If Chewbacca Lives on Endor...

Although a few days ago many were mourning the demise of the Dean campaign, that campaign is far from over. For several days last week the media—intentionally or not—almost assassinate Dean's campaign with a variation on the Chewbacca Defense, which was more like a Chewbacca Indictment and went something like this:

Voters of this supposed America, Howard Dean's supporters would certainly want you to believe that he is a great candidate for president with the best vision for America's future and the best ability to realize that vision, and they make a good case. Hell, I almost supported him myself. But Voters of this supposed America, I have one final thing I want you to consider.

[Roll tape of Dean's post-caucus Iowa speech.] Voters, this is Howard Dean screaming at the top of his hoarse voice. Howard Dean is not a plastic person who has compromised with special interests for decades and missed a majority of his Senate voites. And Howard Dean is not a cipher who's not sure from day to day where his loyalties lie. Now think about it. That does not make sense. Why would Howard Dean, a former governor of Vermont, yell at the top of his hoarse voice to be heard over a cheering, raucous crowd? That does not make sense.

But more important, you have to ask yourself what does this have to do with whether Dean would make a great candidate, and whether he could defeat Bush. Nothing. Ladies and Gentlemen, it has nothing to do with your decision about who to vote for. It does not make sense. Look at me. I'm the media working for a major communications conglomerate that benefits from the most sensational news we can find or create, and I'm talkin' about someone screaming to be heard at a raucous rally. Does that make sense? Ladies and Gentlemen I am not making any sense. None of this makes sense.

And so you have to remember when you're in that voting box deliberating and conjugating the Emancipation Proclamation, does it make sense? No. Voters of this supposed America, it does not make sense. If Howard Dean screamed in Iowa, you must not support Howard Dean.

I know he seems like a terrific candidate, a fresh face with courage and conviction and great ideas and the most inspirational and populist campaign in modern history. But Voters, this is him screaming. Now think about that for one minute. That does not make sense. Why am I talking about screaming when the future of the United States is on the line? Why? I'll tell you why. I don't know. It doesn't make sense. If screaming does not make sense you must indict. Here look at the monkey , look at the silly monkey.

The media never rests.

But hey, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me—we've seen this tactic before, and most of us aren't falling for it this time. Thanks largely to Thursday's New Hampshire debate, followed by the homerun Dean and his wife hit in their interview with Diane Sawyer, Dean's back in the hunt.

Already beginning yesterday morning, Dean's Monday night, post-caucus speech began being referred to by some as only a "memorably loud speech," rather than a "screech" or a "yowl" or whatever. See the speech for yourself, in context, in this video shot from down in the crowd. Also check out Dave Winer's explanation of the speech:

So Dean gets a bit whacky, but after seeing it so many times, the shock value is fading. Taken at face value it wasn't anger, it was a steam-letting, and an attempt to rally the troops, and totally understandable. The press, as usual, is making a big deal of catching a candidate being a human being. But that's what he is. He's not an actor, he's not a commercial, he's not a deodorant, he's not a product, and I'm glad we have a chance to have this discussion. I'm not a Dean supporter (yet, but I'm getting there) and they didn't ask me to say this, but please, it's time for the press to let us have an election, or maybe it's time for us to have an election without them.

So yeah, Dean gave a rousing speech, but I simply don't understand why it was remarkable in any way except to show that Dean and his supporters were undaunted by the results of the Iowa caucus. Look at the definition of campaign—"An operation or series of operations energetically pursued to accomplish a purpose"—and then explain how and why people made such a big deal over this.

But as we put this behind this behind us, it's worth taking a look at the bright sides, and there are many. First, among the many, many audio remixes of the so-called "I have a scream" speech, a few are actually pretty good.

Another bright side: Now that Dean supporters have seen such a vivid example of how the media can twist and blow up any single image and soundbite to destroy a candidate, those who stuck with Dean, and even those who wavered and returned, as well as those who come to support him in the future—all of us have been handed a great lesson in what it will take to win the nomination and the White House. We need not excuse every foible or mistake, but we can't rely on the media to tell us what to think of what happens on the campaign either. Like Winer said, perhaps it's time to have a campaign without the media.

Final bright side: The inspiration of those who didn't let all the spin get to them, but spun right back to turn the speech into a great thing for the campaign. On the official Dean Campaign blog, one person who was at the post-caucus party in Iowa where Dean made his infamous speech describes what it was like to be there (the comment is about a dozen from the top):

I was there, and when I first heard the crowd, I wasn't in the mood. I was tired, I was depressed from watching the returns, and I felt like my effort was for nothing.

And then Howard took the stage, and I started to get more pumped. I remembered why I'd come to Iowa. And I don't care what the pundits say about that yawp. Man, that was what Walt Whitman talked about. "I sound my barbaric yawp from the rooftops of the world." We needed to hear that yawp.

I can't think of anything Howard could've said that would've pleased the crowd, the pundits, and the people watching on tv. I'm glad he spoke to us. He'll be speaking with the rest of the country all this week. That night, he was looking out for the people who'd given their time and energy for him.

And that's why I'm a Dean supporter. On to California!

Posted by [removed] at January 22, 2004 01:35 AM

(The commenter seems to be affiliated with Cyclists for Dean, which is planning a coast-to-coast Ride to Take Back America! Now that is my kind of campaigning. Do I really need legal experience this summer? Can't I just ride my bike across the country with a bunch of Dean supporters? ;-))

From another comment, a little further down in the thread, comes a well-written version of the best take on the speech:

It's our democracy he's fighting for, damn it.  Being emotionally engaged in something of such high stakes is no flaw, in my opinion.  There's a time to be deliberative and detached... and there's a time to be activated and engaged. Among his supporters, after such a blow, he became as impassioned as many motivational speakers I've seen... and more authentically so because it was spontaneous.

At the risk of sounding "intemperate" myself: If you're not angry about what Bush has done to the environment, education, foreign relations, U.S. workers, our judiciary, and on and on; if you're filled with passion to send this administration packing and get the U.S. back on a sustainable and sane path, you're just not paying attention.

Posted 09:43 AM | Comments (6) | election 2004

Grades.

Four out of five are in, and they're fine. Not awful, I don't think, but clearly not great. It's hard to tell; how fine are the distinctions between "bad" and "ok"? I assume some of our profs will be giving us grade distributions sometime soon so we can all see more precisely where we fall in the pecking order, because that matters, right? And, of course, the torts grade remains a mystery, and I suppose it could change the overall outcome significantly downward, but I doubt it. I put in the same sort of performance in that class and exam as in the others, so I assume the results will be similar.

Thanks to everyone for the comments about how grades are working at other schools. My only real concern with the fact that grades come so late at GW (and apparently at many other schools, as well) is that there's so much money on the line. If law school tuition weren't extortionate, it would be a different story; but that's not the world we live in.

In the end, I guess it's no big deal. I'm sure having to wait three weeks into a semester for last semester's grades will end up ranking among the least of the annoyances with which I'll have dealt by the time law school is over. Perspective, right? As Transmogriflaw pointed out in his comment, the real problem is simply the obsession with grades in law school. His analysis, I think, is spot-on—the legal world simply has few other ways to divide and categorize students, so grades take on an inordinate importance. However, it's not that there are no other evaluative measures; what about participation in extracurriculars, performance on skills boards, work and volunteer experience, former career and educational experience, etc? So perhaps it's not a lack of measures, but a culture of quantification that only understands measures when they're reduced to hard numbers. Of course, these difficult-to-quantify measures might not be very good predictors of success in the practice of law, but are grades really good predictors of that?

Posted 08:33 AM | Comments (9) | law school

Grades?

If you're a law student: When did you get your grades?

I ask because at GW, we're going to get our grades today. Yes, today—a full three weeks after the semester began. That seems pretty late to me, and pretty disrespectful on GW's part. It's as if the school is saying: "We know you got almost zero feedback last semester and you'd really like to know how you did so you can start figuring out how to do better, but, well, too bad for you!" But perhaps its standard practice for law schools to wait to release grades until everyone has already accepted their loan checks and made a fairly significant commitment to the spring semester—great business practice! At least we know where these schools' priorities lie.*

Whatever. We'll get our grades today, so yesterday ProfCivPro gave us three reasons to keep grades in perspective:

1. They're 1st semester grades. You've got lots of time to improve.
2. They are only grades. Grades are not an accurate reflection of intelligence, knowledge, or capability; they're simply the only thing we've come up with that's workable.
3. The Big Picture: Keep in mind that a few weeks from now, your grades won't seem very significant, nor are they significant compared with the rest of your life.

All helpful advice. But the trouble is really on point 2. Yes, they're only grades, but do prospective employers realize that? Some do, but I'm sure some don't. Knowing that some employers weed out potential candidates on the basis of GPA alone makes the "grades don't really mean anything" argument a bit less persuasive.

Still, point 2 is absolutely correct: Grades are very close to meaningless. As a teacher, I tried to find ways to avoid giving grades at all, but that wasn't really possible in a school that required me to fill out grading bubble-sheets at the end of every semester, thereby reducing everything my students had done for three months to a single letter. The best I could come up with was a self-grading system that I won't go into here. A lot of very smart people have made a lot of very smart arguments about the evils of grades and have proposed much better systems of evaluation that would give students better feedback, and thereby do more to help them learn. These systems would also give employers or anyone else who cared to look at the evaluations a much better idea of the student's strengths and weaknesses. But such systems are not "efficient," they take time, and in our system, we care less about quality than we do about quantity. Reduce everything to numbers, then we can crunch them and compare them and make fast, simple decisions with zero thought or meaning! Yay!

* "Law school" is perhaps a misnomer; "law business" or "J.D. factory" would probably be more appropriate. Also, I anticipate that anyone wishing to defend GW or law schools who release grades late generally will argue that law profs grade their own exams, and they each have 100 students or more, and it just takes time. All true. But to me that's just another argument for smaller classes and perhaps for longer breaks between semesters.

Posted 06:34 AM | Comments (15) | law school

Organized Resistance

If you're in D.C., check out the National Conference on Organized Resistance (NCOR) happening this weekend at American University. NCOR's brief description of the conference:

The National Conference on Organized Resistance (NCOR) is in its seventh successful year. In years past, this conference has played a significant role in coordinating a dialogue between activist groups, and sparking in-depth discussion of the strategies and tactics of our various social justice movements. This year, NCOR again envisions being a forum for cutting edge discussion for people of all different levels of involvement. Last year, over 1,000 people converged on Washington, DC for a weekend of experience, discussion, planning, and protest. Don't miss this year!

It would be interesting to poll attendees. Who is the presidential candidate of this social justice crowd?

Posted 06:47 AM | Comments (1) | general politics law general law school

The Changing Race

If you had any doubt that the media was dead set against Howard Dean, just look at what they've done with his post-primary speech Monday night—calling it a "yowl" and a "howl" , "overheated" and "screechy." Give me a break! I saw the speech live when he gave it, and I thought it was an energetic and passionate thank-you to his loyal supporters, and an admirable attempt to encourage their continued support. If the media was going to be fair to Dean, all of these stories would recognize that, rather than how "bizarre" the speech was, or rather than characterizing it as yet another "gaffe." The guy probably hadn't slept much in a few days, he was obviously losing his voice, and he just wanted to show the gathered crowd of thousands that his 3rd-place showing in Iowa, his campaign was going to move confidently on to the next primaries. Why can't the media say that? It's not because it's factually untrue; it's because they've chosen another spin. They've declared Dean to be angry and gaffe-prone and unpredictable, and they're making sure their predictions turn out to be true by seizing every opportunity to spin things in that direction and say, "See, I told you so." Now they're already writing Dean's obituary.

Why does this matter? Is this just the boohooing of a disappointed Deaniac? Perhaps. But I'm not the only one who thinks that the Dean campaign has become more than just a campaign for president—it's become a test of whether internet organizing, coupled with grass-roots, on-the-ground organizing, can have any real effect on the status quo in the U.S. If Dean simply gets crushed in the rest of the primaries, there are going to be a lot of people who are going to consider giving up hope in their ability to affect the democratic process in this country. Not least among these people are those in the progressive wing of the Democratic party, many of whom chose not to support Kucinich or to press for some 3rd-party alternative in the hope that their support of Dean would ensure he could beat Bush. They and many other Dean supporters have dedicated massive energy and time and other resources to building Dean's campaign, and it's that kind of public-spirited dedication, that kind of community-building, that kind of hope for a better future that this country really needs. If Dean gets crushed and even a small percentage of those people give up the fight, the U.S. will have lost a lot more than a presidential candidate.

Michael Moore is among those who has recognized this problem. In another somewhat inexplicable message (following his endorsement of Clark, I mean), Moore tells Dean supporters: Don't give up. He's not clear what it is we're not supposed to give up, but the implication is we shouldn't give up hope that a good candidate will defeat Bush or the fight to make that happen. Moore writes:

As one who does not support Dean, I would like to say this to you: DON'T GIVE UP. You have done an incredible thing. You inspired an entire nation to stand up to George W. Bush. Your impact on this election will be felt for years to come. Every bit of energy you put into Dr. Dean's candidacy was -- and is -- worth it. He took on Bush when others wouldn't. He put corporate America on notice that he is coming after them. And he called the Democrats out for what they truly are: a bunch of spineless, wishy-washy appeasers who have sold out the working people of America. Everyone in every campaign owes you and your candidate a huge debt of thanks.

Moore goes on to detail the contributions the Dean campaign and its supporters have made to the election process already. It's good stuff, all true, and worth a look—especially if you're a Dean supporter. Sure, it all seems a little backhanded coming from someone who doesn't support Dean, but, well, Michael Moore is just like that, I guess.

Here's hoping Kerry and Clark will beat each other up in New Hampshire over who's the most kick-ass big bad military man and Dean's new focus will be what Granite Staters want to hear. The debate tonight will be crucial. Dean's never been stellar in the debates as far as I'm concerned, so we'll see how it goes...

I can't even get started with the SOTU address except to agree with this Canadian writer who said it was:

riddled with disingenuous, at times dishonest, formulations as well as logical inconsistencies.

For a little perspective on the heavily saturated spin Bush smirked at us all on Tuesday, read this annotated critique of the speech's foreign policy aspects. If you find other good critiques and analyses of the speech, please point to them in the comments.

Posted 06:41 AM | Comments (4) | election 2004

Thanks

The pace of work at school is heating up and I've been a little busy with the EJF Auction, but thanks to Carey and Adam for their very kind words.

Posted 06:32 AM | meta-blogging

So it begins....

Congratulations to the Johns, Kerry and Edwards, winners by a mile in the Iowa caucuses. Meanwhile, Dean finishes a fairly distant third. Gephardt will bow out today.

The pundits are all asking: What happened to Dean? Can he recover? Dean's response is that he lost support because he was the focus of everyone's fire. Salon's Josh Benson cautions against reading too much into these results:

Tonight's results are going to be imbued with all sorts of meaning over the next week that they may not deserve: Just as the consensus drumbeat for the last several months was that the contests will be Dean's to lose, his rejection by Iowa voters will doubtless be overinterpreted as a sign that he can't win anywhere. He told supporters last night that he would press his campaign in every state of the nation -- and, perhaps more than any other candidate, he has the money and the organization to do so.

About those pundits who are saying that Iowans got cold feet about Dean because, in the final analysis, they worried he wouldn't be able to beat Bush: Perhaps they're right. Of course, an idea like this can quickly become a self-fulfilling prophecy. As Kucinich said to people who said they like him but worry he's unelectable, "I'm electable if you vote for me!"

Speaking of Kucinich, part of Edwards' big gain may have come from Kucinich supporters after the two candidates made a pact to get their supporters to support each other if one of the candidates wasn't "viable" in a particular caucus. Why Kucinich would make a deal like this with Edwards is baffling. Was Kucinich's anti-war rhetoric completely empty?

The silver lining in the Iowa outcome for a Dean supporter is that from now on the media's focus should be on Kerry and Edwards at least as much as it's on Dean. This should mean Dean can spend less time defending himself against charges of being "too angry" or whatever, and spend more time talking about how he plans to improve foreign relations, dramatically decrease U.S. dependence on foreign oil, improve education, provide healthcare for everyone, etc.

The media frenzy over the Iowa outcome has already begun with a story suggesting that the boost from Iowa may be short-lived. Will Kerry and Edwards be able to withstand that "frontrunner" scrutiny? We'll see. I think Edwards is a fine candidate (so does Cicero's Ghost) and he's saying many of the right things, but Kerry worries me more, for reasons related to why Clark bothers me. I suspect a lot of support for Kerry and Clark comes from their military background, and that just seems a poor qualification to vote on. We don't need someone in the White House with more experience fighting other nations and other soldiers , we need someone in the White House with more experience fighting for health care and civil rights and the environment.

One other campaign note: Clark won McGovern's support today, which may or may not be a good thing for Clark in New Hampshire.

Meanwhile, Bush gives his State of the Union address tonight where he'll almost certainly tell more lies and make more empty promises. How can this guy have a 58% approval rating?

Posted 05:35 AM | Comments (7) | election 2004

MLK Jr. & Caucus Day

Unless you've been living under a whole pile of rocks, you probably know that the Iowa caucuses are tonight, the first binding vote in the nation for the Democratic nominee for president. Bitter cold, record turnout, close 4-way race, etc. In the headlines, Dean got some kind words (but no endorsement) from former President Jimmy Carter, and Dean's wife, Judy Steinberg Dean, has joined Dean at some campaign appearances. I swear Dean simply looks happier and more relaxed in the pictures with his wife. Sometimes Dean's smile looks a little forced and awkward, but in most of the pics with his wife, he looks as happy as a kid in a candy store.

Question: Why does this story refer to "Judy Dean" instead of "Judy Steinberg Dean"? Previously I'd always heard the longer name, and sometimes simply "Judy Steinberg," dropping the "Dean" part altogether. Is this something the Dean campaign wanted, or is the press just doing this on its own? Curious.

There's not much more to say about the caucuses tonight that you can't see on every media outlet around. For once I'm not complaining about the media's saturation coverage of an event; the presidential race deserves a media orgy, because what's more important in a democracy than elections?

Musclehead has made it clear that I've done enough whining about the negative coverage of Dean, and I agree—it's not like any of this was unexpected, or that Dean didn't, to some extent, throw down the gauntlet and ask for it. That's why he's my choice, by the way—because he was willing to say bluntly that the cowardice that reigned among Democrats for the past four years was a loser's game. I think Dean may have lost momentum when he began retreating from that blunt, challenging position, and started trying to sound more "moderate" or "reasonable" or whatever. Not to malign Al Gore, but is it any coincidence this shift became really pronounced around the time of Gore's endorsement?

However, the problem with the media is not so much what the negative coverage has done to Dean's campaign, it's what it did to Al Gore's campaign in 2000 and what it will likely do to the Democratic nominee's campaign this fall if something doesn't change. Will the media give Bush a pass on all the negatives of his administration, while beating the Dem's negatives like dead horses? I guess we'll see.

But before that, Musclehead's gone out on a limb with some predicted results, and the Daily Kos is having a contest for predictions. The prize is a set of really cheesy but really cool buttons, which if you really loved me you'd buy for me. ;-) Everyone is still picking Dean as the winner, possibly because he's got such a great "ground game". And regardless of what you think of Dean, the support he's getting in Iowa from people around the country who have travelled there to help is pretty phenomenal. The campaign is calling it the "Perfect Storm" and Blog for America (the official Dean campaign blog) has a fun little anti-FAQ about all those volunteers, answering questions with questions instead of answers:

Your Question: Are all our Perfect Storm volunteers more of those sushi eating, Volvo driving, latte sipping, body piercing, New York Times reading kind of kids?  Our Question: Will any of you dare pose that question to one of the 180TEXANS who arrived Friday on 3 Big Buses?  Will any of us be lucky enough to be there if you do?

Your Question: Would some kid riding the train from California to Philly who encountered 20 Californians on their way to Iowa really be so inspired that he would change his plans and get off the train in the Hawkeye State? 
Our Question: Could we make this stuff up if we tried?

But while the Iowa caucuses are important, today is also the Martin Luther King Jr. federal holiday, meaning lots of people (L and myself included) have the day off, but also meaning it's a good time to give some thought to why we have such a holiday in the first place. According to Julian Bond, a professor at the University of Virginia who worked beside King in the civil rights movement:

"It's a day that we're not working but we do something he would have done -- help clean a neighborhood, work in a soup kitchen. That's the upside."

The downside, Bond said, is the evidence of what people have forgotten. The last five years of King's life -- when he opposed the Vietnam War and advocated the redistribution of wealth so more people could enjoy prosperity -- are hardly mentioned, he said. Memories seem to stop in 1963 at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial, where King said, "I have a dream" and so much more.

"It's as if he gave the speech on Aug. 28 and died on Aug. 29," Bond said. "It's a shame -- we only celebrate half the man."

It's almost painful to think about King's life and work, and then to read President Bush's official statement about the holiday, in which Bush says:

America has come far in realizing Dr. King's dream, but there is still work to be done. In remembering Dr. King's vision and life of service, we renew our commitment to guaranteeing the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all Americans.

Oh yeah, that must be why Bush is fighting so hard to ensure he's got the power to imprison U.S. citizens indefinitely and without charges. Life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, justice for all, etc. Right.

Regardless of who eventually wins the Democratic nomination this year, one thing is certain: That person will do infinitely more than Bush to carry on the kind of work King gave his life for.

Posted 08:40 AM | Comments (6) | election 2004

Bikes, Brakes, and Cold

The recent "arctic blasts" in the northeastern U.S. has brought miserable cold, but it has also revealed a weakness in the "roller brake" on my bike—it simply doesn't work when the temperature falls too far below zero. I have a Bianchi Milano, which I bought on eBay about two years ago, primarily because it's one of the few bikes available with Shimano's Nexus hub. As Shimano describes it:

Nexus is unique in that its internally geared rear hubs and hub roller brakes (or coaster brake) eliminate the need for derailleurs and brake calipers. The result is a more streamlined, cleaner-looking and less complicated bike that requires less maintenance and adjustment. The Nexus bike is just the thing for commuting, fitness cycling, fun riding, or going on errands around town.

See that part about "less maintenance and adjustment"? As far as the hub itself goes, that's absolutely true. In two years of almost daily riding (commuting, mostly), I haven't needed to do anything but keep the chain lubricated. But while shifting still works like a dream, the rear brake just seizes up when the temperature gets below a certain point. Thank goodness the brake gets stuck open, so you can't pull the brake lever; otherwise, the rear wheel wouldn't move at all. When this happens, I can still ride mostly safely because the front v-brakes provide plenty of stoppage, regardless of the temperature—especially with new Kool-Stop Thinline brake pads. But still, having no rear brake is annoying—especially when dumb car drivers decide you don't deserve space on their road and cut you off. (Note to car drivers: Do bikes on city streets annoy you? You annoy the bikers. So there.)

A guy rode up to me the other day at stoplight on a brand new, shiny black Milano. From him I learned that City Bikes in D.C. sells and services the Milano. Maybe they can figure out the brake issue...

Posted 06:58 AM | life generally