Peter Rosenstein gives you plenty (and you too, you young “post-feminist” women who think you have it made in the shade with Obama):
I didn’t realize the extent to which sexism is still alive. As a gay man I have been more focused on homophobia in the last few years. But having worked for the late Rep. Bella Abzug (D-N.Y.) many years ago, I should have been aware that we have not come very far.
It is clear that racism is now politically incorrect. It is there in large measures and if Barack Obama is the nominee we will see just how widespread it still is, but we have come to the point that you cannot be racist in public and get away with it. … But we have seen in this campaign that we can still call women a word rhyming with witch, hold a sign up at a Clinton rally saying, “Hillary iron my shirts,” and everyone just laughs.
It is the same with discrimination against gays and lesbians. It is OK to discriminate and to call someone the “f-word” and most people still laugh.
Many gays and lesbians have found a way to excuse Obama for hiring Donnie McClurkin to speak for him and to accept bland statements of support with no proof that anything will ever be done. Women forget that they are still making only 77 cents to the dollar of what men make and that there is a glass ceiling for most jobs. They apparently continue to believe that by electing a man they will get what they deserve. I agree — they will get what they deserve.
I AM A little more understanding of black women who are torn between their race and their gender. That at least is understandable. But for other women to turn their back on another woman is crazy. For gays and lesbians not to support the person who has a history of supporting us is also not rational. It is Hillary who had a lesbian friend babysit for her daughter; the person holding her father’s hand when he died was a gay man. The relationships are long and deep. It is in Hillary’s office that the fight against the Federal Marriage Amendment was coordinated.
. . .
So I understand what it means to fight for the rights of the GLBT community everywhere even if that fight isn’t impacting me right now. So why can’t the young women of today understand what it will mean not only to them but to women around the world if the United States were to elect a woman president? Why can’t they realize what breaking the highest glass ceiling in the world will do for them? Why can’t they understand that having Hillary in the White House will mean a personal commitment to having judges who will protect Roe v. Wade? After all, I understand what having Barney Frank and Tammy Baldwin at the table with personal commitments to GLBT rights in Congress means to me. …
There’s little I can say that hasn’t already been said in the wake of Barack’s love-fest with Ronald Reagan, in an interview with the Reno Gazette-Journal (given in order to gain the paper’s endorsement) — except: If you don’t understand the outrage, you’re either too young to remember, or appreciate, the enormity of the damage Reagan and his nest of freedom-hating vipers inflicted on America — and don’t give a damn about learning your nation’s history — or you were a Reagan voter who’s still in denial.
For the rest of us still trying to heal from the Reagan Era, this is what the fuss is all about — or, more accurately, this is what Obama is all about:
Ronald Reagan More Effective Than Bill Clinton:
“I don’t want to present myself as some sort of singular figure. I think part of what’s different are the times. I do think that for example the 1980 was different. I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn’t much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. I think people, he just tapped into what people were already feeling, which was we want clarity we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.”
Obama did not specify what he believes those “excesses” were. But Reagan is widely credited with leading a rightwing backlash against the gains of the civil rights and feminist movements that preceded his 1980 election.
Those excesses, of course, were feminism, the consumer rights movement, the civil rights movement, the environmental movement, and the antiwar movement. The libertarian anti-government ideology of an unaccountable large liberal government was designed by ideological conservatives to take advantage of the backlash against these ‘excesses’.
What about the civil rights movement, which had a huge effect on the ’60s. Was that an excess? Were people who protested the Vietnam War, because they felt it was fundamentally wrong, much the same as many of us feel concerning Iraq, an excess? What about the strong feminism movement? Was that an excess? Or how about the new found concern of the environment? Was that an excess too?
His narrative completely excludes stagflation, high gas prices, and the hostage crisis in Iran. Think they might have been factors in the 1980 election?
He also fails to reconcile the fact that Reagan won just 50.7% of the vote in 1980 (his landslide was in 1984) with his theory that there was a unified national mood.
He also fails to explain why, if the nation was so unified, 1980 saw one of the strongest third-party campaigns in 20th century American history.
Moreover, Obama ignores the racism that was fundamental to Ronald Reagan’s campaign. Recall that Reagan began his campaign with a call for state’s rights in Philadelphia, MS.
He [Reagan] was openly — openly — intolerant of unions and the right to organize. He openly fought against the union and the organized labor movement in this country. He openly did extraordinary damage to the middle class and working people, created a tax structure that favored the very wealthiest Americans and caused the middle class and working people to struggle every single day. The destruction of the environment, you know, eliminating regulation of companies that were polluting and doing extraordinary damage to the environment.
I can promise you this: this president will never use Ronald Reagan as an example for change.
Sen. John Edwards January 17, 2008
[Reagan] never did make a similar peace with the “welfare queens” he fabricated out of whole cloth to push his anti-compassionate conservatism. Nor with the African Americans he insulted by launching his 1980 presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Miss., where three civil rights workers were slaughtered by the Ku Klux Klan in 1964. Nor with the Berkeley students demonstrating in a closed-off plaza whom he ordered tear-gassed by helicopter in 1969.
Nor, last but not least, with the tens of thousands of AIDS corpses whose disease he did not even deign to publicly acknowledge until 1987.
When I think about the 60s and the 70s, I think about Medicaid, Medicare, the Environmental Protection Agency, Community Development Block Grants… It’s astounding to me to have this blanket endorsement of a right wing attack.
When he says government in effect grew too much in the 60s and 70s… Reagan agreed with that. This is not simply a tribute to Ronald Reagan’s rhetoric but an endorsement of some of the substance.
Barney Frank (D-Mass.) Conference call January 18, 2008
Republicans: The Party of Ideas
“I think it’s fair to say the Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time there… over the last ten, fifteen years, in the sense that they were challenging conventional wisdom.”
So I suppose that means George Bush (past 7 years), had some good ideas? I suppose he thinks Bob Dole’s ideas were better than Clinton’s in ‘96? Does he think Gingrich had the right ideas in the ’90s?
The Republicans were the party of ideas for the last 10 to 15 years, because they were challenging conventional wisdom? OK, now I’m completely boggled. Is Obama talking about the same GOP I know — the Republican party of Tom DeLay and George Bush? The party in which candidates compete to see who can do the best Reagan impersonation? This is the party that’s challenging conventional wisdom? What’s going on here?
Paul Krugman Reagan and Obama The Conscience of a Liberal January 17, 2008
That’s not the way I remember the last 10 to 15 years.
I don’t think it’s a better idea to privatize Social Security. I don’t think it’s a better idea to try to eliminate the minimum wage. I don’t think it’s a better idea to undercut health benefits and to give drug companies the right to make billions of dollars by providing prescription drugs to medicare recipients. I don’t think it’s a better idea to shut down the government, to drive us into debt.
Sen. Hillary Clinton Conference call January 18, 2008
The Republicans have been the party of ideas for the past ten to fifteen years? Including the last seven years of Bill Clinton’s administration? Really, Mr. Obama?
So just what did William Jefferson Clinton do for blacks and Latinos?
Since the economy is the hot topic these days, let’s just look at what President Clinton did for minorities in terms of economic gains. …
Unemployment Rate for African Americans and Hispanics Remains Historically Low. Under President Clinton and Vice President Gore, the Hispanic unemployment rate has dropped from 11.3 percent in January 1993 to a record low of 5.8 percent in March 1999. The unemployment rate for African Americans has fallen from 14.1 percent in January 1993 to 8.1 percent in March 1999 — one of the lowest levels on record for African Americans.
Here are additional economic accomplishments of the Clinton/Gore administration — as of 1999 (during the administration’s second term) — that also had a direct positive effect for minorities…
. . .
Listen, Mr. Obama. If you think that President Clinton and Vice President Gore accomplished those amazing turnarounds for the economy and for minorities by singing “Kumbayah” with Republicans, you’ve just shown how naive you are.
And you’ve exposed how uninformed you are about the brutal history of U.S. politics where every progressive step is spattered with the blood, sweat and tears of all who fought so hard for those gains.
How we yearn for those 1990s that you dismiss, Mr. Obama.
[The interview] also re-aroused my suspicions that Obama is not a real Democrat, given as he is to touting GOP talking points on Social Security and presenting far weaker economic stimulus and health care plans than his rivals. Are his real political views more like Reagan’s than the Democraty party’s? It’s quite possible.
Worst of all, it reminded me of Obama’s dreamy attitude about the presidency. He thinks he can just be the “vision” guy and get “smarter people” around himself, and that the governing will take care of itself.
Never mind that George W. Bush — taking off where Ronald Reagan began — has decimated all key federal agencies of their most experienced staffers and devastated the agencies’ budgets, so much so that some will have to be rebuilt from the ground up.
JedReport was unable to reach Newt Gingrich, the chief intellectual of the Republican Party for comment. JedReport was able to confirm that Albert Gore, has had an idea or two over the last fifteen years, however.
Not “Invested” in the 1960s, Yet Can Read Baby Boomers’ Minds (Oh, and By the Way, the Boomers Can Go to Hell)
“I didn’t I didn’t come of age in the battles of the 60s, so I’m not as invested in them. So I think I talk differently about issues and I think I talk differently about values, and that’s why… um, I-I think we’ve been resonating with the American people.
“I think… And, by the way, when I say this sometimes, it’s-it’s interpreted as ‘I don’t think anybody who’s a Baby Boomer should be president’ — that’s not what I’m saying, but what i’m saying is… I think the average Baby Boomer has moved beyond a lot of the arguments of the 60s but our politicans haven’t. We’re still having the same arguments, you know, it’s all around cultural wars and it’s all, you know, even when you discuss war, you know, the frame of reference is all Vietnam — well, that’s not my frame of reference, you know, my frame of reference is what works. And my— even when I first opposed the war in Iraq, my first line was: ‘I don’t oppose all wars.’ You know… it… it… specifically to make clear this is not just a… anti-military, you know, 70s love-in kind of approach.”
In one fell swoop, Obama disparages the success-filled, non-stop efforts of millions of people during the 1960s and 1970s…
News flash: Barack Obama isn’t invested in the 1960s. No kidding. He’s not invested in reality either.
. . .
The 1970s peace movement helped stop the Vietnam war. It’s what drew John Kerry to the Senate to give one of the most electrifying speeches from a military veteran in U.S. history.
. . .
The cult of personality of Reagan, now Obama, has another thing in common. The arrogance to seduce the masses into believing something that isn’t so. Obama is convinced that Reagan was transformational, but misses on what grounds that transformation occurred.
That Obama made his case by attacking the “anti-military” Democratic rabble who Reagan also blamed for bringing this country to its knees in the 70s, because of the peaceniks’ love-in kind of approach, which was the in thing after the carnage of the Vietnam war, without realizing what he’s doing proves Mr. Obama’s cluelessness.
Reagan was the antithesis of “an anti-military, you know, 70s love-in kind of approach.” Now we find out that Obama is too. Who’s going to tell John Kerry?
Good Grief! That’s Me on the Left January 18, 2008
Astounding isn’t it? Yep, let’s put the guy who brought us “Iran-Contra, “Star Wars,” and “the largest deficits then ever known” up on a pedastal and claim he transformed this nation with “clarity” and “optimism.”
“One of the things I’m very proud of about this campaign is that I think we’ve already changed the political dialogue. When you think about it, you know, when Mitt Romney starts talking like me — which wasn’t the case… You have somebody like Huckabee who is doing very well basically taking a similar tone… I think we are shifting the political paradigm here.”
He was talking about the very same Mitt Romney who has spent more money on attack ads than all the other presidential candidates combined. Just over two weeks ago, CNN reported:
Two negative ads recently launched by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who has spent more on advertising than any other candidate, either misrepresent his rival’s records or include distortions, according to a CNN analysis of the commercials. (emphasis added)
This is the man who Barack Obama proudly cites as evidence he has brought about a shift in political paradigms?
. . .
Confused? So am I. I honestly have no idea what in the hell Obama is talking about.
It’s either another one of Obama’s completely meaningless bloviations or a political analysis conducted on a geometric plane I’ve never heard of before (perhaps for those times when triangulation just won’t do).
Mind you, I’m not saying that Obama didn’t put on a fine display of triangulation in the video. …
After Obama’s Reagan love-in, a quote I posted January 16 from Ed Pilkington is, if not prescient, far more pertinent than ever:
“Look further back still and the pattern is repeated. In 1990, while a second-year student at Harvard, [Obama] had the audacity to stand for election to head the Harvard Law Review, one of the country’s most prestigious legal publications. He beat off 18 other candidates to become its president (savor the moment: He was elected president Obama).
“David Goldberg, a civil rights lawyer who was a runner-up in that poll, recalls that Obama won by reaching out to right-wing law students, several of whom went on to become key legal advisers in the Bush administration: ‘We were a really polarized group of students, and he managed to span us all.’”
Notice a pattern yet?
Reagan — the Hollywood red-baiter who rose from president of the Screen Actors Guild to president of the United States even though he was already senile. Reagan who gave us tax cuts and “trickle down” economics that didn’t work — except for the rich and richer and richest. Reagan who let “mommy” (Nancy) run the white house with the aid of her astrologer. Reagan whose horse was smarter than he was.
Give me a break. One of the most disgusting sights in recent years was the genuflecting before this total fraud that went on at his funeral. And the hypocritical bullshit being trumpeted by the networks! Where were all the actors and writers and directors whose lives he ruined? I guess they were dead. But — what, me worry? — in America nobody knows one crumb of history, so Ronald Reagan’s vicious red baiting, how he rose to prominence by smearing other actors and writers and directors, was totally forgotten.
I suppose Mr. Obama has forgotten too — scholar of history that he is. Perhaps he was not alive in the 50s so he knows nothing about it — the Army-McCarthy hearings, the smearing of creative artists who donated to Spanish Civil War Relief even though they were not “card-carrying” communists. They happened, like my parents, and their friends, to have given money to help little Spanish children, orphaned by the Spanish Civil War — and ever after they trembled lest Ronnie Reagan and his ilk witch-hunt them.
Nowadays, as we grapple with the malevolence of President Bush, it’s Reagan we remember as the sensible one. At the risk of speaking ill of the dead, let memory at least acknowledge that there was much about Reagan that was not so sensible.
It’s not just more evidence that Obama was willing to say whatever it took to get the conservative editorial board to endorse him. It’s worse. It’s much worse.
It is further evidence that not only does Obama have no sense of the history of the last half of the 20th century — wait until you see the video below the fold — but also that he really is as conservative as his weak health care plan and far weaker economic stimulus plan have hinted. (Then there’s his use of GOP scare-tactic talking points on Social Security, and how he has been embraced by the right — including George Will who last year compared Obama to Ronald Reagan…
On the issue of Obama’s lack of “investment” in the struggles of the 1960s and 70s, and his obvious lack of personal experience of recent American history, here’s another quote from my post of January 16:
“Despite his skin color versus mine, I am not at all convinced that Barack Obama’s ties to the Civil Rights era equate with mine; when my snow-white third-grade class was being introduced to our first black classmate, Obama was living in Indonesia. We both attended Catholic school — but somehow, I cannot imagine that young Barack was inundated by the issue of American race relations (on the news, in the movies, on the cover of newsweeklies, and in lengthy class discussions — yes, even before my age reached double digits) as I was.
. . .
“I wasn’t quite four when the Watts riots exploded — and exploded with such repercussion that I remember them as well as I remember the endless news footage of the Vietnam War, and the nightly body count out of Southeast Asia.
Does Obama remember any of this? Did he even hear about it before he returned to the U.S. at the age of ten — when even the Summer of Love was a quickly-fading memory?”
Liberals always talk as if only the conservatives of our own generation were scary, and the conservatives of a previous generation kind of cuddly. Not helpful. Reagan really did almost blow the world up.
Look, I know this is weedy stuff and probably doesn’t matter to the average voter under the age of 45. But to long time liberals who lived through this period as an adult, it’s like waving a red flag in our faces. Reagan ran explicitly against the left (and in the process normalized the kind of indecent talk that made Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter millionaires.) Because he won big in 1984, leaders in both parties accepted this omnipotent Reagan myth and have run against liberalism ever since — and have ended up, through both commission and omission, advancing the destructive conservative policies that brought us to a place where we are debating things like torture. It would be helpful if ending the era of Democrats running against the liberal base could be part of this new progressive “trajectory.”
Some of us also remember the early devastating AIDS epidemic sweeping through the gay community without a word of support, comfort, or recognition from Ronald Reagan.
Some of us remember the lies about “Welfare Queens” he used to justify horrible callous, usually racist rhetoric about vulnerable fellow citizens.
Some of us remember illegal drugs sold on the streets of our cities to pay for illegal arms to the Contras and torturers and death-squads, while Nancy piously suggested we “Just Say No” as the racist War on Drugs ramped up here.
Some of us remember that an extreme minority of anti-democratic fundamentalist zealots started calling themselves “The Moral Majority” in the Reagan years.
Some of us remember Reagan telling us “government is the problem” and then seeing to it that whenever Republicans are in charge they would damn well prove it.
Some of us remember how Reagan sold the lie that giving to the rich and taking from the poor would create prosperity that would “trickle down” to the poor anyway.
Some of us remember Reagan tearing down Carter’s solar panels from the White House and his choice of James Watt as environment secretary.
Some of us remember “Ronbo” belligerently making war noises, throwing his weight around, and joking about nuclear strikes.
Some of us remember PATCO, and Reagan’s war on the unions that created a democratizing middle class (even if it never managed to extend to people of color as it so urgently needed to do).
Ronald Reagan was an evil bastard and he set the stage for the even worse Killer Clowns of the present Administration.
Feel good bullshit about the affable Gipper is dishonest and dangerous and damaging and we will not stand for it.
No, Ronald Reagan didn’t appeal to people’s optimism, he appealed to their petty, small minded bigotry and selfishness. Jimmy Carter told people to tighten their energy belts and act for the good of the country; Ronald Reagan told them they could guzzle gas with impunity and do whatever the hell they wanted. He kicked off his 1980 campaign talking about “state’s rights” in Philadelphia, Mississippi — the site of the murder of three civil rights workers in 1964’s Freedom Summer. He thus put up a welcome sign for “Reagan Democrats,” peeling off white voters who were unhappy with the multi-ethnic coalition within the Democratic Party.
One of his first acts was to fire 11,000 air traffic controllers in 1981 — one of the most devastating union busting moves of the past century. And his vision of deregulation didn’t free the country up for entrepreneurship, it opened it up for the wholesale thievery of the savings & loan crisis. He popularized the notion that all government is bad government and in eight short years put in place the architecture for decades of GOP graft and corruption.
There’s enough hagiography of Reagan on the right, I don’t think Democrats really need to go there.
…if you think, as Obama does, that Reagan’s rise to power was premised on a sunny optimism in contrast to an out of control government and a society rife with liberal excess, then you don’t understand the conservative movement. Reagan tapped into greed and fear and tribalism, and those are powerful forces. Ignoring that isn’t going to make them go away.
It’s not as if nobody saw this coming — the warnings were there, over and over and over again. Did anyone think the Donnie McClurkin flap was an isolated incident? The easy dismissal of the Baby Boomers? The attack on church-state separatists?
(What “attack on church-state separatists,” you ask? Better you should ask, “Which attack on church-state separatists?” But here’s just one example, from his keynote address at the Call to Renewal’s Building a Covenant for a New America conference: “At worst, there are some liberals who dismiss religion in the public square as inherently irrational or intolerant, insisting on a caricature of religious Americans that paints them as fanatical, or thinking that the very word ‘Christian’ describes one’s political opponents, not people of faith.” Nice job broadbrushing those of us who believe in Thomas Jefferson’s “wall of separation” as a bunch of Christian-haters, Obama.)
Here are just a few — a very few — of the warning signs (note the dates):
Just before U.S. Sen. Barack Obama admitted on the TV television program “Meet the Press” last fall that he was thinking about a run for the presidency, host Tim Russert asked him to define a great president.
. . .
Then, waxing more philosophical, Obama addressed the broader, cultural significance. “When I think about great presidents,” he said, “I think about those who transform how we think about ourselves as a country in fundamental ways so that, at the end of their tenure, we have looked and said to ourselves, that’s who we are. And … you know, there are circumstances in which I would argue Ronald Reagan was a very successful president.”
. . .
In terms of political philosophy, professional background and racial heritage, Obama and Reagan are distinctly different, one a figure of the new century and the other a representative of the previous one.
Look more closely, however, and you see a number of striking parallels between the young senator contemplating a White House campaign and the late, Illinois-born two-term president. …
. . .
Are such parallels predictive? Of course not. The disparity between Reagan and Obama in governmental experience is profound. Eight years as governor of the country’s most populous state is executive training that eight years in the Illinois state Senate and less than a full term in the U.S. Senate could never offer. And other differences abound.
But the intriguing similarities reveal two political figures possessing common traits, including vivid personalities with rare skill in connecting with the public. Both, in their ways, speak American, the distinctive dialect of the nation’s ideals and yearnings. Reassuring smiles and welcome wit of self-deprecating humor notwithstanding, electoral ambition is an animating drive for each.
In Reagan’s case, it took three campaigns spanning 12 years to reach the White House. Will Obama’s future follow such a course? His much-anticipated decision about 2008 will start to answer that question.
I recommend that every Dem read Obama’s “The Audacity of Hope” and read it with a critical eye.
I didn’t know much about Obama so I bought the book. It was an eye-opener.
He is laudatory of Ronald Reagan for his involvement in ending the Cold War. He makes no mention of the bloated military budget taking down the Soviet Union.
He says “Bush won two elections”. There is no mention of election fraud in either Florida or Ohio. He tells stories about first meeting Bush; he definitely was taken in by Bush’s “folksy” charm.
He refers to the “bankruptcy of socialism”.
He claims the press is only “distracted” not bought.
His discussion of 9/11 says nothing about questions disputing the “official” story of how it happened.
I found enough in it to give me pause about Obama, especially since he’s running a campaign on personality as opposed to policy.
That Reagan’s message found such a receptive audience spoke not only to his skills as a communicator; it also spoke to the failures of liberal government, during a period of economic stagnation, to give middle-class voters any sense that it was fighting for them. For the fact was government at every level had become to cavalier about spending taxpayer money. Too often bureaucracies were oblivious to the cost of their mandates. A lot of liberal rhetoric did seem to value rights and entitlements over duties and responsibilities. Reagan may have exagerrated the sins of the welfare state, and certainly liberals were right to complain that his domestic policies tilted heavily toward elites, with corporate raiders making tidy profits throughout the eighties while unions were busted and the income for the average working stiff flatlined.
Nevertheless, by promising to side with those who worked hard, obeyed the law, cared for their families, loved their country, Reagan offered Americans a sense of common purpose that liberals seemed no longer able to muster.
pp. 156-157:
The conservative revolution Reagan helped usher in gained traction because Reagan’s central insight — that the liberal welfare state had grown complacent and overly bureaucratic, with Democratic policy makers more obsessed with slicing the economic pie than with growing he pie — contained a good deal of truth.
As SusanUnPC wrote two days ago: “If that not-a-real-Democrat gets nominated, I’ll be watching ‘Mourning in America.’
“And so will all those young people so smitten with Barack Obama now.”
Here’s a nice, long thread at Democratic Underground that spells out many (’though hardly all) the reasons Ronald Reagan was the devil incarnate. Read it and weep, Obamaites — for that two-faced Janus you call a candidate, for your own naïveté, and most of all for the country you’re so willing to give up to the dogs — again:
…from a Reagan defender who admits he’s “too young to remember most of Reagan’s years, but… The research I’ve done indicates that he did not start any significant wars during the 80’s. He was very poised and did not act based on knee-jerk reactions.”
(The poster, thank goodness, has since been banned from DU.)
Are there any Obama cultists who don’t get it yet? Well, get this: You’re getting PLAYED, suckers.
Gay City News reports on the overtly hostile Republican reaction to gay and lesbian voters in New Hampshire, the “quieter” Democratic outreach to LGBTs — and the Obama camp’s conspicuous silence on the entire matter:
The appearance of ACT UP members and other universal health care advocates at a John McCain rally in Salem, New Hampshire this past weekend — which by its conclusion had some Republican attendees ripping the signs from the hands of protesters and forcing them from the hall — was the exception rather than the norm at candidate gatherings across the state.
There was, in fact, little LGBT visibility at town hall meetings across New Hampshire, despite the fact that the advent of civil unions in the state on January 1 was among the biggest of recent local political stories.
Outreach to lesbian and gay voters and political efforts by them seemed to be taking place in quieter, more intimate settings. …
Members of the local LGBT community turned out, as did two New England gay political stars — Barney Frank, the Massachusetts congressman, and David Pierce, a state representative from Etna in northern New Hampshire, near Hanover.
Frank, as is his custom, emphasized that the fortunes of the LGBT community and of the Democratic Party are inextricably linked, dismissing Republican Mitt Romney as “synthetic” but warning that John McCain poses the greatest threat.
“We have an important role to play in this election,” he told the crowd. “We in the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender community need to work on changing the atmosphere of hate and fear that is sweeping this country. We need to improve the lives of all GLBT people and by working to elect Hillary Clinton for president, we can do it.”
He acknowledged, as well, the role that his sister, Ann Lewis, plays as a chief honcho in the Clinton political operation.
The leading Democratic candidates had small groups of staffers handling LGBT requests about their campaigns and calling on local gay businesses, such as bars and restaurants, and other organizations to drum up support. Candidate flyers, bumper stickers, buttons, and brochures were piled high in several such establishments.
Curiously, though, calls and visits to the official Obama for President headquarters in Manchester to get an official statement or to interview staff or volunteers proved unsuccessful. No one associated with the campaign wanted to go on the record, or even comment on background, about the Illinois senator’s posture on LGBT issues.
Despite a giddy mood that swept that campaign as it anticipated a second-straight win, which in the end did not materialize, it is not clear that LGBT enthusiasm for Obama’s candidacy grew measurably in New Hampshire after his dramatic win last week in Iowa. Voters who spoke to this reporter welcomed his voice in the race, but seemed uncertain how supportive of the community he would prove to be.
Clinton appeared all around to be a better-known quantity. …
“No one associated with the campaign wanted to go on the record, or even comment on background, about the Illinois senator’s posture on LGBT issues.” Well, we’ll be more than happy to comment on the Illinois senator’s posture on LGBT issues. Oops, wait — we’ve already commented on the Illinois senator’s posture on LGBT issues, repeatedly. His posture, in a single word, is: duplicitous.
Is it any wonder that LGBT Americans — particularly those previously lukewarm or even downright antagonistic toward the senator from New York — appear to be rallying around Hillary Clinton in increasing numbers? It’s no wonder to us; Kucinich, the most egalitarian of the bunch, doesn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell, while the other three relatively gay-friendly candidates (Richardson, Gravel, and Dodd) have dropped out of the race.
Funny thing, this growing gay support for Hillary: The Obama supporters have continually accused those of us burned and genuinely disheartened by the Donnie McClurkin affair as exhibiting “faux outrage” to mask the “fact” that we’re all Hillary supporters anyway. And now, thanks to Obama’s continued insistence on not making amends with the LGBT voting bloc — and the continued insistence of many of Obama’s supporters to dismiss our very real concerns as “faux” anything — has pushed untold numbers of LGBT voters squarely into the Clinton camp.
This, I know. A diehard Kucinich supporter — up to the day he threw his support behind Obama — I once said I’d rather jam sharp sticks through my skull than cast a vote for Hillary. As things stand today, I plan on voting for Hillary in the California primary. As my (much) better half often says, it’s not a vote for Hillary — it’s a vote against Obama.
For my radical change of mind, Obama and his supporters have no one to blame but themselves.
The House of Representatives on Wednesday passed the Employment Non-Discrimination Act but with without protections for trans-workers after more than five hours of debate, wrangling, maneuvering and lobbying. …
. . .
After a brief debate on the [trans-inclusive] amendment in the House on Wednesday [Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis.] pulled it before a vote. It allowed Baldwin to speak in favor of trans rights on the record, but without a recorded vote Republicans will not be able to use transgender rights as an election issue in 2008. …
. . .
Democrat Jerrold Nadler (NY) disputed [its sponsor, Rep. Barney Frank]’s assertion that ENDA without trans protections was the best that could be done and said he could not vote for ENDA as long as it failed to include gender identity. …
. . .
Democratic presidential contender Dennis Kucinich also voiced his concern that the Baldwin amendment had been withdrawn without a vote. …
. . .
On Wednesday, following the vote, HRC president Joe Solmonese was all smiles. …
“‘If we do not have the votes to go forward (with the bill including trans-people) do we do away with the bill altogether?’” Frank asked the House.”
Yes, that’s exactly what you should have done, this session!
Notice who (besides Kucinich, of course) gets it right: Jerry Nadler, as usual. The straight congressman from New York’s Upper West Side has been a greater friend to the LGBT community than the spineless gay rep from Massachusetts. (It was Nadler, remember, who introduced the Uniting American Families Act, originally the Permanent Partners Immigration Act, in 2000, and who has re-introduced it every year since.)
And: “Even if a final version is approved by both houses it is likely to be met with a presidential veto.” We KNOW THAT — so if you’re going to push it through this term, why not go for the whole enchilada? It’s GOING to get vetoed, assuming it even passes the Senate.
And: To get ENDA passed in the House, they had to reassure the bigots it wouldn’t touch their precious DoMA:
Two other amendments to specifically address White House concerns were passed.
One would tie religious exemptions to the same wording as currently in the civil rights act. The other would specify that ENDA does not negate any section of the federal Defense of Marriage Act.
P.S. Solmonese, we just don’t have the words for you. How can you sleep at night?
FRANK URGES COLLEAGUES TO SUPPORT REP. BALDWIN’S GENDER IDENTITY AMENDMENT TO ENDA
Congressman Barney Frank is urging his colleagues to vote for the amendment to be offered by Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin to include transgender individuals in the Employment Non-Discrimination Act when it is considered on the House floor.
“The decision to offer such an amendment came out of a Caucus which Chairman George Miller held of the Democratic Members of the Education and Labor Committee. After some discussion, it became clear that offering such an amendment would offer us the best chance to achieve Speaker Pelosi’s goal of adopting in the House the most inclusive ENDA bill for which majority support existed.
“I argued in favor of transgender inclusion when I testified on the original legislation on September 5, but many of us believed that sending the full inclusive bill to the floor would open the door to a series of demagogic procedural moves that would have endangered our chances of a passing any bill at all. The discussion held by the Democratic Members of the Education and Labor Committee, Congresswoman Baldwin and myself resulted in this approach and I believe it meets the goal of giving people the opportunity to support a fully inclusive bill while avoiding the potential parliamentary death traps that would otherwise have resulted. I will on the floor of the House be repeating essentially the arguments in favor of transgender inclusion which I made in the September 5 hearing, because we will now be able to do that in a procedural setting that allows us to maximize support for an inclusive bill without endangering our chances of getting any bill at all.”
We’d like to think Frank experienced an epiphany — or at least that he finally heard those of us who refuse to leave our trans brothers and sisters in the dust, with the empty promise that we’ll come back for them later.
Too bad we don’t think either of those things. We think that if a trans-inclusion ENDA passes, Frank will take all the credit — and if it doesn’t, he’ll lay the blame squarely on Baldwin, and… well, everybody else.
Still, one has to wonder why he flipped (again) at all. Does somebody have some dirt on him or something?
Never mind the obviously biased, right-wing slant — the writer states that “crossdressers are one example” of transgendered people — that’s not the point.
The point is that if the quotes from Frank himself are accurate, he’s an even bigger traitor to the LGBT community than we thought:
No one has earned more stripes promoting gay rights than [Barney Frank], but the Democrat now finds himself targeted by, of all groups, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. And as usual, he’s not holding return fire.
“For some of these people, you can never be an ally,” Frank told me. And the proper response is to “call their bluff.”
“Who are they going to run against me?” he asks. “Larry Craig?”
. . .
Frank marvels at their [gay advocates’] poor grasp of political reality.
“They think that getting a bill protecting sexual orientation is easy,” he says. “We started on the gay and lesbian thing decades ago.”
. . .
Frank sees the campaign to push transgender rights into the anti-discrimination bill as creating a potential “Terri Schiavo” moment for the Democrats - that is, a situation where the fringes drag their party into a crusade that makes the broader public think its leaders are out of their gourds.
The radicals have no idea what it takes to get things done in the real world, Frank complains. And they have wacky expectations.
“We’re supposed to pass with votes from Indiana, Nebraska and South Carolina a better bill than we have in Massachusetts and New York,” Frank says. … “Like America is supposed to be easier than New York,” he adds.
. . .
The babysitting has got to stop, Barney Frank says. And if that means displeasing people who were never terribly loyal to begin with, so be it.
If the quotes aren’t accurate, then he ought to sue the crap out of that rag.
Speaking of rags… I wouldn’t normally pay attention to what a right-wing blog has to say, but so far, I’ve found mention of Frank’s remarks only on the Right — and the particular blog I’m about to quote doesn’t seem quite as hysterical as most (calling us liberals “a battalion of frothing extremists” isn’t the worst thing we’ve heard), and makes a couple of points — about Frank’s “reasoning,” and the portent of a trend — worth keeping in the back of one’s head:
I’m thinking this may be a bit of a coordinated pushback against the far left fringe. Froma Harrop writes about Barney Frank and the assault he is under from the gay community. Or at least some elements in that group. This is the second major story about this particular incident - and Frank seems to be pushing it for a reason.
. . .
Frank is senior enough - and has enough liberal credentials - to fight this fight with the fringe. I rather suspect the counter-offensive is intentional and timed to start forcing the fringe back as the general election nears. (Frank has a couple of really good zingers quoted by Harrop, by the way.) If we see more pushback from other very liberal and very secure Democrats, then it will be a confirmed, coordinated effort. We’ve already seen David Obey hit the “idiot liberals” publicly. A third one would define a trend.
By “the second major story,” the writer is referring to an October 12 piece in the New York Times about “the recent fury directed by gay groups at Mr. Frank,” and which quotes Frank: “The likelihood that somebody is going to run against me in my district on the grounds that I have been insufficiently pro-gay is not very high on my list of concerns.”
What the RW blogger doesn’t realize is that the NYT article is hardly the first “major story” about Frank’s arrogant dismissiveness — but then, I doubt most RWers are giving ENDA much attention (or not as much attention as they will after the transgender-less version comes down to a sign-or-veto fight).
Of course, we’ve been lambasted by plenty of Dems all along — comments about “the fringe,” and how the Dem Party doesn’t need us, are why I can no longer abide by Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer (to name just two) — so I don’t see getting backhanded by two such seemingly disparate types as Frank and Obey as the start of a “trend.”
But it’s turned, undeniably, into a pattern for Frank himself — and one must wonder not so much who’s giving him his marching orders (that’s easy to figure out), but why he’s willing to alienate such a huge percentage of LGBT Americans over ENDA.
But maybe I’m overreading, and the answer really is just as obvious as it seems: Frank values politics — and pats on the head from his masters — over doing the right thing. And while he deserves credit for introducing ENDA, the way he’s “fought” for it exposes the emptiness of all his rhetoric about fairness and justice. And he certainly doesn’t give a damn about LGBT Americans as a whole; his “concern” extends only to his own constituents, and whether or not they will keep re-electing him. (No wonder his Web site won’t accept email from outside his district.)
In the end, I think it’s clear that Barney Frank is as much a House Negro as any Log Cabin Republican.
After many years working as a bartender for Harrah’s Casino, Darlene Jespersen was fired for failing to conform to the Casino’s new ‘personal best’ grooming policy. As a female bartender, Jesperson was required to have her hair “teased, curled, or styled,” and to wear stockings. Jesperson was also suddenly required to put on makeup everyday: lipstick and nail polish mandatory.
It was a regimen she found burdensome and demeaning, and while sexual orientation was not an issue in her case, I know quite a few lesbians who might feel the same way. What would Ellen Degeneres do if NBC decided she needed to wear skirts on her show everyday? What would k.d. lang do if her record label demanded she adopt a ‘less masculine’ haircut?
While this may not have happened to Ellen or k.d., this kind of discrimination happens all the time. Darlene Jespersen lost her job because she did not live up to the female-specific requirements of her new dress code. And when she fought her termination in court, she lost.
Congress is now looking at two different versions of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. One would make this type of discrimination illegal. The other would not.
Congressman Barney Frank has chosen to introduce a straight-acting-only version of ENDA which bans employment discrimination based on sexual orientation but not gender identity and expression. This version may protect gays and lesbians based on their sexual orientation, but it won’t protect gays and lesbians who don’t adhere to society’s view of what men and women should be.
It won’t protect the gay guy who dresses up in drag on Halloween. It won’t protect the lesbian who doesn’t want to be forced to wear a skirt as part of a company uniform. It won’t protect any gay man who can’t live up to society’s standards and “act more like a man”. It won’t protect any lesbian who can’t live up to society’s standards and “act more like a woman.”
We should be outraged that Barney Frank is considering a bill that excludes the transgender community, but let’s be honest, the transgender community are not the only ones being thrown under the bus. Some may argue that we should start protecting straight-acting gays and lesbians, and then come back for the rest of the LGBT community later. As the Task Force [and] other organizations have documented by looking at state laws, this simply does not happen. It is always easier to stand strong and stand united and pass an inclusive bill than it is to go back later and try and pass protections based on gender identity and expression.
Make no mistake, a straight-acting-only ENDA ais a hollow victory one that is not worth achieving because it takes us further, not closer towards the goal of protection from employment discrimination for all of us.
— that’s not the point.