Maybe you won’t be after you take a look at this.

(The things I miss when I’m busy sitting through school board meetings.)

Happy birthday, Amanda!

So why aren’t the candidates for Portland mayor talking about it?

It is undeniable that housing prices in Portland have outrun the ability for the local job market to sustain them. Yet our city government continues to promote and subsidize the kind of high-density development that seeks to encourage (and cash in on) this trend.

As I wrote yesterday, Sam Adams and Sho Dozono represent real estate developers and the business community respectively, so they’ve got no real interest in tempering the trend of total gentrification in Portland’s residential core.

Adams went so far as to posit that there is “too much affordable housing in North Portland” at Sunday’s North Portland Candidates’ Forum, exposing himself as someone who 1) can easily be construed as a racist and 2) doesn’t have the faintest clue what gentrification means to the working and middle classes of Portland.

I thought it would be an interesting exercise to use Google to plumb the depths of this issue in the current races for city government. I searched for the term “gentrification OR gentrify” on the candidates’ campaign sites, and was not surprised to be greeted with the sound of crickets chirping on most of them, starting with Sam Adams and Sho Dozono.

Going down the ticket to city council seat #1, the seat Sam Adams is leaving to run for mayor, we’ve got more crickets from Chris Smith, John Branam, Charles Lewis and Jeff Bissonnette.

Amanda Fritz wins the prize for actually using the word “gentrification” on her campaign Web site, stating “The most pressing issue is the gap between people who are doing well, and those who are not.”

On to seat #2, being vacated by Erik Sten mid-term, things get a little more interesting. Nick Fish gets a hit on his response to a housing opportunity quiestionnaire, where he states (PDF) “Lower home ownership rates for people of color translates into lost opportunities to create wealth, less stable neighborhoods and leaves minorities more vulnerable to displacement because of gentrification.”

But Jim Middaugh also gets a hit for his “issues” page, where he notes “Portland’s African-American community, with its traditional base in North and Northeast Portland, is determined to thrive in the face of the powerful forces of gentrification and hold together a sense of community.” He also talks a good game about “Keeping Portland Affordable.”

Middaugh is Erik Sten’s chief of staff, and Sten is known for his work on housing. Specifically low-income housing and homelessness, i.e. the very low end of the spectrum. Middaugh, of course, wants to carry on this work, which is commendable. But we need to distinguish between issues of subsidized housing and gentrification. Yes, they’re both pieces of the same puzzle. But my reading of Sten’s policy is that while he’s done great work on the low end, he’s done little to nothing on the issue of preserving affordable housing for the working and middle classes. In fact, he’s been right on board with the development policies that feed gentrification.

Middaugh has shown himself to be in league with the “smart growth” crowd, citing the 300,000 coming residents and the need to continue subsidizing (and otherwise encouraging) high density condo development all over our city.

Maybe I’m being unfair to Middaugh, but I don’t think we should expect any great departure from Sten’s policies, and the proof is in the pudding. I know I couldn’t afford my North Portland house at today’s prices, and I just bought it eight years ago.

Unfortunately, the seat #2 race has been quickly reduced to a two-way between Middaugh and Sten. It’s unfortunate, because Ed Garren has been quite up front about how city policies encourage gentrification. “The current gentrification model encourages persons of lower and moderate means to move to the edges of, or out of the city. The issues involving traditional communities of color in the city relate directly to this issue, and it is a nationwide situation, not just in Portland. The city needs to decide if all neighborhoods in the city are going to offer economically diverse housing, or are we going to continue to ‘red line’ neighborhoods and create policies that favor some groups and discriminate others,” writes Garren in response to the Housing Opportunities questionnaire.

That’s the kind of plain talk I’d like to hear from the other candidates.

Actually, I’d settle for any kind of talk.

Local politics, particularly in a liberal city like Portland, are not a localized version of the national scene. There is not a labor/business split in our governing bodies, for example, and nary a Republican in sight serving in any significant local public office.

The historic split in municipal politics has come between real estate developers, who want to maximize the value of their land by increasing density, and those who have stood in their way: neighborhood preservationists and environmentalists.

Siding with the developers, you often find labor, since commercial real estate development usually means union jobs.

But a funny thing happened on the way to global warming. The developers managed to co-opt environmentalists with the idea of “smart growth.” Without the environmental movement in their way, the developers now have virtual carte blanche to run things as they please.

One of the only constituencies left in opposition to this juggernaut are those who oppose gentrification and favor rent controls, that is, people who are virtually powerless by definition.

There’s also the business constituency, relatively weak in Portland compared to other big cities, which takes issue with using tax revenue to subsidize anything, except maybe parking. But they don’t object to gentrification, since it tends to grow markets for the goods and services they sell.

To be clear, I like the ideas of limiting sprawl, preserving green spaces, and developing housing near employment. But the “sustainable” label has been used and abused beyond recognition in Portland. We’ve significantly over-built condos in the central city, publicly subsidized to the tune of millions of dollars annually with a streetcar system that does not solve any identifiable transportation problem and an aerial tram to no place in particular.

Additionally, the “sustainable development” crew has pushed “skinny lots” in our core residential neighborhoods, and multi-story condo developments in our distributed town centers, like Belmont, Hawthorne, Alberta, and now Interstate and Mississippi. All of this is predicated on the notion that we’ve already maxed out our available housing stock, and must choose between building up or building out.

People who object to having a nine-story condo building towering over their back yards obviously don’t understand that we’re going to have 300,000 new residents in Portland, Real Soon Now.

That’s the canard that’s repeated ad nauseum and without qualification or any sense of irony by the candidates who represent big developers. Oh, they’re coming, whether we like it or not, they assure us, and we better make sure we build up rather than out to accommodate them.

So commercial real estate developers not only get to maximize their land values by increasing density under the cloak of “sustainability,” they’re given significant public subsidy to do so.

And what about the “G” word? Yes folks, “smart growth” is progressively gentrifying every neighborhood in Portland’s residential core. This isn’t very “smart” if you, like me, value the diversity of your neighborhood.

And that brings us to what’s wrong with the Mayor’s race in Portland. You’ve got Sam Adams, unabashedly pushing the big developer’s agenda, and Sho Dozono unabashedly pushing the big business agenda (criticizing Adams for opposing Wal-Mart).

But this is a false dichotomy, since they both essentially represent big money. Neither candidate says “boo” about rent stabilization, preserving affordable housing (as opposed to building it per the big developers’ “smart growth” vision) or preserving the historic quality of our neighborhoods.

Both, of course, are “green” candidates, as is virtually every candidate running for city office (Mike Fahey nothwithstanding). But neither of them seems to have much interest in affordable housing.

At yesterday’s North Portland Candidates’ Forum, Adams went so far as to say North Portland has too much affordable housing, a reference to all the public housing on the Peninsula. Which could be taken as thinly-veiled racism.

It could also be construed as missing the point, since it isn’t just the poor and working poor who struggle with housing prices in Portland, but increasingly two-income, middle class families.

At least in the council races, there are a couple candidates who will speak earnestly about issues of housing and gentrification.

For seat #2, being vacated mid-term by Erik Sten, Ed Garren has been the only candidate to actually talk about rent control. Nick Fish talked about “fixing the roof before putting in a jacuzzi” at yesterday’s forum, which is nice. But Jim Middaugh, Erik Sten’s chief of staff, mostly wanted to remind us of those 300,000 people moving here. (Sure, Middaugh talks a good game on his campaign Web site, but I can’t get over the feeling that it’s just boilerplate. He wanted to talk a lot more about those 300,000 new residents yesterday than the communities displaced by the City Hall business as usual his candidacy represents.)

Likewise John Brannam, running for seat #1, who was the first to intone the 300,000 figure at yesterday’s forum. We all know where Chris “streetcar” Smith stands, of course, so much so that he doesn’t even have to speak of the 300,000 promised ones.

In his Willamette Week endorsement interview, Smith talked of replicating the kind of development supported by the central city streetcar loop on the east side. Yes, folks, condos and streetcars for all your friends! To Gresham with the unwashed masses! Let them ride MAX! Somehow, Smith thinks we can cut our carbon footprint in half by pushing all the po’ folks to the margins of our metro area. Well, maybe he doesn’t really think it through that far. But that’s the upshot of gentrifying our close-in neighborhoods with the kind of development he champions.

Amanda Fritz and Charles Lewis stand out as candidates for seat #1 who want to focus on neighborhoods. Lewis had the audacity yesterday to speak of affordable housing (gasp!), and Fritz has been steadfast in her advocacy for shifting the city’s budget priorities to basic services in the neighborhoods. (I’ve already endorsed Fritz for this seat.)

So our Portland body politic is divvied up into a handful of sometimes-overlapping camps, with an overarching “sustainable” umbrella big enough to offer refuge to all kinds of scoundrels. (“Sustainability” is to Portland politics what patriotism is to national politics.)

Dozono is alone in his big retail fealty, but Sam Adams has good company in the real estate developers’ court with Jim Middaugh and Chris Smith.

Those seeking to preserve the character and livability of neighborhoods, affordable family housing, and communities of color are harder to come by, and they aren’t going to have any mayoral coattails to ride this election season. Ain’t it a shame?

Willamette Week has posted video of their panel interviews of candidates for City Council seats one and four on their Web site.

Randy Leonard is a shoe-in for seat four, but seat one has no incumbent (it is Sam Adam’s current seat).

Willy Week interviewed the candidates en masse, and there are some good exchanges on streetcars vs. sidewalks between Amanda Fritz and Chris Smith. Fritz has made it a top issue for her campaign to fund basic services in the neighborhoods first, and Smith seems to be running on expanding the streetcar city-wide.

Interesting contrast, and it’s also interesting to hear from the other candidates.

Just a hunch, but it would seem WW might just endorse Fritz.

The Portland City Council is in for a big shake-up this year, with the mayor’s seat and two council seats open. Randy Leonard is up for re-election in a third council seat. Only Dan Saltzman’s seat is uncontested.

A crowded field is contending for council seat #1, including Ethos founder and duck boat entrepreneur Charles Lewis and streetcar enthusiast Chris Smith.

We’ve also got John Branam, Development Director for Portland Public Schools; Jeff Bissonnette, of the Citizen’s Utility Board of Oregon; and Mike Fahey, about whom I know nothing (and who does not appear to have a campaign Web site).

But my vote, and the support of this blog, is going to community organizer Amanda Fritz. I like Amanda for a lot of reasons.

• She’s smart, and has unusual attention to policy detail.
• She has advocated tirelessly for transparency and accountability in City Hall.
• She has real skin in the game at Portland Public Schools, and has been willing to speak out to the city council about the shameful inequities in our public schools.
• She has demonstrated a long-term commitment to civic involvement, well before her last council run.
• She is not flashy or slick. She is very down-to-earth and real. What you see is what you get.
• She believes city policy should be focused on the neighborhoods where people live, not on “megabuck shiny projects”. “Let’s pay for the things we need, before we start shopping for things that might be nice but aren’t essential,” writes Amanda on her campaign Web site.

That last point really seals it for me. Portland politics is polarized between two extremes, neither of which serves regular working families.

On the one hand is a powerful, west-side elite that favors high-end condo and business development in our central city core, and all kinds of public subsidies to support it. This gang of land-grabbers supping at the public trough is aided and abetted by a passionately credulous cadre of “new urbanists,” starry eyed idealists who think Portland deserves a place with Vancouver, B.C. as a model city, complete with shiny streetcars looping the inner core, an aerial tram (to nowhere in particular), and more condo stock than we could realistically sell in the next ten years — yet they keep building more. It’s all “green” and “sustainable,” of course.

On the other hand, you’ve got rabid anti-transit libertarians who think everybody in city and county government are communists.

Through the yawning hole between these poles walks Amanda Fritz, talking about focusing the city’s policy on public safety, streets and sidewalks, affordable housing, and parks and community centers in the 95 neighborhoods where real people actually live.

Of the other candidates in the race, Smith and Lewis appear to be the serious contenders.

While I am in favor of mass transit, Smith’s focus on the streetcar seems almost all-consuming (I know he touts his background as a “Citizen Activist,” but his streetcar work is his most visible). This expensive “megabuck shiny project” doesn’t actually solve any real transit problem for the masses (one of its five main goals is to encourage downtown condo development), and costs the city over a million dollars a year to operate. While the city throws good money after bad operating the streetcar to lure high-end buyers to new condo neighborhoods, established neighborhoods go without transportation basics like sidewalks and paved streets.

Lewis seems to be all flash, spending public election money on political theatre filling potholes. He has no serious background in public policy.

In short, Amanda Fritz is the most well-rounded, community-centered candidate running for Council Seat #1. I hope you’ll join me in supporting her campaign and giving her your vote on May 20.

Note: Over on PPS Equity, I’m running more extensive coverage of the city council and mayoral races, including candidate responses to a questionnaire about public schools issues.

Update: If you want an Amanda Fritz yard sign, her campaign will be distributing them this weekend. Call 503-235-2295 or e-mail Robert to request one.

Last month I went up against Republican House District 26 candidate Matt Wingard in the Portland Tribune in a pro – con about charter schools. (Some people think my argument for the greater common good won the debate.)

Today I found a speech Wingard gave to the King City/Tigard Women’s Republican Club yesterday. He’s got some real laugh lines, though I don’t think our suburban friends were laughing.

Wingard doesn’t shy away from bringing up the “negative stories…with details and headlines that are misleading and false,” but doesn’t mention that the central point — that he was convicted of striking his child on the head, leaving a welt — is not disputed.

But let’s not dwell on that. Matt’s an advocate for children in my neighborhood, it turns out: “…I have organized poor, minority parents in north Portland to go down to Salem, and face to face, demand from Democrats on the House Education Committee school choice for their children, even though they are forced to attend low performing schools.”

His weaseling distortion of this charter schools boosterism trip aside (he sure as hell doesn’t care about poor, minority children who want equity in their neighborhood schools), he better not come anywhere near my North Portland kids.

What’s worrisome to me about guys like Matt Wingard, all this literal and figurative child hitting aside, is the distrust of “smart people.”

“I think there is a lack of skilled people in our Party who are willing to step into the arena and challenge the certified smart people and the elected and appointed elites who are running Oregon,” said Wingard.

Is the Republican party declaring war on “certified smart people?” If so, they’ve found their man for House District 26 in Wingard, who has “shown time and again that I am not afraid to stand up to these people.” Why, he even stood up to Eric Sten! (I hate to say we have something in common in having some issues with Sten, but it’s for entirely different reasons.)

One last guffaw was about our mysterious “school district’s funding increases of 20 percent from the state.” I think we’re still waiting to get ours here in Portland.

So who’s the big winner coming out of Iowa? Is it Obama? The Democratic Party? Change Agents? Christian right-wingers? Media consultants? Those-who-dare-to-hope?

I guess it depends on what your definition of “winner” is. America, the perennial nation of winners, is beholden to those who strive for victory – and then achieve it. Only winners matter. So with so much on the line psychically in our country right now, a win could really do us some good. Had you slept through the past year of media coverage and awoken on Tuesday to hear Barack the Blessed’s quasi-bombast from the winner’s podium that evening, you would be forgiven if you had assumed that he had just captured his party’s nomination for the presidency. When his voice soared to capture the heights of our capacity to dream, one could detect a resonant, uvular MLK trill in his speech that seemed directed at those of us who dare to dream his dream (aka South Carolina black voters). Our desperate need for a brand new president has us banking on an image and relying on an age-old political system founded on corporate backing and fealty to Wall Street. These are troubling times, and more than ever, it’s the message that counts. Stated policy initiatives and voting records are mere detritus that crumbles into meaninglessness as the candidates wiggle into our amygdalae and down our brain stems, looking to ignite that sweet glow of righteousness inside of us. Their politically-connected advisors and power-brokers are, along with the minions of the media noise machine, just names on a credit roll too fast for our eyes to discern.

I’d like to propose the one really big winner of the Iowa caucuses: the State of Iowa itself. Not average Iowans by any means, but the various factions, consultants, contractors, political flunkies and partisan luminaries that have had the good fortune to cash in on the record-breaking bonanza of campaign expenditures showered upon the unassuming state. By any estimation, Iowa has in the past year been the beneficiary of a financial fiesta that has dwarfed the take during any of its prior caucus seasons. Much attention has been paid to the intensity of the political circus that Iowans have been subjected to this past year, and there is no question that it has left its mark – if you know someone in Iowa, you know that they will never be the same again. But the din of media voices complaining of Iowa’s outsized role in the presidential selection process (hereafter referred to as Iowa Envy) misses the point entirely when it grumbles about how small, how white, or how just plain middling the state is.

The great American Political RoadShow is a production with an agenda of its own, and challenging outside voices are decidedly unwelcome. To participate in the horse race, you have pay the entrance fee. The front-runners made sure to pay up before they got in, and they continue to pay their dues as the act moves on to New Hampshire. Oh how giddy those pundits, politicos, and prognosticators would be – the ones with a bad case of Iowa Envy – were the RoadShow to premiere in their own backyard. The influence and the cash would be sufficient to motivate any state to protect its first-in-the-nation pork pie status. Who needs a tourist industry when you’ve got millions of dollars of outside money pouring into your tiny state each month for almost an entire year? And all Iowans have to do is “take their coveted role seriously”.

I admit it – I like to hear the words “corporate greed machine” when John Edwards speaks. I like to hear Obama speak of a united America, and I like it when Hillary Clinton characterizes the vice president as Darth Vader. These candidates are all speaking to folks like me when they make these remarks; the money spent on market research is paying off. But what I’d really like to hear from one of them is commentary the likes of which Dennis Kucinich delivered recently on PBS when he fingered the influential Des Moines insurance industry for keeping him out of the highly-visible Des Moines Register debate due to his lone support of not-for-profit universal health care for all Americans. That’s the kind of talk – speaking of brain stems – that really gets me fired up.

So go ahead – put the first-in-the-nation primary contest in your own racially diverse and populous state. You’ll be thrilled with your new status, with your shiny new suit, and with all the attention that the young female voters in your state will receive when they “inexplicably” flock to the cause of the senator from Illinois. All you need is spare hotel room capacity, some evenly distributed Starbucks franchises, and a few Thai restaurants to keep the hordes of media nitwits fed. The rest is gravy. You too can be a winner. Just make sure to call the coin while it’s in the air, because the rest of us will be watching on TV.

Benson is a writer and translator who resides in the Twin Cities.

I never quite know what to say when people ask me about the upcoming presidential election. People are generally well-meaning, but if you know me, you know I haven’t been registered Democrat since the 1984 election (I caucused for Alan Cranston who won me over with his support of the nuclear freeze movement).

So when asked about the current election cycle, I have to assume people want to know what I think of the Democrats. The truth is, I tend to see all of the mainstream candidates, Democrat and Republican, bunched up way to the right of my belief system. Oh sure, there’s Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel, but who really believes they have a prayer?

Anyway, I found this site today that asks you some overly-simplistic questions and matches you up with a candidate.

The questions cover Iraq, immigration, taxes, stem-cell research, health care, abortion, social security, line-item veto, energy, gay marriage, and the death penalty.

My top dog, not surprisingly, was Kucinich, with Gravel as a close second. What did surprise me was that this quiz scored John Edwards the lowest of all Democratic candidates as a match for me, tied with right-libertarian Ron Paul. Which goes to show you how little you can glean from such a simplistic quiz.

For a better view of where I stand in relation to the candidates, I took the slightly more nuanced test at politicalcompass.org. This test will place you on a grid that has the traditional left-right continuum for economics, coupled with a north-south axis for social values, with the top being “authoritarian” and the bottom being “libertarian.” (This may be confusing to some people. The bottom point should be called “civil-libertarian” to make clear the distinction between this and what is known as libertarianism in the US. Ron Paul’s position on the grid is about where most US Libertarian Party acolytes would fall. That is, they are economic libertarians but hold generally moderate social views.)

They provide some context, including placing the 2008 US candidates on the grid. Here’s where I stand:

So you can see the source of my consternation when people want me to discern between Clinton and Obama. They’re both so far away from me, they appear indistinguishable from one another, and barely distinguishable from the mainstream Republicans.

Politicalcompass.org also publishes this chart for reference, with some more meaningful labels on the endpoints:

I’m glad to share the southwest corner with Gandhi. The food’s better over here, for one thing.

When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it, always. — Mahatma Gandhi

Once again, I welcome my colleagues Benson Williams and Antonio Valle del Rio from the US high school hockey capital of Minneapolis-St. Paul. We’re going to save my meta question from part 1 for the wrap-up and get right on to the candidates.

Hillary Clinton

Williams: When I saw her speak in Iowa last week, I noticed the crowd. Lots of women of her generation there. She was emphasizing this… “Anybody else out there who thinks it’s high time for a woman president?” Howls from the masses. I’d love to get excited about a female president. But when I think of her, I just don’t get excited in that way.

Valle del Rio: She tries to please too many; does she have any integrity? That said, I would vote for her.

Himself: I see her as an attempt to extend the Bush/Clinton dynasty. She epitomizes neoliberal economic policy, and hurts the progressive cause. When conservatives label her policies “liberal”, it places truly liberal social and economic policy outside of the debate. Plus, she’s got a bit of a “feminist problem”. That is, feminists aren’t too thrilled with her candidacy. Having ovaries in the White House isn’t the goal; having somebody who cares about women’s issues is.

Barack Obama

Williams: I think he has a better chance of being a change agent than president. A guy who makes people think that anything is possible—sort of. I still think he should stay in the Senate, where he could gradually rack up the kind of respectability and influence that is normally not reserved for politicians with his progressive stripes. But he has the potential to win votes by making people believe that they can transcend their Dick Cheney-hastened mortality by voting for the magical Barack.

Valle del Rio: his name sounds too much like that terrorist guy, what was his name? Anyway, a very charismatic figure, and actually seems to genuinely be real.

Himself: Wait a minute… Obama is progressive? He’s got great people skills. He’s a lot like Bill Clinton in that regard. He really wants people to like him, and he really makes people feel at ease with him. But what about policy? Like all three Democratic leaders, he’s an incrementalist on universal health care, unwilling to take on the insurance industry. And he endorses merit pay for teachers, something school privatization zealots have been pushing for a long time. Charismatic and real yes. Progressive? I don’t think so. I think he’s spending way to much energy convincing the corporate establishment (and white voters) that he’s “safe”.

John Edwards

Williams: It’s good to hear at least one of the candidates (besides Kucinich) use the word “poverty” without ducking underneath a table right after he says it. But I just don’t see him wowing enough voters in this campaign, a campaign in which so many of us are expecting to be overwhelmed, to be saved from these dark years by a deus ex machina (see above comments on Obama). Besides, with Kurt Vonnegut’s passing in April of this year, any chance of an Edwards-Vonnegut ticket has been wiped out.

Valle del Rio: I like the fact that he focuses on poverty, and the fact that he is rich means nothing—all politicians are rich.

Himself: Of the top three, he’s the closest to my values. But I agree with Benson… I don’t see his campaign lighting it up like it needs to. Maybe he’s waiting to pour it on later, but I’m not counting on it. Edwards-Vonnegut? Now that would have been cool!

Joe Biden

Williams: When I saw him speak in front of an Italian restaurant in Iowa last week, I realized again that I really do like the guy a lot. I would like to party with him. I’ve always shuddered a bit at how disclosive he can be in front of a TV camera about the workings of Washington. He knows he’s not going to win. He just wants to earn enough brownie points along the way so that he can drop out and endorse a front-runner, cashing in those brownie points in the process.

Valle del Rio: Didn’t he try this in 1988? Let’s call him the paraphraser without footnotes. I think he is more significant in the senate.

Himself: I don’t have a strong take on Biden’s campaign, but hell yeah, I’d party with him, too.

Christopher Dodd

Williams: Basically same as above, except without the entertainment factor.

Valle del Rio: He’s one of the original DLC centrists, right?

Himself: He represents the core of the milk-toast brigade. A principal author of the train wreck called No Child Left Behind, he had the audacity to issue veiled criticism of Obama for endorsing merit pay for teachers. You can’t have it both ways, Chris. Your education policy stinks.

Mike Gravel

Williams: We should be so lucky as to have about 50 Mike Gravels running…that’s the way it should be. He has the best commercials so far—check out the one on YouTube where he’s standing next to a lake staring into the camera for over a minute, then walks over to water’s edge, grabs a rock, and throws it into the lake.

Valle del Rio: This guy better buy some air time; does anyone know who he is? I don’t have time to Google him (he he).

Himself: Hmmm… I like guys who throw rocks into lakes. I’ve spent a few afternoons with my kids doing just that. He’s got my vote. No, wait! Does he have any policy positions?

Dennis Kucinich

Williams: The fact that there is a true, unapologetic progressive running in this campaign says that such a thing is still technically allowable in this country, in these times. The fact that he has no chance at all in this race tells us everything else we need to know. At least for now.

Valle del Rio: Very intelligent, hard for people to take seriously. Plus, he looks terrible.

Himself: The sacrificial lamb of progressives. Why does he do it? Do we gain anything from his campaigns? I think we probably do. It’s important to keep one member of the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party out in front of the public.

Bill Richardson

Williams: He is running for Vice-President, and he is currently the front-runner. Watch the way he positions himself throughout this campaign. He will attempt to finesse a rather extensive series of policy positions while trying not to make too much of a nuisance of himself.

Valle del Rio: He is a balanced liberal and would be my first choice because of his positions on immigration. He is somewhat overweight, though. What if he had to wrestle Vladimir Putin? Still, he would be my number one choice.

Himself: Yep. He’s definitely thinking Veep. But as far as candidates who have a chance (sorry Gravel and Kucinich), I’d have to get behind him.

Still to come in our Election ’08 Round Table: Dark Horses and Wild Cards. Will Al Gore run? What about third-party challengers like Mike Bloomberg and Ralph Nader? How might that change things? And what about those Republicans? Stay tuned.

I’d like to introduce my good friends Antonio Valle del Rio and Benson Williams, both from the hockey heartland of Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota. But they’re not here to talk about hockey. Oh no. Election ’08 is in full swing out on the prairie, and Benson just returned from a trip to Iowa City where he “happened to casually run into a Joe Biden rally in the Ped Mall on the way back from dinner one night, and then caught the Bill and Hillary show down at the river the next day. The campaigns are really gathering steam there.”

So my first question to these two astute political observers (I answered this one in my intro):

What criteria do you have for endorsing/supporting a Democratic candidate?

Williams: That question would seem to require a clarification up front as to what I might mean when I say “endorse/support” a candidate for president in this country. For me – and I would imagine all of those participating in this forum – this is more complex than it sounds. It reminds me of the polls taken in the lead-up to the Iraq war that purported to show an overwhelming percentage of Americans “supporting” the invasion. At the time I thought: these people aren’t processing this issue anywhere close to the extent necessary to “support” it. All they are doing is going along with it, and in so doing excepting themselves from the responsibility that would naturally be entailed by full-blown support.

Having said that, I’ll most likely end up supporting whichever Democrat that wins the nomination by voting for him/her. In the meantime I ask myself: How can my insistence upon rigorous benchmarks for endorsing a presidential candidate actually have an impact in this Miss America contest? With everyone else judging the candidates on their beauty, poise and evening apparel, what does it matter that I demand from them the admission that our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are fighting an energy war (Kucinich) or the recognition that the entire global economy is hanging by the thread of the dollar as it gradually loses it’s position as the World Reserve Currency (Biden) or the intention to grant all vets diagnosed with PTSD 100 percent VA disability benefits (Gravel). Unfortunately, these kinds of benchmarks go against the forward social motion required to engender large-scale change, and so I will have to be satisfied with the more abstract: in order to garner my endorsement (for now), a Dem candidate must go beyond the analgesic assuaging of our depression, and affirm for us what we all know on some level of consciousness — that we live in a sick, unbalanced society that is poisoning our country and the whole world, and the only way out is to do the one thing that Americans fear doing most – taking responsibility for it.

Valle del Rio: Can I say the most charismatic liar with the most stuffed war chest?

Himself: Hey, you can say whatever you want…. That’s why I invited you, you old sarcastard.

Okay, next question. The Democratic front-runners can generally be described as centrists. We’ve got this sort of illusory diversity, with Clinton representing women (despite her lack of feminist bona fides), Obama representing black America (though he is neither a product of the civil rights movement nor descended from the African slaves who built this country), and Edwards representing working people (though he made his fortune as a trial lawyer). It’s a picture of Republican-style tokenism.

None of them endorses single-payer health care, and of course none of them advocate a departure from neoliberal economic policy. And they’re all about as anti-Bush, anti-war as your average Republican presidential candidate (John McCain notwithstanding). Is there a role for progressive social democrats in the Democratic party? If so, what is it? If not, where do we go from here?

Stay tuned for part 2, and feel free to join the discussion.