From “This Week” on ABC yesterday during a discussion of the March on Washington comes the following exchange:

DONNA BRAZILE: And to have witnessed the amount of change I’ve seen in my 50 plus years, it’s amazing, it’s incredible. And yet if Dr. King were alive, he would still be marching today. To raise the minimum wage, to ensure that workers could organize. He would be marching for the same values that he marched for 50 years ago.

KARL: No question about that right Byron?

PITTS: Oh without a doubt. In talking to John Lewis, he talks about how the dream still lives. That only the down payment has been made. Very focused about jobs. But there was also an optimistic spirit to Congressman Lewis and to Andy Young. Men who were there.

And they talk about, for instance, that while those numbers are real about employment, about poverty, one number for instance. In 1963, there were only 365,000 blacks who had a college degree. Today there are 5.1 million. In 1963 you all could have treated us like dogs, Donna and I, and it would have been OK. Nothing would have happened to you. Well that’s changed in America. And so for those men who were there, who bled, they see tremendous progress.

[COKIE] ROBERTS: And they’re right. They’re right. You know having grown up in the deep south in the era of Jim Crow, the difference is dramatic. And the fact that Andy Young was Mayor of Atlanta and John Lewis is a member of Congress from Georgia–

BRAZILE: And the fact–

ROBERTS: Is a great testament to the fact that when you do something like pass a voting rights bill, that it makes a difference. Which is why, at the moment, what’s going on about voting rights is downright evil. (My emphasis)

KARL: Well there are–

ROBERTS: Because it’s something that really needs to keep going forward, not backwards.

Cokie Roberts has been one of the most vocal proponents of conventional wisdom in Washington DC for the past thirty years. To hear her say something so bluntly, so honestly, with no temporizing, and to be absolutely right besides was damned refreshing. Good for her.