Overview of This Week’s Report: “Global Food Crisis”

Spiking food prices have brought pain at supermarket checkout counters for millions of American families this past year, but in many developing countries, the situation is far more severe:

* In Somalia, people who can no longer afford food in markets try to stave off starvation with a watery soup made from the mashed branches of thorn trees.

* In North Korea, where more than a third of the population is undernourished, the price of rice, the major food staple, soared 186 percent between 2007 and 2008, and overall food prices rose 70 percent.

* In Yemen, where 36 percent of the population is undernourished, wheat prices doubled.

* In tiny Burundi, where about half the population is desperately poor, the price tripled for the landlocked nation’s food staple, farine noir, a mixture of black flour and ground cassava root.

With 2.1 billion people worldwide living on less than $2 a day and another 880 million living on less than $1 a day, price increases of such magnitude have plunged hundreds of millions into malnutrition and starvation.

The price spikes have several causes, including drought and bad harvests in major food-exporting countries, high oil prices that make food more expensive to chemically fertilize and transport and a growing diversion of corn for use as a biofuel.

Some critics also blame the impact of globalization and the continued use of farm subsidies by industrialized nations, which they say undercut prices in poor countries.

With harvests expected to improve and more land being brought into cultivation, prices are expected to drop somewhat next year, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), representing industrialized nations. Nevertheless, experts warn, serious pressure on the world’s food supply poses a long-term threat.

“The era of cheap food may be over,” as rising oil prices drive the cost of food production and transport upward, said Haruhiko Kuroda, president of the Asian Development Bank. Over the past several decades, the world’s food system has been transformed from local production to a global market, where many countries produce large quantities of just a few crops each, mainly for export, while depending on imports for much of their own food supply.

“A core problem is that 35 countries don’t produce enough food to give their residents a 2,000-calorie-per-day diet, even if all their production was being distributed equally” among citizens, says Cornell University Professor of Applied Economics and Management Christopher B. Barrett.

Furthermore, most of the world’s population growth now occurs in the very developing nations that are currently unable to produce enough food to feed themselves, Barrett says.

Readjusting the global food system to avoid future crises will require fundamental rethinking of how and where food is produced and how it’s allocated, analysts say.

“We’re running up against this brick wall called finite resources,” mainly the fertile soil and ample water needed to sustain good harvests, says Randall Doyle, an assistant professor of history at Central Michigan University.

“I always tell [food] producers that this whole thing is not rocket science – it’s far more complicated,” says Jerry L. Hatfield, supervisory plant physiologist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Soil Tilth Research Laboratory in Ames, Iowa. To manage water resources successfully, for example, “you have to look at the whole landscape.”

“Feeding 6 billion people is really hard,” says Curt Ellis, a filmmaker in Portland, Ore., whose documentary on American farming, “King Corn,” aired recently on PBS. “I don’t think we’ve figured out the right way to do it.”

“We’ve got to increase the supply,” says Mark Alley, a professor of agriculture at Virginia Tech and president-elect of the American Society of Agronomists.

That is especially difficult “in Europe, the United States and Australia, where our ability to exponentially increase food production is quite limited,” says Doyle. This means that the most attention must be spent on increasing agriculture yields in developing countries, especially in Africa, where agriculture is least advanced, he says.

However, development experts say, there’s no consensus on how future farming should look – what balance should be struck between large-scale industrial farming for export and smaller farms that produce food for local consumption.

“There’s no consensus in the global development community about agriculture,” says Peter Gubbels, vice president for international programs at World Neighbors, a nonprofit development organization in Oklahoma City that helps poor farmers in developing countries become self-supporting. Nevertheless, “there are growing movements in every country” to return to more local production, he says. “Some call that food sovereignty, and now we’re even beginning to see the U.N. and the World Bank” talking about it.

The food crisis has sparked international tension over the rich diets enjoyed by industrialized nations and the fear that, as developing countries add more animal products to their menus, food crises will increase.

“There’s still plenty of food for everyone, but only if everyone eats a grain and legume-based diet,” said Peter Timmer, a fellow at the Washington-based Center for Global Development. “If the diet includes large . . . amounts of animal protein (not to mention biofuels for our SUVs), food demand is running ahead of global production,” he said.

In India, the “middle class is larger than our entire population,” said President George W. Bush in May, and “when you start getting wealth, you start demanding better nutrition and better food,” including meat, which increases global food demand and “causes prices to go up.”

But Indians reacted with outrage to Bush’s implication that their diets have fueled food-price spikes. “Bush is shifting the blame to hide the truth,” said Devinder Sharma, chair of the New Dehli-based Forum for Biotechnology and Food Security. “We all know that the food crisis is an outcome of the American policy of diverting huge land area from food to fuel production,” under a congressional mandate to increase use of biofuels, mainly corn-based ethanol.

While greater consumption of meat in developing countries is a long-term trend, it’s not a factor in current price spikes, says Brian Wright, professor of agricultural and resource economics at the University of California at Berkeley. For example, he says, Indians consume only 37 eggs a year per person, and “meat consumption is almost not on the charts.”

Other analysts argue that developing countries’ farm sectors have been crippled because the United States and other wealthy nations shut out poor nations’ farm exports while subsidizing their own farmers to sell abroad below cost.

“The U.S. and the European Union in particular have preached free markets but have been in blatant disregard” of trade rules, which they repeatedly tweak to their own advantage, says Thomas Dobbs, a professor emeritus of economics at South Dakota State University in Brookings. “We produce too much of the wrong kind of thing,” then “dump it on Third World markets and remove [those countries’] incentive for local production,” he says.

But many U.S. policy makers hotly defend the subsidies. By and large, the United States has not constructed overwhelming trade barriers against agricultural products, said former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Ann M. Veneman. U.S. farm subsidies “haven’t changed market access into this country. At least 91 percent of African produce comes into this country duty free.”

Addressing these contentious issues will be difficult because “the poor are voiceless,” says Cornell’s Barrett. “The loudest and often the shrillest voices are those who aren’t paying attention to the billion or so people who are living on a dollar or so a day.”

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Coming Up in CQ Researcher

Global Food Crisis

Food prices have spiked around the world over the past year, bringing hunger and unrest to many developing countries, along with pain at the checkout counter for lower-income American families. In North Korea, for example, where 35 percent of the population is undernourished, the price of the major food staple, rice, soared 186 percent between 2007 and 2008, and overall food prices rose 70 percent. With 2.1 billion people living on less than $2 a day and 880 million living on less than $1 a day, such price increases may plunge hundreds of millions into malnutrition and starvation. Drought in food-exporting countries, high oil prices that make food transport pricey, and a growing diversion of corn for use as a biofuel all play roles in the price spike. The crisis has sparked international tensions, including disgruntlement over wealthy nations’ meat-heavy diets, which take many more resources to produce than grain- or legume-based diets.

By Marcia Clemmitt


Politics and Race
When Barack Obama was born, in 1961, people with skin his color were denied the right to vote in parts of the United States. Now, in the weeks leading up to the late-August Democratic convention, poll data show him running virtually even with the presumptive Republican nominee, war hero Sen. John McCain of Arizona. The Illinois senator did win a tough primary contest, but lost key races marked by significant race-based resistance, especially among some white working-class voters. Obama is trying to rise above America’s racial divide, pointing proudly to both sides of his mixed ancestry. Leading Republicans argue that political differences alone – not race – will decide the general election, but some Democrats scoff at the claim, even while arguing that prejudice in the United States has eroded enough for Obama to win.
By Peter Katel


Human Rights in China
As the curtain rises in August on the 2008 Summer Olympics in the Chinese capital of Beijing, not only the world’s best athletes but also China’s human-rights record will be on display for all to judge. Nineteen years after its violent suppression of protesters in Tiananmen Square, China is trying to present a new face to the world that showcases its hypersonic economic growth and embrace of what it calls the “rule of law.” But human-rights advocates say that behind the sheen of Chinese progress and prosperity lurk repression and brutality that have grown worse – not better – with the approach of the Beijing games. The Communist Party of China continues to stifle dissent, trample basic freedoms of speech, religion and assembly and commit or abet other abuses that make China one of the world’s worst human-rights offenders, they argue. Chinese government officials say their nation has made huge strides on the legal and human-rights fronts and that the West has no business interfering in China’s internal affairs.
By Thomas J. Billitteri

In the News: Obama Rejects Public Financing

Sen. Barack Obama told supporters on June 19 that he will not accept public financing for his presidential campaign. The decision means he will forgo more than $80 million in public funds. In exchange for public funds, candidates agree to a cap on the amount of money that can be spent on campaigns. While he says he supports public financing, Obama said the system as it currently stands is broken and would put him at a disadvantage against Sen. John McCain, his likely Republican opponent. Obama repeatedly broke fundraising records during the Democratic primary season, raising more than $270 million.

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In the News: Flooding Threatens More Midwest Levees

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has warned that four or five additional levees in the St. Louis area could be breached as a result of Mississippi River flooding. About 11 levees have already been breached in the area since flooding began in Iowa and Missouri. Overflowing waters already have destroyed fertile farmland and prompted evacuations by residents in both states. National Guard troops have been deployed to work alongside 300 prisoners and hundreds of residents in sandbagging and stabilizing the threatened levees. Two dozen people have been killed and 148 have been injured in the flooding, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

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Overview of This Week’s Report: “Transition to Digital TV”

Wilmington, N.C., may rank 135th among the nation’s television markets, but it will be getting outsized attention in September when the city’s four full-power TV stations become the first in the country to pull the plug on traditional broadcasting and go all-digital.

The vast majority of viewers in the Cape Fear coastal region will hardly notice when the four stations stop sending out signals composed of analog, or continuous, electromagnetic waves at noon on Sept. 8 and begin transmitting only in digital “bits” – ones and zeroes. But local broadcasters and cable systems, electronics dealers and federal communications policymakers are working hard to make sure that viewers with older TV sets and no cable or satellite service know what to do to make sure the screens on their non-digital sets do not suddenly go dark.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) picked Wilmington as the guinea pig for the much-ballyhooed, long-delayed switch to digital television now scheduled nationwide for 11:59 p.m. on Feb. 17, 2009. The change holds the promise – already being realized in many markets – of clearer pictures, better sound and more programming.

The change also moves TV stations from a coveted part of the electromagnetic spectrum to a smaller band, freeing considerable airspace for wireless communications and public safety. The federal government’s auction for a major portion of the released spectrum in March fetched more than $19 billion, mostly from established wireless carriers (mainly Verizon and AT&T) with yet-to-be-unveiled plans for a new generation of broadband communications services.

Broadcasters, however, have faced and are still facing a host of operational problems in getting ready for the change – along with a price tag put at more than $5 billion for technological and operational upgrades. Some of those costs are for equipment and studio improvements needed for high-definition television (HDTV), the high-resolution video technology that – because of the extra bandwidth required – is impractical to broadcast on analog.

The estimated 15 million to 21 million consumers without digital TVs or cable or satellite service – around 15 percent of TV households – are also facing a modest cost. Most will have to buy a converter box to change the over-the-air digital signal to an analog signal compatible with their older set. The converter boxes retail for around $50 to $70, but the federal government is offering coupons worth $40 toward the purchase price.

“It’s a massive undertaking,” says Kathleen Abernathy, a former FCC commissioner who now practices communications law in Washington.

FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin calls the transition “a historic moment” while also stressing the “daunting” nature of the change. Testifying before the Senate Commerce Committee on April 8, Martin said the commission had completed new channel assignments for TV stations and is monitoring construction of post-transition facilities. He also cited surveys showing heightened consumer awareness of the transition, but with some number – anywhere from 20 percent to 35 percent of Americans – still uninformed about the change. “We still have more work to do,” Martin said.

For their part, broadcasters are also generally upbeat about preparations for the Feb. 17 switch. “It’s going really well,” says Shermaze Ingram, senior director for media relations at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB). More than 90 percent of stations nationwide are ready for the transition, Ingram says. NAB surveys found that consumer awareness more than doubled from 38 percent in early 2007 to 90 percent this spring.

Consumer groups are less confident about how the transition is going. “I don’t know nor does anyone else,” says Andrew Schwartzman, president of Media Access Project, a Washington-based public interest advocacy group. “I hope for the best. I’m more anxious than most. We’re really not going to know how good or how bad it is until next February.”

“Anybody in the industry will say things are going well,” says Philip Swann, who tracks the high-definition TV industry on his blog, TVPredictions.com. “When you look at the statistics and listen to the concerns expressed by various congressional leaders, you get a different story.”

Joel Kelsey, a policy analyst with Consumers Union, says the group’s survey found “many, many misconceptions” among TV viewers. “Awareness has significantly increased,” Kelsey says. “I’m not sure how much understanding has increased.”

In Wilmington, retailers are scrambling to stock store shelves with converter boxes following the joint announcement of the pilot project by FCC and local officials and local broadcasters on May 8. “It’s definitely increased sales,” says Al Pearce, manager of the Circuit City store in Wilmington. “Most people are trying to get converter boxes ahead of time so that they don’t have to deal with the rush after.”

“People call panicked that their TVs aren’t going to work,” says Larry Van Zomeren, a telephone sales operator at the local Best Buy outlet. “We have to tell them that if you have cable or satellite you’re covered, and if you bought a TV in the last four years you’re probably covered. Once people find that out, they usually calm down.”

For their part, Wilmington broadcasters say they are glad to have been asked to be a test market for the transition and eager to get on with it. “It’s time to get it done,” says Gary McNair, general manager of WECT Channel 6, the NBC affiliate.

“Quite frankly, I’ll be happy the sooner it’s over,” says Constance Knox, general manager of WILM Channel 10, the CBS affiliate. “I can be worried in January, or I can be worried in August. While the rest of the country is sweating bullets in January, we will have taken care of it.”

In addition to permitting better image and sound quality, the switch to digital will allow broadcasters to transmit multiple “streams” of programming – “multicasting” their existing, primary channel along with one to five others. Broadcasters in many markets are already multicasting. Many commercial stations have added 24/7 local weather channels, while public television stations are broadcasting additional educational, travel, nature and public affairs programming.

Wilmington broadcasters are moving slower in providing viewers with new programming. WECT has added a weather channel, but the other three stations – WILM, ABC affiliate WWAY and Fox affiliate WSFX – are not yet multicasting. WSFX tried an all-music channel, but dropped it because the channel “didn’t really produce the [hoped for] revenue,” according to General Manager Thom Postema.

The scheduled Sept. 8 switch in Wilmington has one distinctive problem: The change is due to occur at the height of the Atlantic Coast hurricane season. Broadcasters and local officials have two concerns. Any viewers who fail to make their older sets digital-ready by the scheduled date will be unable to receive emergency information from TV stations. And most consumers are unlikely to buy converter boxes for smaller, battery-operated TVs, which would be essential in the event of a power outage.

To guard against any communications outage, Mayor Bill Saffo says the FCC is promising to postpone the switch if the region faces an actual hurricane threat at the time. In addition, the public television station serving the region, WUNC in Chapel Hill, will continue broadcasting in analog for the time being.

Saffo says he is pleased so far with the FCC’s work on the transition, but he stresses that the agency “must invest the resources locally” to make the switch run smoothly. “We anticipate there will be problems,” he adds.

Nationally, a market-research firm is warning that digital TV signal coverage may be more limited in some areas than broadcasters and the FCC are anticipating – disadvantaging some viewers using antennas. Their solution, says the Los Angeles-based market-research firm Centris, may be to install costlier roof-top antennas or to shift to cable or satellite service. Broadcasters and consumer-electronics manufacturers dispute the study.

Meanwhile, the broadcast and cable industries are in a high-stakes standoff over cable systems’ obligation to carry local TV stations in the digital era. Broadcasters say the federal “must-carry” law, enacted in 1992, should be interpreted to require cable systems to carry all of a digital broadcaster’s channels, not just its existing, primary channel. “Why would we have a policy that discourages those additional channels from being carried on cable?” asks Donald Donovan, president of the Association for Maximum Service Television, an association of major broadcasters that has been a prime mover in advocating and advancing digital TV.

The cable industry says the issue should be left up to negotiations between local broadcasters and local cable systems. “We don’t believe that a government mandate is either necessary or called for,” says Bruce Dietz, a spokesman for the National Cable Television Association (NCTA).

So far, the FCC has sided with cable on the issue. With one exception, the commission also has declined so far to adopt recommendations from media-access advocates to expand public interest obligations on broadcasters on the new digital channels. In the one exception, the FCC voted in 2004 to extend the existing requirement for a minimum of three hours of children’s programming to each digital channel.

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Overview of This Week’s Report: “Campaign Finance Reform”

Sen. John McCain has faced withering criticism during his rise to presumptive GOP presidential nominee, but one barb stands out: condemnation by conservatives in his own party for his role in the eponymous McCain-Feingold law, which sought to curb the influence of money in political campaigns.

Reform advocates hail the 2002 law, which in part cracked down on so-called soft money – unregulated contributions to political parties – as an incomplete but welcome step toward fixing a broken campaign finance system. Critics, on the other hand, view the law as a misguided assault on free expression.

“For a lot of conservatives,” interviewer Chris Wallace of the Fox News channel told the Arizona senator last fall, campaign finance reform is “your original sin.” An unapologetic McCain said, “If anybody thinks that we need more special-interest money in Washington, I’d like to meet them.”

The exchange was a small hint at a much bigger ideological contest over campaign finance regulation, one that is putting not only the McCain-Feingold law to the test this year but is shaking up a political reform movement that stretches back more than three decades to the dark days of the Watergate era.

And it’s not just McCain who is challenging the tradition of raising money from special interests. In early June, right after becoming the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama – who frequently tells supporters Washington lobbyists “won’t run my White House . . . when I am president” – made history by announcing that the Democratic National Committee would no longer take contributions from federal lobbyists or political action committees. The new policy was an extension of the rules he had set for his own campaign last year.

Obama clearly is planning to try to compete with McCain for the “reformer” title on campaign finance. But despite their rhetoric, both men have been accused of accepting special-interest money, and several of McCain’s top advisers had to leave the campaign after reports of their ties to lobbying and special interests.

In addition to the controversies over special interests, the world of campaign finance regulation is confronted by several other challenges:

* The McCain-Feingold law faces an uphill battle in the Supreme Court, where a conservative majority has already chipped away at it, and new cases are in the wings. The law – officially the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, or BCRA (pronounced “bick-rah”) – survived a 2003 Supreme Court challenge over free speech and other issues. But since then the court’s majority has shifted to the right. That shift concerns reform advocates, who fear a basic tenet of campaign finance regulation – that it is constitutional to limit campaign contributions – could be at risk.

* The system of public funding for presidential campaigns, begun in the 1970s and paid for with a $3 voluntary checkoff on income-tax forms, is teetering. Critics say the system is grossly underfunded and needs updating if it is to be effective in an era of long primary seasons and expensive media campaigns. Democratic nominee Obama is poised to be the first major-party presidential candidate to forgo public financing for a general election since the system began in 1976.

* The Federal Election Commission, charged with enforcing campaign finance laws, was without a quorum and paralyzed during this year’s campaign because of partisan bickering over appointments. The deadlock has spurred debate about the best way to regulate money and politics in the future.

One positive development has occurred, however: Spurred partly by McCain-Feingold and the shortcomings of the public-funding system, candidates are turning more then ever before to grassroots donors making small contributions. This year’s three leading presidential contenders – Obama, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., and McCain – raised nearly $200 million in contributions of $200 or less through April 2008, according to the Washington-based Campaign Finance Institute.

The swirl of issues surrounding campaign finance is complex and volatile, and BCRA is in the eye of the storm. McCain co-sponsored the law with Sen. Russ Feingold, a liberal Wisconsin Democrat, in a hard-fought struggle in Congress. For more than 50 years corporations and unions had been prohibited from making political contributions and expenditures but were nevertheless funneling millions of dollars into federal elections via soft-money donations and sham issue ads.

BCRA had two chief aims. One was to stanch the flood of unlimited and virtually unregulated “soft” money flowing to national political party committees, some of which ended up going to individual campaigns. Before BCRA, corporations, labor unions and wealthy individuals were fonts of such largesse, which politicians themselves sometimes solicited from donors with business pending before the government.

By most accounts, BCRA stopped the geyser of soft money to the parties, but critics say it did nothing to reduce the overall amount of special-interest dollars washing through politics via nonprofit groups organized under Section 527 of the tax code, and other avenues.

BCRA’s other main goal was to curb what some saw as abusive “electioneering communications” – partisan attack ads thinly disguised as “issue ads” that shadowy corporate and union groups broadcast in the weeks and days before elections.

But a year ago, in a case involving ads run by the advocacy group Wisconsin Right to Life, a conservative majority led by Chief Justice John Roberts, appointed to the court in 2005, sharply undercut that provision. The court said unless the ads explicitly urged people to vote for or against a particular candidate, censoring the ads violated the constitutional guarantee of free speech.

While the full impact of the ruling is not likely to be known until this year’s general election draws nearer, some expect a cascade of so-called issue ads paid for by nonprofit political advocacy groups.

Another part of BCRA was before the court this spring: a provision widely known as the “Millionaire’s Amendment,” which lets opponents of wealthy, self-financed House and Senate candidates accept more in contributions than the law normally allows. Supporters of the provision say it levels the playing field in congressional races. But critics say it infringes on the free-speech rights of self-funded challengers and unfairly protects incumbents.

Legal issues aren’t alone in shaking the campaign finance ground this year. Tectonic shifts also are changing how candidates shoulder the multimillion-dollar cost of running their campaigns, and the public-financing system is at the center.

In the primaries, the federal public-financing system matches the first $250 in contributions from individual donors, but candidates must agree to stick to national and state spending limits. Critics argue the system is inadequate, not only because the amount available for primaries – about $42 million this year – has not kept pace with campaign costs but also because the money isn’t available early enough in an election cycle to help serious candidates mount effective campaigns.

In the general election, candidates who accept public financing must forgo private contributions, and the amount they can receive – $84.1 million in this year’s general election – can easily be eclipsed by both campaign costs and the amount candidates may be able to raise on their own.

“It’s underfunded,” says Jay Mandel, an economics professor at Colgate University who has studied the system. “It was indexed to 1976. In real terms, campaigns have become much more expensive than that.”

Obama and Clinton opted out of public financing for the primary season. McCain abandoned it in the primary but has increasingly indicated he will use it in the general election. The system is “creaky,” Obama has said. Former Democratic congressman Bob Edgar, president of the liberal advocacy group Common Cause, says while the system is not dead yet it’s “on life support.”

With McCain-Feingold putting a squeeze on soft money and the public-financing system collapsing, it’s not surprising that candidates are turning more and more to small donors for financial help.

To be sure, big donations still rule. In this year’s primaries, donations of $200 or less made up only about a third of total fundraising, about 7 percentage points more than in the comparable period in the 2004 presidential race, according to the Campaign Finance Institute (CFI). Under BCRA, individual donations per federal candidate are capped in 2008 at $2,300 for the primaries and separately at $2,300 for the general election.

Even though large contributions remain the lifeblood of campaigns, however, small donors are emerging as one of the big stories of the 2008 race. Obama, for example, culled $121 million in donations of $200 or less from January 2007 through April 2008, compared with $88 million in contributions of $1,000 or more, according to the CFI.

And many of those small contributors went to work as campaign volunteers, staffing phone banks and staking yard signs. “The most healthy aspect of the small-donor phenomenon,” says CFI Executive Director Michael Malbin, is “people who tend to do more than just give.”

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This Week’s Report: “Dealing With the ‘New’ Russia”

by Roland Flamini, June 5, 2008

Will U.S.-Russian relations improve under Medvedev?

Winston Churchill once famously called Russia “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” Viewed from Washington, or any Western capital, Churchill’s observation still rings true in today’s post-Soviet era. On May 7, Dmitry Medvedev became Russia’s third president. But no one knows how much clout he’ll exercise, given that he appointed his powerful predecessor, Vladimir Putin, as prime minister, a post that until now has been only marginal. Medvedev vows to fight corruption, strengthen the judicial system and reduce the vast country’s bloated, entrenched bureaucracy, but so far his power base remains a mystery, as does his future relationship with Putin. Also a mystery: who the next U.S. president will be and how he will deal with the Kremlin’s new power-sharing arrangement.

  • Can Medvedev be more than a surrogate for Putin?
  • Are the West and Russia heading for a new Cold War?
  • Does Putin have legitimate grievances with the Bush administration?
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Coming Up in CQ Researcher

Campaign Finance Reform
As the 2008 presidential contest approaches, the campaign-finance system is in upheaval. Six years after Congress passed the landmark Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act to help curb the influence of unregulated “soft” money in politics, the so-called McCain-Feingold law is facing court challenges and persistent claims that it infringes on free-speech rights. Meanwhile, the system of public funding for federal campaigns is teetering, and Democratic frontrunner Barack Obama is poised to be the first major-party presidential candidate to bypass it in a general election. The Federal Election Commission, charged with enforcing the nation’s campaign-finance laws, has been paralyzed because of partisan bickering. And spurred partly by the effects of McCain-Feingold and the shortcomings of the public-financing system, candidates have been turning more and more to small donors, who are responding in unprecedented ways.
By Thomas J. Billitteri


Digital Television
After years of delays, the nation’s full-power television stations are facing a deadline of Feb. 17, 2009, to switch from traditional analog broadcasting and go all digital. Digital TV promises viewers better-quality pictures and sound. The switch also frees up valuable room on the electromagnetic spectrum for wireless communications. Broadcasters will be able to offer more programming and to match the digital signals of subscription cable and satellite services. But viewers with older TV sets and no cable or satellite connection have to buy special converter boxes to continue receiving most over-the-air channels after the switch. The government is offering coupons to help viewers pay for the boxes, but many people are still confused. And some stations may have reduced coverage with digital signals. Meanwhile, public-interest groups complain that broadcasters are getting a financial windfall without any new public-interest obligations.
By Kenneth Jost



Global Food Crisis
Food prices have spiked around the world over the past year, bringing hunger and unrest to many developing countries, along with pain at the checkout counter for lower-income American families. In North Korea, for example, where 35 percent of the population is undernourished, the price of the major food staple, rice, soared 186 percent between 2007 and 2008, and overall food prices rose 70 percent. With 2.1 billion people living on less than $2 a day and 880 million living on less than $1 a day, such price increases may plunge hundreds of millions into malnutrition and starvation. Drought in food-exporting countries, high oil prices that make food transport pricey, and a growing diversion of corn for use as a biofuel all play roles in the price spike. The crisis has sparked international tensions, including disgruntlement over wealthy nations’ meat-heavy diets, which take many more resources to produce than grain- or legume-based diets.
By Marcia Clemmitt

In the News: Headscarves Banned at Turkish Universities

Turkey’s Constitutional Court has upheld a ban on wearing Muslim headscarves at the nation’s universities. The ruling is a setback for Turkey’s ruling party – the Islamic-oriented AK party – which supported a decision by parliament earlier this year to allow headscarves on the grounds that religious freedom is essential to keeping the country a secular state. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan says the ruling is an unfair denial of individual rights and religious liberty in a nation where two-thirds of women cover their heads. The Constitutional Court banned headscarves from universities in 1989, and it is still illegal for women in the public sector to wear them, but the regulation is often ignored.

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In the News: Obama Clears Threshold for Nomination

Illinois Sen. Barack Obama has secured enough delegates to become the presumptive Democrat nominee for president, finally defeating New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton after the completion of all the party primaries. A late flurry of superdelegate endorsements helped Obama clear the required 2,118-delegate threshold, along with better than expected results in the South Dakota and Montana primaries. Clinton is expected to suspend her campaign and endorse Obama against presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain of Arizona. Obama has formed a committee to select his vice presidential running mate. Some names that have been mentioned include Clinton, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and Virginia Sen. Jim Webb.

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In the News: Suspected Terrorist Asks to Be Martyred

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has told a U.S. military judge that the wants to become a martyr for his role as a mastermind in the Sept. 11 attacks. During his arraignment, along with four co-defendants, at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Mohammed told the judge, Marine Col. Ralph Kohlmann, that the wished to dismiss his attorneys and plead guilty. Under Islamic law, Muslims are prohibited from accepting attorneys. The defendants – all accused al Qaeda operatives – are being arraigned for their alleged role in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and the Pentagon, which, along with a hijacked plane that crashed in Pennsylvania, killed nearly 3,000 people. It is the first time all defendants have been together since their arrests in 2002 and 2003.

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Overview of This Week’s Report: “Dealing With the ‘New’ Russia”

When Russian voters went to the polls to elect a new president on March 2, the outcome was hardly in doubt. Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, 42, is both genuinely popular and had been picked by the even more popular incumbent, President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. Indeed, Medvedev garnered 72 percent of the votes. “It was not really an election, it was an appointment,” observed Fraser Cameron, director of the European Union’s Russian Center, expressing a widespread Western view. Medvedev was inaugurated on May 7 and immediately nominated Putin – barred by the constitution from serving a third term – as prime minister at the head of his United Russia party government.

Medvedev has defined Russia’s new leadership structure as “a single team” that would “be able to solve the most difficult and large-scale tasks.” Political commentators in Moscow are calling the partnership a diarchy, or a government by two joint leaders. But finding the right label is a lot easier than figuring out how the power-sharing arrangement will work in practice.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the position of prime minister has been largely administrative and no threat to the presidency, but Putin has already indicated that he will broaden its political scope.

Medvedev, on the other hand, has never held elected office and has spent most of his career in Putin’s shadow as a trusted deputy, so the most likely scenario seems to be that Putin will continue to dominate the government. If public opinion polls are to be believed, this sits well with the majority of Russians. According to surveys, more than 80 percent expect Putin to continue as chief guide and arbiter of the nation’s fate. More than 50 percent would be happy to make him president for life.

Yet Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of the Moscow-based Russia in Global Affairs magazine, says things may not be that clear-cut. Two-headed power is without precedent in Russia – never mind that, ironically, the double-headed eagle was for centuries the Russian imperial symbol.

“The Russian political tradition is to have one single leader – one czar,” Lukyanov observes. “Now we will get two centers of power, which is extremely unusual. If anyone tells you he knows how the system is going to work, don’t believe it.”

Meanwhile, with the U.S. presidential election looming, time is running out for any significant improvement in the U.S.-Russian tension that has developed during the Bush administration. Still, President George W. Bush telephoned Medvedev on March 4 to express the hope – in the words of a Medvedev spokesperson – that “the two [leaders] can establish a close working relationship that will help them deal with important world issues.”

A working relationship is what Bush no longer seems to have with Putin. In 2001, President Bush said he looked Putin in the eye and saw a man who was “straightforward and trustworthy.” But it has been downhill from there.

“In 2001 the Russians thought they were entering into a new strategic alliance [with the United States] against global terrorism, “says Michael McFaul, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C. When the Bush administration sought to establish military bases in Uzbekistan and other former Soviet satellites in Central Asia to support a U.S. attack on al Qaeda in Afghanistan, Putin agreed. But when Bush turned on Iraq, Putin strongly opposed the invasion.

Relations between Washington and the Kremlin continued to worsen, with each side blaming the other for the deterioration and some experts warning that further worsening could lead to a new Cold War. “Now, relations are the worst in 20 years,” says McFaul. “The central belief of Russian foreign policy is: If it’s bad for the United States, it’s good for Russia.”

The contours of U.S.-Russian differences have emerged in disagreements over Iran’s nuclear ambitions, U.S. support for Kosovo’s independence, efforts by Ukraine and Georgia to join NATO and construction of gas and oil pipelines in the region. Moreover, Bush and top administration officials have lectured Putin on human rights violations by a presidency “based on the uncontested primacy of the top executive, with controlled politics and a growing intolerance towards public dissent, let alone political autonomy,” as Washington Post columnist Masha Lipman wrote from Moscow early this spring.

Some Russian analysts advance the argument that Putin’s autocratic rule – also known as “Putinism” or “managed democracy” – was necessary to stabilize the country. Says Veronika Krasheninnikova, director of U.S. operations for the Council for Trade and Economic Cooperation and author of a recent book (in Russian) on U.S.-Russian relations. “Putin is putting order where there was chaos: The collapse of the Soviet Union had destroyed the state in every function.”

Meanwhile, Putin charges that the Bush administration has aggressively moved to encircle Russia with military bases, install missiles on its borders, topple allied regimes in Central Asia and incite political upheaval in Moscow through U.S.-backed pro-democracy groups.

Arguably the most contentious single issue between Washington and the Kremlin is the Bush administration’s plan to install an anti-missile defense system in Eastern Europe with the long-range missile interceptors deployed in Poland and a tracking radar system in the Czech Republic. Bush says the missiles are needed to protect the West against possible nuclear attack from Iran or North Korea.

To remove legal obstacles to the system, the Bush administration in 2002 withdrew from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM), which prohibited missile defense systems in the region. Putin calls U.S. concerns over Iran overblown and complains that the proposed missile shield “will work automatically with the entire nuclear capability of the United States” functioning as one unit. The missile system also will trigger “a new arms race,” Putin adds, since it will force Russia to update its own antiquated missile network.

Some blame unrealistic expectations on both sides for the existing tensions. After the Soviet Union collapsed, Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former White House national security adviser, said, “There was too much euphoria; too much inclination to declare that Russia was a democracy; and too much pretension. . . . All of that has created ambiguity when clarity is needed.”

The United States has been disappointed that the hoped-for democracy has failed to take root in Russia after the fall of communism. For their part, the Russians had expected more from the United States in terms of support. Instead, a weakened Moscow was pressed into signing arms-control agreements. Furthermore, by welcoming former Soviet Eastern Europe and the Baltic states into NATO, the Atlantic alliance planted itself right on Mother Russia’s front porch – a move that Putin, not surprisingly, saw as a serious threat.

But when that happened, Russia was weak and poor, and with its economy in free fall, the country was too eager to integrate itself into the West to object too strenuously. Russia’s latest prosperity has brought a marked change in attitude. Thanks to rising world energy prices, revenues from Russia’s vast natural gas and crude oil reserves have contributed significantly to putting Russia back on its feet – rich, resentful and nationalistic and seeking to regain its great-power status. (After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian oil production fell about 50 percent, largely because of a lack of much-needed investments and poor management. The situation remained unchanged during Russia’s financial crisis in the 1990s. The dramatic turnaround came in 1999, after two new pipelines were completed, the ruble was devalued, making Russian oil and gas cheap, and world energy prices spiked, triggering new foreign investments.)

Grateful Russians, their pride restored, credit Putin with the country’s resurgence and its consistent 7 percent annual growth rate, and the Russians gave him great latitude to exercise his “tsarist” style, which – unlike democracy – does have its roots in Russia.

Caught in the middle, as usual, is Europe, the historic battlefield of Russian expansionism. French President Nicolas Sarkozy expressed the general concern – increasingly reflected in the polls – that “ Russia is imposing its return on the world scene by playing its assets, notably oil and gas, with a certain brutality.” He was referring to Putin’s use of Europe’s dependence on Russian energy supplies (some 36 percent in the case of Germany) to pressure Europe into supporting Moscow’s positions.

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This Week's Report: “Changing U.S. Electorate”

by Alan Greenblatt, May 30, 2008


Are demographic trends reshaping U.S. politics?

Demographics have played nearly as large a role in this year’s presidential race as health care, war and the economy. The Democratic field has come down to an African-American man dominating voting among blacks, the young and highly educated voters and a white woman winning older voters, Hispanics and the white working class. Regardless of whether Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton is the nominee, the Democratic candidate’s first order of business will be reuniting party supporters against Republican John McCain. Many trends favor Democrats, including increased support among Latinos and voters under 30. But states that have supported George W. Bush are gaining in population and will gain electoral votes by 2012. One sign of changing voter dynamics is the white working class, which made up a majority of all voters not so long ago and is now the key “swing” group of voters. As the American electorate changes shape, the big question is which party stands to gain the most.

  • Are whites losing political clout?
  • Are suburbs shifting to the Democrats?
  • Are young voters more liberal?
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Coming Up in CQ Researcher

The “New” Russia
When Russian voters elected a new president on March 2, the outcome was hardly in doubt. First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, 42, is both genuinely popular and had the backing of the incumbent, Vladimir Putin. The Bush administration is hoping Medvedev will improve current U.S.-Russian tension. In 2001, Bush said he looked Putin in the eye and saw a man who was “straightforward and honest.” But it was downhill from there. Relations between Washington and the Kremlin got steadily worse after Iraq, with some experts warning that further worsening could lead to a new Cold War. The contours of U.S.-Russian differences have emerged in disagreements over how to deal with Iran’s nuclear ambitions, in diplomatic stand-offs over Kosovo, Ukraine and Georgia (Russian neighbors who want to join NATO), in disputes over gas and oil pipelines and above all in the Bush administration’s plan to put an anti-missile system in Eastern Europe. Caught in the middle as usual is Europe, the historic battlefield of Russian expansionism. French President Nicolas Sarkozy expressed the general concern – increasingly reflected in the polls – that “ Russia is imposing its return on the world scene by playing its assets, notably oil and gas, with a certain brutality.”
By Roland Flamini


Campaign Finance Reform
As the 2008 presidential contest approaches, the campaign-finance system is in upheaval. Six years after Congress passed the landmark Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act to help curb the influence of unregulated “soft” money in politics, the so-called McCain-Feingold law is facing court challenges and persistent claims that it infringes on free-speech rights. Meanwhile, the system of public funding for federal campaigns is teetering, and Democratic frontrunner Barack Obama is poised to be the first major-party presidential candidate to bypass it in a general election. The Federal Election Commission, charged with enforcing the nation’s campaign-finance laws, has been paralyzed because of partisan bickering. And spurred partly by the effects of McCain-Feingold and the shortcomings of the public-financing system, candidates have been turning more and more to small donors, who are responding in unprecedented ways.
By Thomas J. Billitteri


Digital Television
After years of delays, the nation’s full-power television stations are facing a deadline of Feb. 17, 2009, to switch from traditional analog broadcasting and go all digital. Digital TV promises viewers better-quality pictures and sound. The switch also frees up valuable room on the electromagnetic spectrum for wireless communications. Broadcasters will be able to offer more programming and to match the digital signals of subscription cable and satellite services. But viewers with older TV sets and no cable or satellite connection have to buy special converter boxes to continue receiving most over-the-air channels after the switch. The government is offering coupons to help viewers pay for the boxes, but many people are still confused. And some stations may have reduced coverage with digital signals. Meanwhile, public-interest groups complain that broadcasters are getting a financial windfall without any new public-interest obligations.
By Kenneth Jost

In the News: Shareholders Approve Bear Stearns Sale

Bear Stearns shareholders have approved the investment bank’s sale to rival JPMorgan Chase, finalizing the $2.2 billion buyout of the bank after heavy wagers on subprime mortgages made it the largest corporate casualty of the global credit crisis. The widely anticipated “yes” vote means the acquisition will take place on May 30. Bear CEO James Cayne, who presided over the vote, apologized for the turmoil and urged shareholders “not to believe what you see in the press.” JPMorgan Chase agreed to acquire Bear two months ago after a $29 billion loan from the Federal Reserve had eased concerns over managing losses from Bear’s mortgage-backed securities.

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In the News: Nepal Votes to End Monarchy

Nepalese lawmakers have voted to abolish the nation’s 239-year-old monarchy, concluding a decade-long struggle by former Maoist rebels to install a republic in the country. Gyanendra, the world’s last Hindu king, has been given 15 days to vacate the royal palace after a 560 to 4 vote by the newly elected special assembly. After taking control of the government in 2005, Gyanendra lost a great deal of his authority a year later after street protests forced him to cede power to the last elected government. Pressure from the Maoists in 2007 forced Parliament to declare Nepal a federal democratic republic. The special assembly must now govern the country for the next two years while it rewrites the constitution.

To view the entire CQ Global Researcher report, "Separatist Movements," click here. [subscription required]

In the News: Report Highlights Importance of Biodiversity

A study presented to the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity argues that recent spikes in commodity and food prices are partly attributed to the world’s loss of biodiversity. The report estimates the annual cost of damage to land-based ecosystems by pollution, deforestation and other causes at nearly $80 billion. European Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas – who blames much of the loss on climate change – says the study proves that biodiversity is not just about saving species but is also crucial to preserving natural wealth.

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Overview of This Week’s Report: “Changing U.S. Electorate”

Given the historic nature of the Democratic presidential primary contest – with the nomination coming down to a battle between a white woman and an African-American man – perhaps it’s not surprising that there have been splits among voters along racial, geographic, age, income and educational divides.

“I don’t think there’s any way this election could have been anything but demographically focused, given the candidates left standing,” says Scott Keeter, associate director of the Pew Research Center for People & the Press.

The Democrats’ internal splits have them nervous about repairing the breaches in order to get all party supporters on board for the fall contest against Arizona Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee. McCain might well appeal to white, working-class voters, including the so-called Reagan Democrats, who have sometimes supported GOP candidates because of their relatively conservative stances on social issues.

New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has repeatedly pointed out that, thanks to working-class support, she has beaten Illinois Sen. Barack Obama in the largest states – California, New York, Ohio, among others – which a Democrat would need to carry in order to win in November against McCain.

In an interview with USA Today conducted the day after the May 6 Indiana and North Carolina primaries, Clinton cited an Associated Press report “that found how Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.”

In exit polls conducted during the April 22 Pennsylvania Democratic primary, 16 percent of white voters said that race had influenced their decision, with almost half of these saying they would not support Obama in the fall. Only 60 percent of Catholics said they would vote for him in November.

“Mr. Obama was supposed to be a transformational figure, with an almost magical ability to transcend partisan difference,” writes Paul Krugman, a New York Times columnist who has been supporting Clinton. “Well, now he has an overwhelming money advantage and the support of much of the Democratic establishment – yet he still can’t seem to win over large blocs of Democratic voters, especially among the white working class. As a result, he keeps losing big states.”

Obama supporters, meanwhile, are concerned that his supporters – particularly young people and African-Americans – will feel disenfranchised if Clinton wins the nomination through a coronation by party officials, because it seems certain she will trail Obama in delegates and overall popular vote support after all the primaries are concluded on June 3.

“We keep talking as if it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter that Obama gets 92 percent of the black vote, [that] because he only got 35 percent of the white vote he’s in trouble,” House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn, D-S.C., the highest-ranking African-American in Congress, told The Washington Post following the Pennsylvania primary.

“Well, Hillary Clinton only got 8 percent of the black vote. . . . It’s almost saying black people don’t matter. The only thing that matters is how white people respond.”

Whatever the outcome, Obama’s candidacy has already highlighted many of the ways in which the American electorate is starting to shift – as well as the ways that it hasn’t changed quite yet.

“The biggest trend is that the U.S. is no longer going to be a majority-white country,” says Scott Page, a University of Michigan political scientist. Given the growth of the Asian and, particularly, the Hispanic share of the population, most demographers predict that whites will no longer comprise a majority by 2050.

“Within 40 years, no single racial group will be a majority,” Page says. “Second, interracial marriage is increasing, and many of these marriages are in the upper-income groups, which means that many of our future leaders will be multiracial,” like Obama.

In leading the battle for Democratic delegates and total votes, Obama has forged a coalition unlike any seen before in his party. It’s typical for one candidate to appeal to educated elites, as Obama does, while a rival appeals to “beer track” blue-collar voters, as Clinton does.

What Obama has done differently is wed African-Americans, who typically vote along with lower-income whites in Democratic primaries, to his base among elites. “This is the first time African-Americans have sided with the educated class,” says David Bositis, an elections analyst at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.

Referring to the leading contenders of the 1984 Democratic primary race, Bositis continues, “Obama is Gary Hart, but with the black vote. Hillary Clinton is Walter Mondale but without any black support. Obama’s going to be the first nominee who represents the more educated and higher-income Democrats.”

Assuming he does ultimately win the nomination, an Obama victory will be the result not only of this historic shift in black voting but also the fact that educated and upper-income voters are both growing in number and becoming more Democratic. He has also benefited from unusually high levels of support among young voters of all races.

But the white working-class vote, while shrinking as a share of the total electorate, is still a predominant factor in American politics. Many Democrats – as well as Republicans – believe that Obama’s inability to appeal to this group will prove an Achilles’ heel.

“Hillary supporters are going to be very unhappy,” says Herbert I. London, president of the conservative Hudson Institute. London predicts that McCain will do very well in the fall among the older Democrats who have supported Clinton – and could make inroads into other Democratic constituencies as well.

“This age gap [between Clinton and Obama] is so persistent that I would be concerned about it,” says Robert David Sullivan, managing editor of CommonWealth magazine, “especially because McCain might have a particular appeal to older independents.”

“Older whites are really going to stick with McCain,” echoes Dowell Myers, a University of Southern California demographer. “They’re going to think that he speaks to their interests.”

William H. Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, suggests that Obama’s candidacy does represent a possible future for American politics. His candidacy has been “post-ethnic” in terms of his appeal to upper-income whites, as well as other white voters in states such as Wisconsin and Virginia. It’s also “post-boomer,” with Obama appealing to millions of “millennial” voters (referring to the generation born since 1982) and seeking, not entirely successfully, to move politics beyond the culture clashes that have marked American politics since the 1960s.

“Obama got a lot of initial support from people who liked his post-boomer sensibility – a way to get beyond moralistic politics,” says Pew’s Keeter. But as for a post-boomer period, he adds, “I don’t think we’re there yet.”

Frey also cautions that Obama’s candidacy may represent the shape of a political future that hasn’t yet fully arrived. The trends that have benefited Obama – the rise of the youth vote, the increasing size of the upscale Democratic electorate – will continue, but may not yet be sufficiently in place to overcome the type of traditional, white working-class voters who have long dominated American politics and have fueled Clinton’s campaign.

“Maybe 20 years down the road there will be more of the Obama group overall, but for now everything is split,” Frey says. “It’s not 2030 yet.”

Many demographic trends appear to be moving more generally in the Democrats’ favor, including support from voters in their 20s, the increasing number of unmarried adults and secular-minded voters, the party’s inroads into traditional GOP turf in the suburbs and the support of a majority of Hispanics – the nation’s largest and fastest-growing minority group, who have been put off by the hard line many Republicans have taken on illegal immigration.

In seven states that held primaries in March and April alone, 1 million new voters registered as Democrats, while Republican numbers mostly “ebbed or stagnated.” In Indiana and North Carolina, which held their Democratic primaries on May 6, the rate of new registrants tripled from 2004.

Ruy Teixeira, another Brookings scholar and coauthor of the 2002 book The Emerging Democratic Majority, not surprisingly suggests that all these trends should help his party. But he concedes that Republicans still have some potent arrows in their quiver.

“The good news for the Republicans is that despite some of these various demographic factors that are moving against them, they have held the loyalties of lower-income white voters pretty well,” he says.

Other structural advantages that Republicans have enjoyed in recent years – dominance of the South and the interior West, the rock-solid support of regular churchgoers, large margins of victory in the nation’s fastest-growing communities – also remain in place.

And McCain’s candidacy may dash Democratic hopes of running up a bigger margin among Hispanics that could help them prevail in states President Bush has carried, such as Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado. McCain has famously taken a more conciliatory stance toward immigrants than much of his party. “McCain takes Democrats out of their Western strategy entirely,” says John Morgan, a Republican demographer.

With Democrats not quite settled on a candidate, it’s premature to guess how the persistent demographic differences that have played out in the primaries will manifest themselves in the fall. Bositis suggests that Clinton’s performance has been an indication of support for her among white women, in particular – not of white antipathy toward Obama. White working-class Democrats will mainly “come home” to support Obama in the fall, he suggests.

McCain’s candidacy also has engendered some concerns on the Republican side that evangelicals – the conservative Christians who have been the party’s most loyal supporters of late – will not support him with any enthusiasm. McCain consistently trailed among evangelical white Protestants during his primary race against former Govs. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas and Mitt Romney of Massachusetts.

How all these crosscurrents of support – or lack thereof – will play out in the fall remains to be seen, of course. What this year’s election season has indicated more than anything, however, is that the nature and shape of the American electorate is in a state of flux just now, with the allegiances of various groups shifting between and within the two major parties – and with new constituencies making their presence very much felt.

“We’re seeing more people registering now than we’ve ever seen before,” says Kimball Brace, a Democratic consultant. “How that is going to change the demographics and nature of voting is one of the larger questions coming into play.”

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