LIVE BLOGGING: From Soundbites to Solutions

The first panel, “Candidates, Campaigns, and the Politics of Bias,” is underway. Overheard here at The Paley Center:

Celinda Lake, Political Strategist and President of Lake Research Partners: “Polling shows the voters feel 2 to 1 that the media has been unfair to Obama in terms of race, and that the media has been hardest on age, vis a vis McCain. There’s not as much sense of unfairness around gender.”

Dr. Susan Carroll, Senior Scholar at the Center for American Women in Politics: “The media failed to educate the public about ways that gender considerations affected HRC’s campaign. For instance, research shows that women are seen to be less qualified to hold public office than men, even when they have more credentials and experience. So HRC made experience central to her campaign. But by emphasizing this, she ceded the issue of change to Obama. But it was something she had to do to counter negative ingrained stereotypes. The media didn’t acknowledge this.”

Dr. Ron Walters, Professor of Government and Politics, University of Maryland: “The race comments from Bill Clinton, HRC, and Geraldine Ferraro—I don’t believe all that was an accident. It was a strategy by Obama’s opponents. Obama’s campaign hoped it would go away, but it didn’t. Fox news made sure it wouldn’t, by bringing Rev. Wright into the picture. And other networks jumped right in.”

Courtney Martin, author and columnist for The American Prospect, and feministing.com blogger: “There’s been a 109% increase in youth voters in this election. That’s profound. Youth are excited about this election, but they are not excited about partisanship. Chalk it up to Facebook, chalk it up to our tendency to see ourselves as individual projects, but we just aren’t into party politics.”

Patricia Williams, Columnist, The Nation, and Professor of Law, Columbia University: “Again, we see in this election, all the women are white, all the men are black. Race was gendered and gender was raced in this primary. Michelle Obama, Asian men, and others were left out of this conversation entirely.”

Up next: Panel II…