist talking points:

So, to hear Senator Clinton tell the story, the most comprehensive lobbying reform in more than thirty years -- and one of the major accomplishments of the Democrats controlling Congress -- was a joke...

To hear Senator Clinton spin the tale, the law was a meaningless effort because lobbyists can still serve cheese platters and mini-weenies on a toothpick at a stand-up gathering, when just a few months ago they could feed targeted elected officials and their staffs at the finest restaurants in DC and elsewhere. This is an argument against corruption reform straight out of GOP backrooms and the gilded offices of K Street.

Leaving aside that that ethics reform act, championed by Russ Feingold as well as Barack Obama, also drove Trent Lott into early retirement so as to skirt the reinforced provisions that would have prevented him from taking up a plush lobbying position, we're to believe that it had no impact in Washington.  

Her position that you're not really against the war if you have ever voted to fund the troops is almost funny --- funny because it says what exactly about her own work in the Senate and her years of approving funding after approving the war resolution that brought this country into Iraq?  (It's worth noting on the side that a number of the two dozen Senate Democrats who opposed the Iraq war resolution later voted for funding resolutions once troops were deployed, Dick Durbin for example.)  This is apparently a "clever" way of derailing criticism of her own staunch support of the war by deflecting attention away from it.

Forgive if I take the candidate who from the start in 2002 argued against "the cynical attempt by Richard Perles and Paul Wolfowitz and other arm-chair, weekend warriors in this Administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne." (Yes, that's a quote.)  Only one of these two candidates stood up at the beginning and expressed their outrage, didn't they?  

The blurring goes on and on...

Update [2008-1-23 16:13:46 by psericks]: Her amnesia over previous telecommunications legislation doesn't of course prevent her from pushing industry-written plans to sell out the progressive goal of expanding broadband access.

You know, I have to say I was actually strangely pleased with that New York Times headline this morning.  Hillary Clinton upsets Barack Obama.

Hillary Clinton, wife of Bill Clinton, former leader of the free world, was the underdog in a race against an until recently unknown urban black guy from the south side of Chicago via Hawaii and Indonesia named Barack Obama.  This is a guy whose punchline in every stump speech during his 2004 Senate race revolved around his funny name.

If that doesn't say something about how much we've already achieved in this race, I don't know what does.  Clinton might be firmly back in this race, but she'll never be what she was before.  Clinton's narrow, late-breaking victory was, as Dana Milbank put it this morning, "not so much a comeback as a return from the political dead."

In twelve months, Obama built a campaign from the bottom up.  He didn't just out-fundraise the vaunted Clinton machine, he did it through a dramatic influx of and emphasis on small donors.  He didn't just build a stronger field campaign and beat Clinton by nine points in Iowa, he did it by dramatically expanding the Democratic base, bringing out new voices and young people, and by setting up an unprecedented grassroots network of field offices that have stretched beyond Iowa into at least 22 states.  

He's a candidate, who from the start of his political career envisioned himself first and foremost as an organizer.

What if a politician were to see his job as that of an organizer? - Barack Obama, quoted in the Chicago Reader 12/8/95

Change, he insists again and again, will only come if the people are energized and involved, if a working majority is created by shaking up out-dated ideological boundaries.  Why, for example, have polls long shown broad support for progressive domestic policy goals while Democrats continue to lose election after election?  Change will not flow from Washington, it will come because the American people demand it.  The first and foremost task of a president is to activate, engage that movement.

Obama's campaign continues to come close to taking down the biggest brand in Democratic party politics.  We came up a few thousand votes short last night, but there will be plenty more opportunities to come.

And all this in New Hampshire too, Clinton's vaunted firewall, where her establishment support ran through the Shaheens, Kathy Sullivan, 8 of 14 Democratic state senators, the speaker, the majority leader, and most established party operatives.  Obama's endorsed support came from relative new-comers, like Paul Hodes and Carol Shea-Porter.  

What's also remarkable is that Obama's surge there began long before the Iowa caucus:

Part of the candidate supporter series

It's hard not to say that the work of youth vote advocates in Iowa has been magnificent.  They've shown themselves willing to flex their muscle, even in a Democratic primary, and they produced results.

Whereas just yesterday, it looked like more and more Democratic campaigns were abandoning student voters, and most media coverage related it as an Obama-Clinton spat instead of weighing in on substance.  Organizations like Young Voter PAC, Iowa PIRG, and Rock the Vote put out tough statements, worked behind the scenes, and stuck to their principles.

Let me make clear: The idea that a student should only be able to vote in the community they come from, rather than in the community they live in, is in itself an attack on the student vote as such.  And it's wrong to spontaneously create new standards of citizenship that apply to no other category of citizen but students.  No other Iowa resident would be challenged for spending the holidays with family and returning home early to Iowa to cast their vote.

Today, the Iowa Democratic Party released a statement making clear all Iowa students are eligible to caucus and making clear their intention to encourage all Iowa students to exercise that right.  Iowa's lefty blogosphere seems unanimous in challenging Yepsen on this.

And the Clinton campaign released a near flawless statement today (despite insisting once again on raising the specter of youth voter fraud):

"Hillary wants every student who lives in Iowa and wants to caucus in Iowa and is eligible to caucus in Iowa to do so. We hope that they will and we hope that they will caucus for Hillary[...] We hope and trust that every campaign is making sure that potential caucus goers have all the information they need, and in no way explicitly or implicitly encourages anyone to break the law by participating in two places. Not only is it okay to engage students in Iowa, but it is critical to ensure that they are active participants in the process, and we are doing everything we can to get them out to caucus."

What I like about the statement is that it not only an endorsement of the right of all Iowa students to participate, but it is a commitment to work in engaging those students.

This is a dramatic reversal from their earlier statement:

There's a big difference here. We are not systematically trying to manipulate the Iowa caucuses with out of state people. We don't have literature recruiting out of state college students.

And an improvement over their last "clarification":

Senator Clinton... hopes that all Iowa students who have made Iowa their permanent home participate in the caucus.

So why am I still not optimistic?  For one, I'm still worried that while comments disparaging student voters received wide coverage, such as Clinton's comments insisting that students don't pay taxes or Dodd's comments that students from out of state aren't legitimate Iowans, retractions have been mostly mailed out to progressive youth voting advocates and haven't received much attention.

Second, let me pause for a minute on the issue of youth voter fraud, a bizarre topic to suddenly be releasing press releases about.

On the stump yesterday at Grinnell College, a college where all but 13% of students are from out of state, Bill Clinton responded to a question about the student vote:

Clinton responds to the question first by arguing that a "caucus" is not in fact an "election" and thus should only be for "Iowans" --- that a caucus is inherently limited, in that service members and workers on a night-shift are disenfranchised by not being allowed to vote absentee.  This is an argument against part of the caucus format, but how is it an argument for disenfranchising student voters?

Second, Clinton argued that the decision to vote was a matter of conscience, arguing that students should caucus only if they consider themselves Iowans.  Iowa Independent's Chase Martyn was at the Grinnell College event and had this to say:

Implied in Clinton's argument is the premise that college students feel too strongly connected to politics in two different states, as if that is the true problem: conniving young people are so eager to vote that they will do so in two different states at the same time.  Does anyone actually think that's the problem?

In truth, college students, like other young people, feel increasingly disconnected from politics, whether we're talking about politics where they grew up or politics where they live now.  There is no epidemic of college students who vote in too many elections.  To the contrary, the problem is that they don't vote enough.  Viewed in this light, Clinton's argument sets up nothing more than a straw man designed to suppress youth turnout.

Lastly, Clinton repeatedly implicitly criticized same-day registration for opening the door to voter fraud, arguing that it allows people to come in, claim to be a resident, vote, and then leave.  Instead of forcing young people to make a true commitment to a place by registering to vote in advance apparently, voters can vote and run.  It is odd, to say the least, that he would challenge the idea that perhaps has the greatest short-term potential of boosting voter turnout.

Maybe I'm cynical because last week saw a string of candidates saying one thing on the stump and then releasing press releasing saying another about the right of students from out of state to participate.

Needless to say, the strategy is beginning to backfire on Iowa campuses.  Clinton campaign volunteers in Des Moines were confused on their own campaign's position on Iowa students from out of state when doing phone banking for the Grinnell area.  And Clinton's rally at the University of Iowa was sparsely attended and the audience, according to Iowa Independent, was there for Bill and had little interest in voting for Hillary.

Over the weekend, Biden and Richardson announced that they do not support the right of Iowa students from out of state to caucus.  Dodd has had four different positions in the span of as many days.  The Clinton campaign seemed to retract her earlier comments and then not so much.

What is so shocking is that so few in the Democratic Party establishment and no one else in the Democratic primary field has weighed in on behalf of the utterly unproblematic, long-held progressive position that students have every right, and should be strongly encouraged, to register to vote.  How hard can this be?