Election Response 3

I e-mailed a dear friend with some post-hoc observations. Call it "Wednesday evening quarterbacking," or just smug attempts at self-righteousness as a way to appease the hurt, but here are excerpts (names of friends changed to protect identity). Here goes.

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Some thoughts, posts, and old e-mail excerpts here, as I sift through my pain. The blog at Daily Kos has a lot of interesting stuff right now, and captures the array of bewilderment, hurt, anger, apathy, and call for intra-party reform (i.e intellectual overhaul) that we progressives are facing at this moment. The analyses are astute too, sometimes colorful.

And while I don't want to indulge in post-hoc I-told-you-soes, which are all too easy and which can't change what's happened, I feel compelled to speak on certain things. Among my immediate friend circles, I tend to be the ONLY one who has lived, grown up, in the South and who keeps warning us to pay attention to its power. In an e-mail to many friends on January 20, on the night of Dean's "Iowa screech", I wrote to you and several friends (bold added later):

After considerable thought, I've decided that two candidates have the right tone and the right credentials to take on Bush on the issue that Bush campaign is making central: national security. Those two are Senator John Kerry and General Wesley Clark. Of them, Kerry has more domestic experience, to be sure, but I believe Kerry cannot win the South either, because he will be perceived as an elite Massachusetts liberal (which, believe it or not, hurts one's campaign in the heartland). (Kerry's victory speech last night was opened by Sen. Kennedy). Without winning at least 5 southern states, a Democrat cannot win the White House. So I'd like to ask you to take a second look at Wesley Clark, a son of the South: www.clark04.com.

Well, I said "believe it or not" and the Democrats in their bizarre system of primaries decided on "not." I also feel that, as a gay man who has faced deep, immovable homophobia all his life, I'm perceptible to the catastrophic divisiveness of gay rights while all my straight, liberal allies of northern origin (like you, JB, Sandy) see gay rights as a fundamental civil rights issue that needs to be confronted now, and that can be confronted without jeopardizing more important things. Consider an excerpt from this post on Left Center Left:

Matt Yglesias points out that "values" and gay marriage especially tend to have been more decisive than expected, more decisive than policy issues even. If that's true, I can't convey how disheartening it is. Back when the SJC mandated equal marriage rights in Massachusetts for gays and lesbians, many liberals were lukewarm, fearing that gay rights advances, particularly marriage, would give fodder to Bush's reelection and GOP power in general. Then after the Constitutional Convention and the first marriages, such fears seemed unfounded. Gay men and women were getting married and life, even political life, went on as normal. Even nationally, the FMA was a wash. Now, to think the naysayers were right is distressing.

Well, I was one of the naysayers disturbed by the sudden "breakthroughs" in the gay rights movement this past spring. Recall from my e-mails to you (and others) in March of this year:

Gay marriage, even if legalized in various states, will remain shaky in the U.S. for years to come (and not just because of the Defense of Marriage Act); the larger struggle, I think, is to push for states to adopt civil unions and gay/lesbian equality into their legal codes, state by state, until we can get the federal government to acknowledge gay civil unions NATIONWIDE, at which point we can then decide whether or not to call it "marriage." I don't see why this isn't possible within 30 years or less. But right now, this debate is premature, misleading, and even potentially counterproductive in its divisiveness.

Well, it seems that looming larger than actually relevant issues like jobs or national security was the fear of gays, fear of losing gun rights, the fear of losing rights for fetuses---these aspects of conservatism's "values" played a larger role in the electorate's mind than the President's record of the past 3 years (abysmal), let alone ANY concrete issues involving the reality-based world (as opposed to the "faith-based" world of the right-wing).

A post in the Daily Kos says:

It wasn't the war or the economy that killed us. It was the notion of "values".

Massachusetts has the lowest divorce rate in the nation, yet Kerry was bad because he had "Massachusetts values" or other such nonsense.

We need to retake the language. We need to reframe the notion of "value".

That's why Obama's speech below is so brilliant. He speaks of God in a way that not just fails to offend this atheist, but inspires me. It's faith used for the purpose of living a good life, rather than faith wielded as a weapon against a whole class of people.

The wedges: gays, abortion, and guns.

Democrats have abandoned guns as an issue, and over the next three or four cycles it will prove an increasingly ineffective wedge. The NRA won. Good for them.

That leaves the two "faith based" wedges -- gays and abortion. And with great skill, the Republicans have equated those two issues with the word "value".

That's going to have to change.

To which there was the colorful post by "B":

sexual politics (3.50 / 2)

This is really all it comes down too. You might argue that this is all it has ever come down to:

Fear of the black man for his presumed sexual prowess and alleged promiscuity.

Fear of gay men for their alleged promiscuity.

And, why not fear of "liberals" for their desire to take away our favorite penis substitutes: guns, large automobiles.

Fear of the French for their alleged effeminacy, (and presumed sexual prowess). What's worse than limp wristed men who are attractive to our women ?

Fear of women who seek abortions, for they must also be promiscuous, and a demand that they pay the price for their sexual activity: denial of the right to control their bodies.

This is the difference between the two groups in the US. One body of people thinks that they have every right to impose their prejudices on those they fear. The other wants to eliminate those fears altogether.

We're screwed. It took a civil war to eliminate slavery, and a near civil war to begin the process of giving civil rights to all Americans. Lyndon Johnson, was wrong. It wasn't the South he lost for two generations, it is the would be theocrats he lost for who knows how long.

Note, I don't for a moment think that a majority of Americans necessarily think this way, but I do think that this is at the core of today's conservatism.

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Any thoughts out there? (Is anyone even reading this blog?)