A couple of quick points about Obama's somewhat tepid and many years late acknowledgement of basic human dignity his campaign people staged for him this afternoon.
First, insofar as Obama's announcement... which changes nothing and basically reiterates Dick Cheney's position that the legality of gay marriage should be left to the states to decide... insofar as that is an advance of any value, the credit for it goes not to Obama who has spent most of his time with this issue
basically twisting in the wind. Instead it goes to the critics who have continued to drag him along on this "evolutionary" path.
Glenn Greenwald and
David Sirota both said this quite well today. Here's Greenwald's bit.
As David Sirota explained today,
this demonstrates why it is so vital to always apply critical pressure
even to politicians one likes and supports, and conversely, it
demonstrates why it is so foolish and irresponsible to devote oneself
with uncritical, blind adoration to a politician, whether in an election
year or any other time (unconditional allegiance is the surest way to
render one’s beliefs and agenda irrelevant). When someone who wields
political power does something you dislike or disagree with, it’s
incumbent upon you to object, criticize, and demand a different course.
Those who refuse to do so are abdicating the most basic duty of
citizenship and rendering themselves impotent.
The only problem I have with that paragraph is the part that implies there are supposed to be politicians we "like and support." When you get down to it, they're all just hollow vessels of ambition and suckassery. None of them deserve your support and certainly not your affection. But, depending on circumstances, some of them may be more susceptible to pressures that work in your favor and that's how you decide which way to vote.
The point is politics isn't really about the politicians. They're just the tools (in multiple senses of that word). Policy change is brought about by the forces acting upon those tools be they money, personal influence, or... in very very rare cases... genuine organized active demand of the voters. But the minute that demand relents is the minute the power to create further change is ceded. So, for the most part, I agree with Greenwald. I only disagree with the implication that we should ever stop and credit any politician for work they do not actually perform... such as leadership.
As to the politics of this thing, the stunt is a clever way to turn a poor election result in North Carolina into a "win the week" moment for Obama by momentarily firing up part of the much neglected Democratic base. Sure, the Fox and Freaks crowd responded predictably today but their pushback was so lame that it felt like going through the motions. I think they knew they'd been outmaneuvered... almost like a bluff had been called.
And that brings us to a final observation. Liberals like me have long said that the best way to counter the old Republican phony "values" playbook is to just show a little backbone on issues like gay rights. "Our" side has always enjoyed the true "moral" high ground in such matters. We've only suffered from a lack of candidates willing to articulate that clearly.
I actually don't think Obama has done that clearly enough yet but this was a strong enough move to cause an interesting reaction from the Romney camp and one that shows just how much the game has changed with regard to social wedge issues in national politics. It wasn't too too long ago that Republicans took it as a given that Democratic candidates could be separated from their "economic" base by a campaign strategy that highlighted issues like race, gay rights, abortion, recreational drug use, and the like.
I'm not about to say that this is no longer the case at all but I think those dynamics may be changing in a way that makes them less of a rout on the Republican side. For example, Mitt today, clearly knocked back on his heels,
offered this reaction.
Mitt Romney would like to talk about the economy. He would apparently
prefer not to talk about marriage equality, education for the children
of illegal immigrants or medical marijuana. In an interivew with a CBS
affiliate in Colorado, Romney was visibly annoyed after a string of
questions that included his stance on gay marriage and civil unions
(he’s against them), in-state tuition for the children of illegal
immigrants (he’s against that) and medical marijuana (he thinks pot is a
“gateway drug”).
“Aren’t there issues of significance you’d like to talk about?” he
said, after the string of social issue questions, one of which came from
a viewer. “The economy, the growth of jobs, the need to put people back
to work, the challenges of Iran? We’ve got enormous issues that we face
but you want to talk about medical marijuan–go ahead, you want to talk about Medical–”
“Marijuana should not be legal in this country,” Romney said finally, before calling pot a “gateway drug.”
Have we really come so far now that it's the Republican candidate, whose party even more than ever now is firmly ensconced as the party of the privileged "1%", who is so thrown for a loop by a Democrat who just (sort of) endorsed gay marriage that the best response he can muster is, "It's the economy, stupid"? These are indeed the strangest of times.
