The Hollywood writers' strike has placed the Democratic frontrunners in something of a bind, forcing them to choose between unions and the entertainment industry executives who are some of their most important big-money contributors. The responses of Senators Clinton, Obama, and Edwards have been revealing.

A strike has long been in the offing. The two unions that make up the Writers Guild of America voted overwhelmingly (by over 90 percent of their 12,000 members) to authorize a walkout on October 18. Their main point of conflict with the Alliance of Motion Pictures and Television Producers (which bargains on behalf of the movie and TV studios) was the royalties associated with downstream revenue.

Profits from computer downloads of movies and TV shows are the most contentious issue. Currently, content is distributed on the Internet in two ways: Some movies and TV shows are purchased and downloaded through services such as iTunes or Amazon Unbox; in these cases the writers get a negligible portion of the take (a third of a cent for every dollar of profit). Alternatively, studios allow viewers to stream TV shows (not movies, yet) from their websites. The studios sell advertising within these streams, but have wiggled around having to share this revenue with writers by labeling the streams "promotions" rather than "broadcasts." This prevents writers from getting any share at all of the profits. The Writers Guild strike is, at heart, an attempt by writers to claim a small sliver of these two pies. Their position is not unreasonable.

The strike was called on November 5. Within hours, the three top Democratic hopefuls released statements of support. Hillary Clinton's two-sentence statement said, "I support the Writers Guild's pursuit of a fair contract that pays them for their work in all mediums." It then urged the parties to resume bargaining.

John Edwards went a bit further, contributing three sentences to the cause. Characteristically, he noted his own long history of strike support: "As someone who has walked picket lines with workers all across America and as a strong believer in collective bargaining, I hope that both sides are able to quickly reach a just settlement."

Barack Obama went furthest in his own short statement. "I stand with the writers," he declared. "The Guild's demand is a test of whether corporate media corporations [oops] are going to give writers a fair share of the wealth their work creates or continue concentrating profits in the hands of their executives." It wasn't, perhaps, everything the Writers Guild might have hoped for, but it was better than the union got from Chris Dodd, Joe Biden, or Dennis Kucinich--none of whom as of Friday, November 16, had pronounced on the strike. (Bill Richardson issued the most substantive, and thoughtful, support of the lot.)

After their brief statements, Clinton and Obama fell silent. When asked whether any further demonstration of support for the strike was planned, the Clinton campaign simply re-emailed its original statement of quasi-solidarity. When asked the same question, the Obama campaign did not respond. After staying quiet for almost two weeks, Edwards attended a rally for the WGA at the NBC picket lines in Burbank last Friday. Clinton was scheduled to make a campaign stop in Los Angeles last Saturday, but as of Friday had no public plans to do any events in support of the union.