Picket lines as political currency
It's becoming really quite the thing among Democratic candidates to brag about or promise to picket somewhere.
Hillary Clinton is the latest to join the ranks, reportedly promising the culinary workers in Las Vegas she'd join the line if they strike. Barack Obama and John Edwards have already said the same thing. Do you think that would get on the TV news, three Democratic presidential candidates walking the lines on the Strip?
And the other night in Chicago, before thousands of union members in Soldier Field, the candidates were standing in line to talk about picketing. There'll be no Sister Souljah moment in that area.
"In the last two years," Edwards intoned, "I have walked 200 picket lines. I have helped organize thousands of workers with 23 national unions."
"I've worked with you," Obama added, "and marched on your picket lines. Everybody in this stadium knows the work I've done with Illinois labor, and that's what I want to do all across the country."
But Joe Biden of Delaware was not to be out-picketed. And he'd had enough of his former Senate colleague from North Carolina.
"For 34 years I've walked with you in picket lines," he told the crowd. "Twenty-five years ago with Rev. Jackson he and I walked picket lines together.... It's not where you've been the last two years. Where were you the six years you were in the Senate? How many picket lines did you walk on? .... The question is, did you walk when it cost? Did you walk when you were from a state that is not a labor state? Did you walk when the corporations in your state were opposed to you? That's the measure of whether we'll be with you when it's tough."
We suspect that was not the last we'll be hearing of picket lines this year.
--Andrew Malcolm
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Andrew Malcolm's immigrant parents repeatedly stressed the importance of active participation in a democracy. Early lessons included learning the alphabetical list of states by watching televised roll calls of national political conventions. That childhood exposure led to a lifelong fascination with politics, including 40-plus years of covering them and a brief stint practicing them as press secretary to Laura Bush in 1999-2000. A veteran foreign and national correspondent, Malcolm served on the Times Editorial Board and was a Pulitzer finalist in 2004. He is the author of 10 nonfiction books and father of four.
Johanna Neuman is a veteran Washington correspondent for both The Los Angeles Times and USA Today, having covered presidents and politics as far back as Ronald Reagan. A former president of the White House Correspondents Assn., she authored a book on media and foreign policy, “Lights, Camera, Wars.” Most recently she was co-author of the 
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