Timing, priorities, political capital, and why Brian Pierce should be patient
At the risk of inflaming the Rainbow Panther brigade, Brian Pierce should simmer down about Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, (”DADT”) at least for a little while. Even the most strident gay rights advocate should be able to see that the progressive cause is facing more pressing national priorities right now, like health care reform and the global economic crisis. Taking up DADT right now would be a distraction that would cost the Obama Administration too much political capital.
Consider the set back DADT posed to the Clinton Administration, and how it compromised health care reform. I’m sure Rahmbo has. Despite an evolution on DADT in the public mind, moving the issue to the forefront will undermine Obama’s efforts to extend affordable health care to all Americans.
I submit that more gays are harmed by the lack of health insurance than by DADT. And more gays are harmed by the global financial crisis than DADT. These are broad American problems that are too important to allow distractions from any narrow activista interest group.
You can’t expect smart progressives to take up polarizing fights on issues effecting a small subset of Americans at the expense of possibly losing political wars of paramount national importance. Be patient.
Brian, it’s still early in the Obama presidency. Don’t get angry yet. There will be time to hold him accountable. Timing is everything. Imagine you’re a senior White House advisor. When would you tell him to take up the issue if your interest was serving the American people and President Obama instead of just the LGBT community? I’d like to see him take this issue up right after the 2010 election, preferably in a lame duck session.
Comment by Billy Joe Mills on 9 June 2009 at 8:39 am:
I support Brian on this for moral reasons. If this would actually have the power to derail nationalized health care, as Joshua suggests, then I would have a second reason to support it.
Comment by Brian Pierce on 9 June 2009 at 9:26 am:
If I thought that the Obama administration was doing what you said – prioritizing, working with the gay community to incrementally make progress on our issues steadily but over time – that would be fine with me. My concern is that no such arrangement has been made – even things like hate crimes or ENDA that should be relatively easy to get done without much of an uproar are being moved forward at an extraordinarily slow pace. And these are things that garner huge majority support (just as overturning DADT does – 70% of Americans want gays to be able to serve openly). Instead, I think the Obama administration has simply decided to either Sister Souljah us or just to distance itself from our issues entirely. With a Chief of Staff like Rahm Emanuel, it would be not at all surprising.
I don’t really doubt that at some point we’ll be getting hate crimes and ENDA, and I think DADT will eventually be done away with as well. I’m just concerned about how much pushing seems to need to be done to get the administration moving on these things. It’s discouraging when hate crimes and ENDA are only a starting point and there’s still a federal civil unions bill and changes in immigration policy that need to be made down the road.
I also think you’re making way too much of a false dichotomy between health care and DADT. DADT is going to take some political capital, yes – but it’s ALWAYS going to do that. There’s never going to be a “good time” to go forward with it, and there will always be bigger national issues around that affect more than just the gay community. But that just means Obama should bite the bullet and get it over with, especially at a time when he’s got a ton of political capital to spare. But in any case, as I said, if I thought that as soon as health care got done he would start moving on DADT, I’d be fine with that – and if that turns out to be the case, then great. I’m just really afraid that’s not what’s going on.
Comment by Joshua on 9 June 2009 at 9:41 am:
BJP: Passing meaningful health care reform will be the biggest struggle of the Obama Presidency. He’s gearing up now, and launching a full-scale campaign. Taking up DADT may not be a big enough political setback to “derail” the obama health care agenda, but that doesn’t mean it wont have an impact. For the sake of simplicity, chart a progressive vision for health care from 0 to 10, 0 being status quo, 10 being single payer universal coverage. My contention is that the difference in shedding political capital for things that can wait could make the Obama admin reach a 5 or 6, instead of a 7 or an 8, because weakness overall could impact components of the health care battle. A big debate on DADT would undermine a focused admin message on health care and slow down the health care reform campaign.
In that respect, slowing down gigantic reform proposals may postpone the time at which someone like Rahm is able to recommend taking up DADT. Pushing this now could conceivably self-defeating.
Comment by Joshua on 9 June 2009 at 9:51 am:
BJM – Moral reasons? You used to consider yourself the ultimate pragmatist. I fully support the moral battle to overturn DADT. I’m advocating a different strategy. There is nothing inherently immoral about looking for the best strategy to bring about change advancing morality. Reversing DADT will be more attainable after health care reform is pushed for pragmatic reasons.
Comment by Billy Joe Mills on 9 June 2009 at 9:55 am:
I know that few will agree, but I don’t think that killing DADT will meet with much sustained public outrage. Rush will go crazy for 3 days and then forget about it. In other words, I object to your political capital argument. I don’t think he needs to spend all that much capital.
Comment by Billy Joe Mills on 9 June 2009 at 9:58 am:
Also, perhaps if he pushed ending DADT and health care reform at the same time that DADT will be overlooked and sort of slipped past the busy Rush guards. They can only go crazy about one thing at a time.
Comment by Brian Pierce on 9 June 2009 at 10:44 am:
Josh – I get the argument, and it’s a good one IF that’s what’s going on. As I said, my concern is that it isn’t what’s going on – that instead the administration has just decided not to move on this stuff unless the gay community goes absolutely crazy over it. If the word going around gay rights circles was that the Obama administration had made arrangements to move on DADT at a particular time and had given assurances that it would do so, say, once health care got done, I’d be okay with that. But what’s going around is not that, it’s that the administration is just ignoring the gay community. That worries me. The Clinton administration clearly adopted the view that, once in office, it was best to just screw over gay people – not move slowly in such a way as to make steady progress, but just screw them over. There are indications Obama’s made the same assessment. I hope I’m wrong, I’m just very scared that I’m not.
Comment by Joshua on 9 June 2009 at 12:38 pm:
Its an interesting assumption you make, that the gay community going absolutely crazy will make the administration more likely to take action. Sometimes it seems like when gays go absolutely it leads to a steeper climb for the gay rights movement.
I concede your fears are valid, if the Obama admin hasn’t made such assurances. Then again, if those assurances were made, it’s possible they wouldn’t be widely known.
Comment by Tom Trumpinski on 9 June 2009 at 1:03 pm:
I expect that the gay community is merely the first community of supporters that the Obama administration is planning to screw over. Seems to be the simplest explanation to me.
Much as it pains me to say it, Brian’s right.
Tom
Comment by Joshua on 9 June 2009 at 1:11 pm:
Tom – Brian is right based on your expectation, because it is the simplest explanation. Thank you Captain Superficial Analysis
Comment by Brian Pierce on 9 June 2009 at 1:30 pm:
“Sometimes it seems like when gays go absolutely [crazy] it leads to a steeper climb for the gay rights movement.”
For the life of me I can’t imagine what you’re talking about. Look: politicians are cautious by nature. They’re risk averse, and the status quo is always preferable because doing anything inevitably requires pissing somebody off. Action only happens when organized groups push for it, and when it’s a small, discriminated against group like the LGBT community, they need to push like hell. Sitting around waiting for the Democratic party to just GIVE us stuff because we’ve been good little boys and haven’t made any waves isn’t gonna get the job done.
Comment by Joshua on 9 June 2009 at 1:52 pm:
You said “politicians are cautious by nature.” This is generally true. Sometimes when gay activists get really worked up, it also gets religious moderates and conservative democrats and some values independents worked up. When that happens, the cautious approach can easily become to ignore the gay rights activists. The gay rights movement has historically had terrible message discipline. That doesn’t mean they will going forward, and maybe they will handle pressuring on DADT in a more rational way, they should, since public opinion is on their side.
Comment by Tom Trumpinski on 9 June 2009 at 4:42 pm:
It’s called Occam’s Razor, Josh, and it’s a long-accepted analytic tool.
Here’s the deal:
The Democratic Party has been, since the post-’68 power reshuffle, a coalition of progressive interest groups. Some of them, like women with careers, have large numbers and a large amount of power. Some, like blacks, have relatively large numbers, but less power. Some, like gays, have neither power nor large numbers *and* are less than popular with the mainstream of America (where the money ends up coming from to fuel the Dem’s power.)
Therefore, the Dems use the gays just long enough to get themselves into a position of power–as they did during the 1992 election of Bill Clinton–and then throw them under the bus as Bill did in January ‘93 when Barney Frank called in his marker concerning gays in the military then.
Especially after Proposition 8 showed that “democratically”, gay marriage was not a viable political position even for one of the most liberal states in the Union, it was a no brainer for the Party to abandon their gay constituents until about November of 2011, by which time most gays will have conveniently forgotten their betrayal once again.
After all–what are they going to do, vote Republican?
[Please note that gays are perfectly welcome to any part of the Libertarian movement that I'm promoting--we don't believe in identity politics, so you'll be judged only on your individual merits as a human being.]
Tom
Comment by Tom Trumpinski on 9 June 2009 at 4:45 pm:
By the way–I find the entire “gays in the military argument” as somewhat ironic, since all I could think of when I was Brian’s age was staying *out* of the fucking military. Y’all do know that you can get killed over there? The people who are shooting at you and blowing shit up could care less about your sexual orientation.
Tom
Comment by Tim on 10 June 2009 at 12:23 am:
Wow, Tom hit the nail right on the head before I could even get to it. I need to start reading Urbanagora at work instead of actually working.
Comment by Rosie on 10 June 2009 at 9:59 am:
I would somewhat agree with Tim; the problem with relying on politics is that the Obama administration is likey to focus on certain issues (such as healthcare) that many Americans are wanting and/or expecting to be improved. I’m not saying that the DADT isn’t an exigent issue to many Americans, but I think many are putting a fair amount of pressure for Obama to make the “changes” he proposed during his campaign. It seems somewhat of a weak move politically to be spread so thin, tackling so many issues at once. In that respect, I agree with Josh. Thus, sticking with the courts seems more productive.
It’s early on. However, Brian, I do support what you’re saying, especially from a moral standpoint; Obama needs to stop ignoring an essential issue in many American lives.