Michelle Obama has announced that she's going to delay her appearance on The View, originally scheduled for Dec. 5, until after the end of the Writers Guild of America strike. "Michelle Obama will not cross a picket to line to appear on 'the View.' When the strike ends she looks forward to appearing," says Obama spokesman Bill Burton. That could take a while -- under the worst case scenario, the strike may last until June 2008 (the last such strike lasted 22 weeks). This actually raises a pretty significant question for the Democratic field. If the Democratic presidential candidates forgo their Dec. 10 CBS debate on account of a different though related strike, as they have said they will, and also commit to forgoing appearances on chats shows like The View until the WGA strike is over, as Michelle Obama now has, what happens if the WGA strike continues into early- to mid-next year? Hewing to commitments to avoid crossing picket lines seems likely to have some impact on the candidates' abilities to get their messages out, especially in the Feb. 5 states, or, at the very least, to target them as they had planned.
--Garance Franke-Ruta
