May 08, 2008
Don't cry for her, Democratic Party
Posted by: Kevin
The festering Clinton boil is finally being lanced within the Democratic Party, at least for this election cycle. It's a tremendous bit of luck not only for the party -- despite its idiotic blindness to this fact. It's a relief for the country, given the brand of politics that this couple would practice if it regained control of both the party and Washington.
I haven't written much since Hillary Clinton entered the fatal win-at-all-costs phase of her doomed presidential campaign a couple months ago, frankly because there wasn't much more to say. The ship would inevitably sink, it was just a matter of whether enough of the remaining idiots in her camp would get into the lifeboats and save themselves in time from the wake of her titanic disaster.
A lot of tripe is thrown around about gay Republicans in the gay media, and has been for over a decade. But not enough has been written about the toxic impact that Clintonism has wrought on the gay community and its political leadership. The cravenness of it, the poisonous combination of raising hopes with glistening promises, and dashing them at the first sign of political risk -- all the while shifting the blame to others -- has done more to destroy what was once a potentially powerful movement than anything a small band of hapless, closeted gay Republicans on Capitol Hill (now "cleansed" for the most part) could ever have done.
And if the rich content of her presidential campaign was any indication, Hillary Clinton would have been even worse for us as president than her husband. Unlike him, she didn't have the touch when it came to using the charming lie on gay rights. She speaks in half-tones, half-measures and platitudes with little heart in it, and made it fairly clear by the way her campaign did gay outreach that it was all about hack-o-rama appointments and personal ambition within the gay political community. Basically -- get on board, or be cut out. Very Karl Rove, and very lethal for those who sign up for it. I can attest to that personally, as can nearly every Republican of every stripe in politics right now.
Indeed, her brand of politics seems to have divided the gay Democratic camp into two clear factions -- those who envy the Republicans so much that they want to emulate them (all the while bashing and personally destroying gay Republicans, interestingly enough, to cover their own shame), and those who are fed up with calculation and ruthlessness in politics that they are willing to try almost anything that is new and different. (A third, unregistered group simply has walked away and taken up new interests in frustration.)
From my vantage point here in South America, it is amazing how parallel the Clintons are to the political couple that is running Argentina at the moment -- Néstor and Cristina Kirchner. He was president last, and now she's president, while he is about to take the chairmanship of the main Peronist party. They, too, rail at big business, count on labor unions and blue-collar workers as their base, and spin all sorts of webs to scapegoat, capture and destroy all political opponents, from inside their movement or outside it. They, too, deflect any and all blame for their policies that do harm, and refuse to even acknowledge reality at most junctures. (Sound familiar?) They came from a backwater province in the south of the country, which Néstor ran as governor, and Cristina launched her own presidential campaign last year from a Senate perch she'd recently captured outside Buenos Aires city. But Argentina is sinking into, perhaps, its worst social, economic and political crisis since the nervous breakdown it suffered in 2001 -- completely at the hands of this self-obsessed, knuckle-breaking political machine government that the Kirchners are running. And Cristina, pig-headed to the end (The Economist says she lives "in the land of make-believe") is mobilizing unions to beat down protesters in the name of fighting big business. The galloping 25% inflation rate is something she blames on "greedy rich corporate owners" who won't voluntarily lower prices, raise wages, and pay for it all out of their profits. (It has nothing to do with her, of course, nor market economics.) She answers the new crisis with gimmicks (hello, gas tax holiday?) and populist rhetoric, not because she's incompetent. It's because the entire raison d'etre of Peronism - like it's North American cousin in Clintonism - is to win at all costs. To say anything, do anything, blame anyone, and never surrender to win out in the end, at the expense of anyone outside the walls of their marital union. Over the last half-century, it has destroyed a once powerful country, probably for good.
Ask any gay Hillary supporter to say, in plain words, exactly why Hillary would be best for the country. You will never -- I repeat, never -- get anything in response but platitudes mixed with venomous stabs at either Obama or the GOP or both. ¡Que peronista! And all her most prominent gay defenders are lifetime gay Democratic hacks simply hoping for a job. Period. They defend the Clintons in the face of the Defense of Marriage Act and "Don't Ask, Don't Tell", and stand ready to defend them again to the teeth -- and the do-nothing Democratic Congress, and the "fight-on-the-ice" DNC -- should four or eight years pass without any movement on either under their watch. ("It wasn't the {lying, hypocritical} president's fault! It was [insert blame here]!") They are the worst detritus of the Bill Clinton era of gay Washington, and would bring a sense of blind loyalty to power more dangerous and insidious than the paradoxical, circus-freak brand that has been trotted out in hit pieces on gay Republicans who still love George W. Bush. Because it would have the air of respectability, and could not dare be questioned without reprisal.
So breathe easy, gay Democrats. Hillary is finally being shoved out the door by the length and breadth of the selfishness she represents. Whether it's soon, or after the inevitable rejection of her 900th attempt at game-changing party rules on May 31st (nuevamente peronista), it's been in the cards since February.
Whether you realize it or not, it's good for you. Embrace it. And get back to work in making your party something other than a gigantic waste of money, hope and effort.
May 06, 2008
A nonsensical non-endorsement from HRC
Posted by: Chris
UPDATE: Kay Hagan won today's North Carolina Democratic primary by a landslide, taking 61% of the vote to Jim Neal's 20%. Keep in mind there were five candidates in the race and Neal placed second, but still it was a blowout. No doubt Neal's very long odds played into HRC's decision not to endorse -- echoed by the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund, which also steered clear of the race.
I still view those decisions as unfortunate and short-sighted, not to mention self-fulfilling. Neal's candidacy was credible and generated a great deal of grassroots excitement among LGBT folks and a number of progressives in and out of North Carolina. With the assistance of groups like HRC and the Victory Fund, Neal would no doubt have performed better -- laying the groundwork for himself and others.
In the last two decades, the LGBT groups in Washington have become incredibly more sophisticated politically, and that's mostly a very good thing. But sometimes their inside-the-Beltway mentality prevents them from taking risks and investing in the future, even when conventional analysis sees a particular contest as a huge longshot.
ORIGINAL POST: I'm behind the curve commenting on the recent decision by our blinded-by-the-Beltway friends at the Human Rights Campaign not to endorse any candidate in the North Carolina Democratic Senate primary. Controversial endorsement calls have actually been one of the few areas historically that I've generally agreed with and defended HRC (yes, publicly).
But the "no nod" in the race between openly gay businessman Jim Neal and veteran state Sen. Kay Hagan is a head-scratcher of an entirely different sort. By most accounts, Neal has run a smart campaign and against the odds has polled well enough to appear viable in the contest with Hagan to see who will challenge vulnerable GOP incumbent Elizabeth Dole.
Hagan apparently has a strong gay rights record, but there's a fundamental difference between a gay candidate and a gay-friendly candidate. History has shown over and over just how more effective and instrumental openly gay elected officials can be; just look at Barney Frank and Tammy Baldwin in the House.
The election of an openly gay U.S. senator, especially from the Deep South, would be ground-breaking and historic. And even if Neal should fall short, a primary victory or even a respectable finish lays important groundwork for the future -- for Neal himself and other out contenders as well as politicians still cowering in the closet.
The smart folks over at HRC know all this, of course, but as on so many issues they are loathe to rock the boat for fear of offending Democratic party chieftains, who are backing Hagan, or mucking up their cherished win-loss record in endorsed races -- a tally artificially propped up by backing a buttload of completely safe incumbents.
It's time for HRC to grow a pair, to use a testicular metaphor of the sort being tossed at Hillary Clinton of late, and show the big-equals-org isn't simply the tool of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign. Committee.
May 02, 2008
How does America get its great presidents?
Posted by: Andoni
Does America get its great presidents because the voters
have a good eye for choosing those who eventually become great? Or do we
get great presidents because the well-oiled machines in our political parties offer up great candidates who then become great in office?
I would argue that neither the voters nor the political
parties deserve credit for our great presidents.
We get our great presidents when the system is bypassed --
either because of extenuating circumstances or luck, but not when things are politics as usual.
Our first great presidents, obviously, were George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. They ascended to the presidency mainly because they proved themselves during the founding of our country, so let's put them aside.
Most historians agree that after that, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman were great or near-great presidents. (I’m leaving out the last four presidents because not enough time has passed to evaluate their historical standing). As to the other four, I would argue that it was not the astuteness or brilliance of the American electorate or the good stewardship of the dominant political parties of the time that gave us these great leaders. It was really a matter of luck.
In 1860, a majority of U.S. voters did not perceive Abraham Lincoln as the best person to lead the nation through the impending crisis. He was a relatively obscure candidate from a new party, the Republican Party. His competitors, Stephen Douglas of the Northern Democratic Party and John C. Breckenridge of the Southern Democratic Party, were established party favorites of the time. Luckily for Lincoln (and us), the Democratic Party split in two over slavery. Had that not happened, one of these two would have been elected. Douglas and Breckenridge were established party favorites from the same broken and deadlocked system that produced Presidents Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan, Lincoln’s immediate predecessors and two of the worst ever according to most rankings.
Lincoln was therefore not a product of the normal political system of that time. The Democratic Party split opened the door to an untested newcomer who otherwise never would have had a chance of becoming president. Lincoln actually received only 39.9% of the popular vote, which means that 60% of the country wanted someone else. The person most historians think is our greatest president won office only because of the anomaly of that 1860 election. He was elected by luck -- given the special circumstances of 1860 -- and certainly not because voters or the dominant parties recognized his potential.
Follow the jump for more…
March 31, 2008
Those people in Kansas and me
Posted by: Andoni
I went to my accountant today to discuss my taxes and while
driving home I couldn’t stop thinking about people in Kansas. You know, those
people in the book, "What's the Matter with Kansas" by Thomas Frank. This is
the book that asks the question why the majority of people in Kansas continue
to vote Republican when it is not in their economic interest to do so.
Republicans do not have a track record of protecting jobs for the middle class, expanding health care, or benefiting the typical worker economically. Yet middle class and working class Kansans don’t seem to care and keep voting GOP. Kansans seem moved more by Republican positions on social issues like gay marriage and abortion than their own economic interests. Why can’t these people see the light?
Then, while driving home I realized that I’m a Kansan, too. No, I don’t vote Republican for their social values, I vote Democratic for theirs. But voting Democratic for me also puts me in the same category of those Kansans we love to criticize. It goes against my economic self interest.
Let me explain. I’m retired and my entire income comes solely from capital gains. Thanks to George W. Bush’s tax cuts a few years ago, for the third year in a row, my final total federal tax rate is 15% -- lower than Warren Buffet’s. The Democrats want to end this tax give away for the wealthy. McCain and the Republicans want to renew it. My economic interest would be to vote Republican to continue saving all this money in capital gains taxes -- a very, very sweet deal.
However, social issues like gay rights are what more important to me than my own economic interests. As a result, I’ll be just like those Kansans I used to like to criticize so much. I'll vote my “values” instead of my economic interest. Count me as irrational as those Kansans. This demonstrates to me that as much as I would like to think otherwise, values can trump economics and make people act "irrationally."
The question for this November is, will a severe recession cause enough Republican "values voters" to switch into economic voters; that is, to suddenly become rational?
March 05, 2008
Raise the Titanic!: The coming Democratic meltdown, courtesy of the Clintons
Posted by: Kevin
It should give any partisan Democratic gay activist a moment of pause, no matter which camp you're in. Hillary Clinton's determination to thrash around in the sinking waters of the Democratic primaries is the strongest signal yet that, despite the mathematical impossibility of winning the nomination in pledged delegates, she will not give up.
The Clinton strategy is simple: combine a ruthless fighting spirit with an all-out effort to destroy her opponent, and the superdelegates will ultimately hand her the nomination. There really is no other way to describe it, given the sheer reality of her losing predicament amidst the delegate math and the party's own rules.
And should she somehow pull that off, there will then be perhaps the bloodiest round of triangulation, private threats and enemies-list-making inside the Democratic fold which the Clintons will refer to, cheerily, as "unifying the party." Out will be those who most fervently supported the front-runner, Barack Obama, and in will be her buzzing borg of hacks who can be defined only by their loyalty. Including in the gay Democratic activist world: the new gay Dem power elite that the Clintons would seek to bring with them to power in November at this stage will be the ones who either defended her the most in the past two months (read: loyal), or remained the most silent throughout the rise of Barack Obama as front-runner (read: calculating).
Thus, whether Hillary goes on to defeat against John McCain or not, it will mean zero change in the leadership of the gay movement. Loyalty, silence and thirst for power will be the most rewarded qualities yet again, above dissent, boldness and a hearty desire for change. I don't know which result is more depressing, that borg back in power in Washington, or still running this movement under a McCain administration. Either scenario promises a world of gay activism revolving around image, fundraising, torturedly empty rhetoric and a hopeless failure to achieve anything.
What's more, the only path from last night to a Hillary-bunted Democratic Convention in the summer is one strewn with blood inside the Democratic ranks. There is no other way to see it. You can pretend that she will somehow find a way to honorably wrench the nomination from the (black) man who got more pledged delegates than she did. You can also believe in Santa Claus. But whatever delusions you might be operating under this morning as you look ahead, the stark reality of what Hillary Clinton is doing from here on out will hit us all with full force soon enough, should she achieve her goal.
February 26, 2008
It's over, Hillary (V): the stink of denial
Posted by: Kevin
The Clintons are denying that they had anything to do with putting out a photo of "Barack Hussein Obama" dressed in elder Somali robes. And they angrily deny it in that same way they've always done when it's glaringly obvious that they had everything to do with it.
Perhaps Bill will even regale us with another accusatory finger wagging, and remind us of the good old days when there was no depth to which a President would stoop in his self-preserving deceit. Meet his wife and heiress.
There is a reason that the Clintons put out that photo. They were presuming there is just enough racism, just enough ignorance and just enough residual paranoia in the country that such a picture would make a difference and help turn around Hillary's self-induced death spiral. They knew that no picture of Hillary in a head scarf or of Bill in a dashiki would have any such impact, since "Barack Hussein Obama" is, to put it in their own words, is someone we should fear as President. Fill in the blank as to why. She's already admitted she needs less-educated, working class white voters back if she has a prayer of winning Texas and Ohio. Go ahead, my liberal friends. Fill in the blank. I dare you.
That's the Clintons, people. Always was, and always will be.
The same Clintons that campaigned on their signing of the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, running radio ads bragging about it despite being way ahead in the national polls against Bob Dole. (And don't give me that crap about Hillary not being in office in the 1990s. As the Scientologists like to say: fair game. She's taken credit for every accomplishment of her husband's White House already, so that old retort is finished.)
So if there is any gay Clinton ass-kisser left out there, I have a little advice for you before you open your mouth again about Hillary Clinton: You can rant and rave all you want about the Republicans for the rest of your activist career. But the stain of what the Clintons are doing in this campaign -- jettisoning all forms of decency or loyalty to principle in the raw pursuit of power -- will remain and it will tinge everything they do going forward. And you, too. So think hard about your next move. The lifeboats are filling up fast and there won't be enough for everyone.
Some of you still seem to imagine that the political equivalent of a Jerry Bruckheimer disaster movie might let Hillary wrench the nomination from Obama. If so, every one of you remaining supporters of this campaign will have to answer to when she -- inevitably -- does to the gay community everything she did to Obama. And she will. Indeed, she has put the whole nation on notice in the most chilling moment of cynicism this campaign has seen yet. I take the final sentence of this statement not as an observation, but as a warning:
But I don't fear that horror show at all, personally. My friend Frank Rich speaks for me in his most recent New York Times op-ed from Sunday:
Despite Mrs. Clinton’s valedictory tone at Thursday’s debate, there remains the fear in some quarters that whether through sleights of hand involving superdelegates or bogus delegates from Michigan or Florida, the Clintons might yet game or even steal the nomination. I’m starting to wonder. An operation that has waged political war as incompetently as the Bush administration waged war in Iraq is unlikely to suddenly become smart enough to pull off that duplicitous a “victory.” Besides, after spending $1,200 on Dunkin’ Donuts in January alone, this campaign simply may not have the cash on hand to mount a surge.
February 22, 2008
It's Over, Hillary (IV): Lifeboats filling up
Posted by: Kevin
From today's Associated Press survey of Democratic superdelegates:
The Democratic superdelegates are starting to follow the voters—straight to Barack Obama.
In just the past two weeks, more than two dozen of them have climbed aboard his presidential campaign, according to a survey by The Associated Press. At the same time, Hillary Rodham Clinton's are beginning to jump ship, abandoning her for Obama or deciding they now are undecided.
With her campaign's money woes, internal disarray and falling morale -- against the backdrop of record fundraising, surging momentum and a string of unbroken victories for her opponent -- the question now is: will Hillary Rodham Clinton last to March 5th?
February 21, 2008
Video Flashback: March 2007
Posted by: Kevin
Remember this video that was created by internet consultant Philip de Vellis, posted mysteriously on YouTube back on March 5, 2007? It cost its creator his job when it became an internet sensation a few weeks later, and crossing the Clintons was seen as bad for business.
It appears that exactly one year later, when the votes are counted in Texas and Ohio, and a defeated Hillary Clinton finally exits the stage, it will officially go down as the single most prophetic spot of the 2008 Presidential election. And it wasn't done by a campaign.
This video does capture the essence of Obama's stunning defeat of the Clintons better than any other so far. And the question now is -- will this essence carry Obama beyond the ashes of the Clinton campaign?
February 20, 2008
It's over, Hillary (III): The consultants huddle on the deck
Posted by: Kevin
The doomed crew of S.S. Hillary are now trying to explain the source of the rushing waters pulling the ship down. They seem to have neglected the iceberg and the fatal underwater gash in the hull.
From today's The Trail:
Clinton needs something more dramatic in terms of a midcourse correction as the two-week battle for Texas and Ohio begins. What might it be? There appears to be conflict inside the Clinton campaign about the nature of the problem she has. Various theories abound.
Is it that white women are no longer supporting her in the numbers they did earlier in the campaign? Or is it that white men have moved decisively to Obama since John Edwards quit the race? Is Obama truly beginning to break even or even win the votes of non-college-educated white voters? Does she need to be more empathetic, to show she is vulnerable, in order to recapture the voice she found in New Hampshire? Or more presidential to highlight her experience vs. Obama's inexperience?
Of course, they fail to realize the massive strategic blunders she has made are not the result of failed tactics. It's that the Clintons and their inner-circle failed to realize from day one that the 2008 election is not about playing people off each other for a tactical victory. It is not about weaving an enormous machine together on favors, loyalty, fear and "decking" the opponent.
The 2008 election will be about ending all that and starting fresh in all respects. And therefore, it is indeed not about her. And the American people want a soaring, inspirational leader as their President. Not someone who compares herself to a waitress or a hairdresser. We want a President...of the United States of America, not a glorified bureaucrat or a new shop steward for the White House Local 001.
One of her legion of scrambling, warring consultants seems to get it:
The first strategist quoted said the time for slogans is long past and what Clinton needs is a sustained argument about the election and the choices.
(Ya think??) But even he acknowledges that it's probably too late:
"None of this is likely to work miracles (and Act IV Scene iii is a little late in the play to commence the action)," the strategist wrote.
February 19, 2008
Live by identity politics, die by identity politics
Posted by: Kevin
A cautionary tale for Obama on what did the Clintons in on their faulty assumptions going into the 2008 election campaign:
Hillary Clinton's black supporters -- especially the most prominent ones -- hadn't expected their candidate to be in a dogfight right now. They thought Barack Obama was an election cycle or two away from being serious presidential timber. They thought Bill Clinton's presidency and the close relationships the Clintons had forged with African Americans would translate into goo-gobs of votes in '08. They were wrong.
Remember all the commentator chatter last summer: Is Barack Obama black enough?
Well, he's black enough now.
When you spend your hard-earned political capital, and months of brain-time planning a tortured machine-approach to winning an election, especially based on a premise as ludicrous as your southern white husband somehow having been the "first black President", this is what happens to you.
Here's hoping Obama really understands that, amidst the avalanche of support from African Americans, and the emotional expectations that seem to be coming with it.
May identity politics find itself slaughtered on the altar of the 2008 Democratic National Convention. God, please, make it happen.
February 15, 2008
TO:Hillary, SUBJECT:It's over.
Posted by: Kevin
It's not clear what it was in the past week that could be called "the turning point", but we've reached it. Hillary Clinton is toast. Period.
While Andrew Sullivan is convinced that it was the loss of Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), who was envisioned as an African American firewall-eminence for Hillary Clinton's campaign, Andoni isn't quite convinced. But then there's 1992 Bill Clinton campaign chairman and uberloyalist David Wilhelm's endorsement of Barack Obama, painfully timed perhaps to send her the message that it was time to go. And then there is the ultimate machine loyalist -- the Karl Rove of the left, James Carville -- who quite bluntly declared on CNN that if she loses Texas or Ohio, then "this thing is done." No need to mention Obama has pulled into the lead today in one Texas poll.
Clinton's bizarre decision to use the Giuliani campaign playbook and concede a long string of primaries and caucuses to Obama to focus on Texas and Ohio, all the while claiming that they "don't count" as much somehow, is all the confirmation I needed. Looking at the spread she faces in delegates, the momentum her opponent is picking up, and the glaring lessons of the campaign so far, this strategic miscalculation was the clincher. No matter about two more debates, or any amount of money she might have on hand. The thing is already done.
And in the whirlwind of this glaringly bad decision, plus the Lewis and Wilhelm defections, on top of the Kennedy family formally anointing Obama, the money problems, and Hillary's unchangeably droning presence, it's dawning on the remaining passengers of S.S. Hillary that it's time to get up to the deck and into the lifeboats. Superdelegates and major donors first!
What's more, the political class that is about to abandon the Clintons is very smart. They can see what's coming if Hillary tries to really win this. They can do the math, and see that she must drive deep racial wedges into the electorate and pulverize a man who many of her party's most energized voters see as a hero and a Godsend -- just to stay in the game. She will then have to actually win by horse-trading with unelected superdelegates. It will be gory, and it will reek of unfairness. There will be chunks of political flesh all over the place, and racial and factional knives will be out all the way to the convention. She and her husband will be the bearer of this carnage, and will end up the victors and defining image of the Democratic ticket for the fall -- all the way down to Senate, House, governor and state legislative races. The very people who want to win, too; and they hold the key to her machine-gun massacre's success.
Hence, this thing is over.
Nobody has laid it out better today than Michael Gerson in the Washington Post:
Clinton's largest problem is not a lack of money or public enthusiasm. It is the lack of a compelling narrative for her campaign.
Most successful presidential runs eventually have an overarching theory: the generational ambitions of John Kennedy's "New Frontier," the rising cultural resentments of Richard Nixon's "Silent Majority," the reviving national confidence of Ronald Reagan's "Morning in America."
Obama's appeal is straightforward: getting beyond "the ideological battles that have consumed us for the last 20 years" -- in which Clinton and her husband have been two of the main combatants.
Gerson muses on all of Hillary's lame, failed attempts at narratives, and touches on the one that she'll close her campaign with - the one, I think, is the closest one to her real self:
[T]here is Hillary the Fighter. In recent interviews, Clinton has come out swinging with negative attacks -- what she once referred to as "the fun part" of politics. Obama has "questions to answer about his dealings with . . . a big nuclear power company" as well as with "Mr. Rezko." But it is hard to imagine American voters thinking: "If only the Clintons were a little more ruthless, I'd finally support them."
While Gerson's analysis is very thorough and utterly damning as to why Hillary Clinton's campaign failed, I think in the end, the problem Hillary Clinton faced from the very beginning was that despite all that she had going in -- some of the most prodigious assets and advantages of any presidential candidate in modern history -- she blew it for the plain reason that when it came to her fundamental narrative, a picture is worth a thousand words:
February 13, 2008
Will he or won't he?
Posted by: Kevin
We are at a stage in the Republican nomination process where symbolism, code language, and posturing matter more than almost anything else. It's a tentative, tension-filled moment where the various constituencies in the GOP begin biting and angling for place and dominance as the ranks begin to consolidate behind a presumptive nominee.
With any run-of-the-mill GOP nominee-in-waiting, there would be a whole lot of calculated hugging, genuflecting, back-slapping in order to "unite the party". It can sometimes lead to craven promises, nearly always to the religious right, which morally stain the Republican Party's march forward in the eyes of the rest of us. The question now remains - with a candidate as unusual as John McCain, who is openly reviled by the core religious right and its fanatical amen-corners on talk radio, and the pressure of an almost suicide-mission campaign from the right by Mike Huckabee in state after state, will John McCain kneel down, too?
It's usually been a kind of an awful display of politics over principle, one which anyone who seeks a power base of any size in the GOP must angle toward participating in. It's often said that Republicans are from Mars, and Democrats are from Venus - and when it comes to inter-party politics, that's definitely the case. The push-pull of this moment in the GOP campaign is classic, and everyone who wants to be a player has to, well, play.
As a GOP organization, Log Cabin Republicans did so in 1996 and 2000 - two election campaigns in which I played a senior staff role. The group made a public decision from the outset in both cases to create leverage by positioning itself from the beginning to have some eventual say at this same tentative moment of "party unity" - not to mention a possible role in an eventual administration.
With Bob Dole in 1996, we were breaking new ground. And it was quite an adventure from start (a returned campaign check and the resulting international media furor) to finish (a request for our endorsement, a convention free of anti-gay rhetoric, a pledge to maintain non-discrimination policies in federal employment).
In 2000, we were courted by the McCain campaign, which had several openly gay Republicans in its leadership doing the wooing along with the candidate himself, and while we took actions to remind Karl Rove that his political dalliances with anti-gay groups who demanded all sorts of promises would not be overlooked by us, and there would be pain inflicted on the Bush campaign if it even whispered anti-gay rhetoric on the stump.
McCain's early trouncing of Bush in some primaries opened up that leverage, and we smacked Bush with negative radio ads ahead of the 2000 Super Tuesday to hit back for his behavior in South Carolina. The result was to force Bush to hold the first-ever meeting with a group of openly-gay Republicans -- albeit ones that Karl Rove chose in order to snub LCR's leadership. But that didn't matter. We got our leverage, and we used it. Other 'firsts' resulted -- the first openly-gay national AIDS director, the first federal prosecution of an anti-gay murder as a hate crime, and the first real global AIDS initiative. Small potatoes for some, sure. But progress for the GOP circa 2001-2002. It was enough to infuriate leading religious right organizations, who in 2001 launched an effort to "expose" the "gay Republican agenda" at work inside the Bush White House (and I was named personally as a conspirator in some reports).
The point of recalling all this is not to extol the virtues of Bob Dole or George W. Bush by any means; far from it. It's a very different world in 2008, and as it should be, the bar is far higher for both parties than it was then. But it's to point out how leverage is the name of the game in politics, and how power is gained or lost inside the GOP through leverage. And why this is a very tense moment for gay observers of the McCain campaign, because of the leverage trying to be exerted on him now by some of the gay community's biggest enemies in politics. Will he be different? Will he fight off the religious right kitchen-sink that is currently flying at his head?
Chris asked very understandably for someone to explain what the attraction is for John McCain among some gays. It's not easy to explain in sound bites. McCain does represent a milestone in the journey that gays have made with the Republican Party, either on the inside or on the outside. Because he will be the nominee, we will have a presidential contest in which neither candidate supports the Federal Marriage Amendment. True, neither will support gay marriage; indeed both will have been on record opposing it. But we should all agree that this is still progress.
If Hillary Clinton is the nominee, she will carry with her some nice rhetoric and very little substance on gay issues. Obama is a very new product, and the radioactive wattage of his rhetoric is all we really have on him. McCain has a long record, and it contains both legislative and political memories of all types.
He stood with gay Republicans against the ugly tactics in South Carolina in 2000 and the early pandering by the 2000 Bush campaign to anti-gay groups. He voted against the FMA in the Senate, and spoke against it on the Senate floor, but he also voted for DOMA, against ENDA, supports "don't ask, don't tell" and backed the Arizona anti-gay marriage referendum (but so did John Kerry back such a measure in 2004).
He led the fight with Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) and Sen. Mark Hatfield (R-OR) in 1996 to repeal the repulsive Dornan Amendment, which sought to create witchhunts to drive soldiers out of the military who tested HIV positive after enlistment and cut off all their benefits. I remember meeting with him that year in the Senate and seeing the blood in his eyes over how unfair it was as he laid out their strategy for getting the votes to repeal it. And when I raised "don't ask, don't tell" in the same conversation, and again when it was raised in our meeting with him as a presidential candidate in 2000, he had the same political (almost Hillaryesque) answer: "When General Colin Powell says it's time to repeal it, we can do it."
Conviction, politics, bravery, skittishness -- all rolled up in one. It was good from a conservative Republican in 1996 and 2000; it's frustrating today coming from anyone wanting to be President, even if it's an improvement over the last guy who ran.
He would certainly appoint openly gay people in a McCain Administration, and probably in some senior positions should the right people come along. I have no doubt about that. And he would get his back up and defend them against even a whisper of anger from the (shrinking) GOP minority in the Congress over their qualifications. But I don't know if he'll ever be with us on ENDA. I'd like to think he will be. But that's not enough for most people to make a decision in November, if that's their big issue.
He'll never be with us on marriage, though. There aren't enough years left in life for that kind of conversion, I'm afraid, as much as I like him personally. At least he'll never lie to us in the face about it, like many Democrats. But how good is that a reason to vote for him? I guess it depends on his opponent, who will also oppose gay marriage. Here's where it gets muddy, yet again.
So, in that melange of answers and ruminations, you see where McCain fits into the bigger picture for some gays. And you also see how tenuous this moment is for those who hope he will continue to be "different", albeit imperfect, in terms of Republican nominees. He already went to Liberty University a long time ago, and much like he did at CPAC last week, he didn't give them anything other than very polite attention and a restatement that he is who he is, take him or leave him.
If McCain faces down the pressure of Huckabee's challenge and the ravings of the talk radio set, and refuses to kneel in any way to that pressure, then we shift our focus to the GOP convention in St. Paul and beyond, and begin to wonder what a Clinton or Obama challenge would bring out in John McCain next fall. And if he wins the presidency, whether we voted for him or not, what will it mean for the Republican Party that a tough man stood up to our community's biggest political enemies, told them to go to hell, won the nomination, led the party to victory and never regretted it for a moment? It could finally embolden gay rights supporters in the GOP to get off their asses, come out of hiding (and the closet) and do the right thing in abundance once and for all.
For many of us who look at the U.S. political spectrum far beyond the meetings of a few gay Democratic clubs in a handful of major cities, it would be a gigantic step forward for the United States. And there would be a duty for Log Cabin Republicans to build leverage over the McCain Administration and to use it for the right ends -- legislative and policy outcomes that we want as a community, and progress that we can measure and hold up to the next president and the next.
If you don't get it, well, sorry. That's just the way it is on Mars.
February 07, 2008
One down; one to go...
Posted by: Kevin
Today, Mitt Romney gave up his effort to lead a soulless borg of hacks into power in Washington, and the gay community is better off for it. If nothing else, all those people that he flipped-off to launch his flop of a presidential campaign can rejoice -- he was taken down.
And he was taken down by a candidate who is seen as enemy number one by anti-gay monsters like James Dobson and Pat Buchanan. John McCain is the anti-borg; he's a man who inspires Democrats and independents because he revels in telling the psychotic wing of the Republican Party that it can eat shit. (And I think that's actually a quote...) Regardless of whether any of us should vote for him in November, it is clearly a welcome development for the GOP and for gays in general. (Log Cabin Republicans are celebrating, and with good reason. They had a score to settle with Romney, and a message to send to any GOP gay rights supporters that there will be pain if you flip-flop on our issues.)
Now, with the GOP race decided, it's time to go after the other corrosive element that is holding our community back politically. It's time to take out Hillary Clinton, and the soul-crushing hack-o-rama that she and her husband are gathering off the coast to lead back into power.
A McCain-Clinton race would be the worst of all worlds. Clinton will have to "run to the middle", and in the universe of the Clintons that means throwing gays overboard on just about everything except the most antiseptic, unnecessary fluff of rhetoric and no action. And their surrogates (e.g. the Human Rights Campaign) will microtarget the same tired Elizabeth Birchian message that if gays don't vote for Hillary, masked gunmen will essentially break into their houses the day after the election and march them off to camps. (And, as so many of us are just as dumb as any other machine demographic, it will work with a lot of gay voters.)
Hillary will drone on and on about nothing during the general election campaign, slowly beginning to resemble the sound of an adult speaking in a Peanuts animated cartoon, and leave McCain a wide berth to simply point to her and say, "I'm not that." The end. No debate, no pressure and no oxygen for gay issues.
However, an Obama-McCain race is the one that the borgs dread like a vampire dreads the sunlight. What seems clear now is that it would be a race that would smash all the usual claptrap of machine politics and test the limits of the left-right, Democrat-Republican, conservative-liberal continuum. They are honorable men with ideas, spiritual groundings and true charisma, but they are also men with flaws, weak spots and shortcomings.
I can't imagine McCain ever embracing the rhetoric of the anti-gay movement, or the cowardly cavings to groups like Focus on the Family. He has taken some brave moves, like voting against the Federal Marriage Amendment, and speaking against it on the floor. But on a wider range of legislative issues that have come up, like ENDA, he has stubbornly stood aside for a long time. Obama has been called by many, including Chris, as the best candidate on gay issues. I confess that even I am taken by his soaring speeches, and not just on gay issues but even on the war and the economy. He is like booze - tastes great, and makes me almost forget what my convictions are. Dangerous, but not necessarily in a bad way. Who knows? But no matter how taken any of us might be with Obama, let's not forget that this man is a novice. And the presidency is the most awesome office in the world, especially now. It's not just the prize on the season finale of a reality show.
So, let's table the question on the vote in November for now, and unite behind this important principle -- it's time to annihilate the machine politics that have held the gay movement back for too long. Romney has been stopped. Time to stop Hillary.
Then we can have the race we deserve as a community, and as a nation.
February 01, 2008
For gay GOPers - now what?
Posted by: Kevin
With the exit of Rudy Giuliani, who by any reasonable account was the biggest gay rights supporter to ever have a decent shot at the GOP nomination for president, a lot of air has come out of the balloon for gay Republicans this cycle. What comes next is still a very open question.
Some things are very clear. The vast majority of gay Republicans I know were either declared or undeclared Giuliani supporters, many of them registered on his delegate slates to the GOP convention. That was logical. He was a Republican worth fighting for in the gay community for many years. I backed his mayoral campaigns in 1993 and 1997, and I was lucky enough to speak with him a few times during my time on staff at Log Cabin Republicans. At an event after the 1997 election, I saw him get booed at a high school in Queens because he had proposed an expansive domestic partnership law for same-sex couples after the election. He didn't blink, and he lectured the hecklers about respect for people who are different, and why it made not only New York a great city, but America a great country. I marched with him down Fifth Avenue on many a Gay Pride Day. I never dreamed he'd run for president. And just from the level of vitriol and attacks the partisan New York gay Democratic hacks stirred up from the moment he announced (if you understand New York City politics at all), you can be sure Rudy was indeed a stand-out Republican on our issues.
Right off, as the campaign got serious, he started hedging on some important things. It was very disappointing. And it wasn't excusable. Had his primary election strategy succeeded (i.e. had John McCain vanished early), he would have had to answer to the gay community, not the least of whom his many, many gay supporters, for his equivocations. I was betting that he would come clean and be with us forthrightly before November. But that's in the what-if category now.
The other sure thing is that Mitt Romney must be stopped. He is, embodied in one man, everything that is reprehensible and destructive inside the Republican Party of which I am a member. Romney's lies and flip-flops on gay issues run the gamut so widely that he literally should be in the Guinness Book of World Records for the most heinous backtracking on more gay issues than any other politician in history. But it goes beyond our community. Mitt Romney has shown that he is not only incompetent as a potential commander-in-chief (see his laughable answers in the last debate), but he is willing to say or do anything to get ahead politically, and the combination of the two at this moment in time could lead to the worst imaginable consequences for the world. Romney in the White House is just a dangerous, frightening concept to imagine.
Mike Huckabee is already a footnote in the race, and given the fact that he depended on a lot of rabidly anti-gay supporters to even peak his head out in this election it would be ridiculous to think we could count on him to be rational on gay issues. His last minute, pre-Mega Tuesday fumbling to sound tolerant in San Francisco is more a sign of him being lost on the road to oblivion than anything else.
And then there is John McCain. He's a man I also supported very strongly in 2000 before he was knocked out of the race. I also got to talk to him on occasion in my old career, and the balls he showed to Karl Rove, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell alone in the 2000 campaign will always make me proud to call him a friend. The fact that many on the anti-gay right have said they hate him so much they'd vote for Hillary instead of him, frankly, is because his contempt for their politics is real. But it isn't 2000 anymore. And McCain is not with us on a lot of issues, even if he's with us gay Republicans on the fight against a common enemy. In the end, the enemy-of-my-enemy adage just doesn't cut it anymore. It's not good for HRC's boot-licking of the Democratic Party, or to let the Clinton Borg hack-o-rama off the hook for their uselessness. So it can't be the reason for voting for McCain for president in November either. He's going to have to do more.
It's only February, yes. But stay tuned. If you haven't noticed, gay Republicans don't fit neatly into any box, despite the relentless trashing that we get from a few trolling gay lefties on the internet. We're also not represented by a wide measure by friends of mine like Bruce Carroll, founder of GayPatriot, who despite my strong affection for him as a longtime friend, sometimes scares me with the intensity of his devotion to leaders who are unmistakably and unabashedly unreachable on whether gays should have any equality under the law now or ever.
The 2008 election has the chance of being a real party-bender of major proportions, depending on who emerges from the ashes of the primaries. With the gays, too. I'm not close to deciding who'd I'd want in November myself. But if the gay blogosphere is any indicator, don't be surprised if a surprising number of other gay Republicans decide to make history and get behind a man who (I must confess) has inspired many of us more profoundly than we expected, and has us all considering our options more widely than we'd ever considered before.
And I'm not talking about Mike Bloomberg.
January 30, 2008
Kennedy hit with bitter NOW backlash
Posted by: Andoni
It’s the politics of gender now.
According to the AP, the New York chapter of the National Organization for Women had the following to say after Sen. Edward Kennedy endorsed Barack Obama.
We are repaid with his abandonment! He's picked the new guy over us. He's joined the list of progressive white men who can't or won't handle the prospect of a woman president who is Hillary Clinton.
NOW added it was our obligation to "elect, unabashedly, a president that is the first woman after centuries of men who 'know what's best for us.'"
I think they are saying that we have to vote for Senator Clinton because she’s a woman no matter who we think would be best for the country.
January 26, 2008
African Americans speak in South Carolina; now it's the gays' turn on Mega Tuesday
Posted by: Kevin
It seems the Clintons would not allow an election season pass without a whole lot of smear tactics in South Carolina. Why leave it to the Republicans, who left behind a pile of sleaze in the 2000 GOP primary? So, the Clintons decided to win at all costs.
In response, the voters of South Carolina hit back hard and said, "no." There was an African-American-led tidal wave against the Clintons' underhanded and desperate tactics.
It isn't just that Hillary herself accused Barack Obama of "representing" a slumlord (which it was later revealed she and her husband cozied up to for a photo back in their good old days) during the televised debate. It isn't just that Bill Clinton himself ran around the state, drawing on all his fake indignation and mind-game talents, saying contradictory things just about every 10 minutes and then blasting the media for daring to capture it all accurately. In for a penny, in for a pound. They went for broke, even as the whole thing was clearly slipping away from them.
Word then came this afternoon, reported first by Political Radar, that the Clinton campaign launched robocalls across the state attacking John Edwards:
"Hello, This is the Hillary Clinton for President Campaign.
Before you vote on Saturday, you should know that John Edwards voted for permanent trade relations with China. That’s right, John Edwards voted for the bill that cost thousands of jobs. Like the ones in the textile mills he talks about so much down here.
"You should also know that John Edwards made nearly a half a million dollars working for a Wall Street investment fund. A fund that’s been profiting on foreclosing on the homes of families; including 100 homes right here in South Carolina. That’s according to The State newspaper.
"Here in South Carolina, Edwards says he’s one of us, but up on Wall Street he was just another one of them.
"Can you trust John Edwards? This call is paid for by the Hillary Clinton for President Campaign."
Yes, from the same woman who sat on the board of Wal-Mart, and was a corporate lawyer herself who didn't exactly run around defending nuns and orphans at the Rose Law Firm, a Little Rock perch broiled by scandals involving its Clinton-attached attorneys. And let's not forget Bill Clinton was a staunch defender of free trade agreements with China, as well as NAFTA.
And what's more, this is from the same political couple that, after signing the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, ran radio ads in western states bragging about their opposition to gay marriage, even though that election was clearly in the bag. They haven't changed one iota, and they won't change.
In 2000, the Human Rights Campaign made a moral choice in the Democratic primaries. They leaped into the primary campaign and endorsed Al Gore, the establishment candidate, in order to help short-circuit Bill Bradley's challenge, even though Bradley was better on gay issues for longer than Gore was and his campaign was running out of steam. They played their card, and it said a lot about what they valued most. This year, HRC is so diminished in its standing and credibility (no hate crimes law, no ENDA, after a year of Democratic control of Congress), and has picked losers in the presidential sweepstakes since the DOMA-bragging Clintons left power. So they are standing on the sidelines, waiting to be told who they must support.
Mega Tuesday is nearly upon us. There will never be another moment in this entire election campaign where gay voters can be more influential on the outcome. So what will you decide? What statement will you make? Time is short. Just don't kid yourself that this moment doesn't mean much. It means everything - whether the gay community will have a real chance for progress in the next four years, or be consumed whole by a political machine that puts itself above all else, including our lives.
January 24, 2008
We can't say we weren't warned
Posted by: Kevin
As a lot of gay activists would prefer we forget, one of the wealthiest and most powerful openly gay men in America warned us almost a year ago about the Clintons, in an interview with Maureen Dowd of the New York Times:
Can [Obama] stand up to Clinton Inc.? “I hope so,” he says, “because that machine is going to be very unpleasant and unattractive and effective.”
Once, David Geffen and Bill Clinton were tight as ticks. Mr. Geffen helped raise some $18 million for Bill and slept in the Lincoln Bedroom twice. Bill chilled at Chateau Geffen. Now, the DreamWorks co-chairman calls the former president “a reckless guy” who “gave his enemies a lot of ammunitio