I recommended a very good diary yesterday by TomP Obama Orders DOJ NOT to Defend DOMA but had to leave about 5 inches into comments because of flame wars. What bothers me about them, about the claims that President Obama could have stopped this sooner, or the canards about his corporate sell-outs, or the raging about not clobbering Wall Street is the level of political naivete they reveal.
I'm counting on Progressives to change the country I live in, the world I live in. We're the drivers of every good piece of socially responsible legislation this country can boast of, along with a few major stinkers, and we have a responsibility to keep our legacy alive, healthy, and growing. We can't do an effective job if we're snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
Our malaise in 2010 is largely responsible for what we're watching in Washington, in Wisconsin, and Ohio, Texas and Arizona, and all the other places where women, children, the elderly, the disabled, the ill, the un- and under-employed are literally on the chopping block.
People will die if the Republicans get what they're fighting for. Many people will die. Many already have, in immoral wars, in drug-ridden neighborhoods, from dangerous pregnancies, from proliferating gun violence and spousal abuse, from dangerous chemicals in our water, air and food, from medications that hurt more than they help, from diseases that should be eradicated by now, from explosions in mines, from hunger, from exhaustion, from despair.
We are facing an enemy empowered by corporate funding, supported by corporate media, and enabled by an astonishingly ignorant population. To be ranting about Rahm Emanuel saying mean things when we have Sarah Palin's ability to sell death panels to worry about is bone-jarringly foolish.
Compromise is not a dirty word, folks. It took 13 years to ratify our Constitution, and the tensions about compromise could have lit the continent.
The fact that we're still refighting the DADT battle means we're nowhere near to being focused on the realities of the country we live in.
Let's look at DADT complaints.
Why didn't he sign a Stop Loss Executive Order? Can you spell spineless Dems? The damage to the Armed Services' effectiveness was the best possible argument for full repeal. Take that away and try to imagine how many Democrats in Congress would feel any urgency to repeal DADT. (Hint: you only need one hand's worth of fingers for counting them.) This would be a hindrance, not a solution.
Why didn't he get rid of it with an Executive Order? Because we have 3 branches of government, and once Congress passes a law it's a law. A president might be able to weaken that law, but I'm not sure I want to encourage that kind of behavior. Bush did a lot of damage with Executive Orders, I'd like to see them return to "rare" status if possible.
Why not push for it sooner? Here's where things get interesting. We've got a rabid RW in this country that needs to be declawed and defanged. Instead of making life more dangerous and precarious for gays in and out of the military, let's make sure we've fully answered all the objections they've raised. The infamous and much maligned Survey did just that. Some interesting commentary on the survey
My sense is that this was a worst-case scenario type of survey, probably because it was already pretty damn clear that people who were serving with people they thought might be gay weren't all that worried about their gayness.
IOW, create a means to support what we know to be true, release the information, and move ahead in a much more favorable climate.
The Repeal bill passed far more easily than I'd imagined it could, because the groundwork was laid, the facts were clear, the passions couldn't be enflamed enough to block it. That's good politics.
Now DOMA: Why didn't the DOJ stop defending DOMA sooner? Because the job of the DOJ is to defend the laws Congress passes, and I hope to God you're not serious about being pissed that Holder's Justice Department is doing that. Let's not set anymore bad precedents. How thrilled are you going to be when the next Republican AG refuses to support EPA lawsuits against the polluters who are poisoning your water supply? He spent 2 years building the framework for dropping defenses of the law. That's smart politics. Death Knell for DOMA Rachel Maddow
What we're demanding will always have consequences, I'm in favor of really thinking those things through.
I'd love to see the financial industries chopped into small pieces, I'm not willing to see millions of retirees become collateral damage. I'd love to send all the corporate overlords to another country, any other country, I'm not willing to let all their employees in this country become collateral damage. I'd be thrilled if all the Health Insurance Companies were tossed on the slag heap, but they're major employers and I'm not sure how those employees would survive without jobs. So far we're pretty much overloaded with unemployed and underemployed citizens, this isn't the time to make that worse.
When you're a community organizer trying to find work for the people in your neighborhood, you do it by cultivating relationships with business owners, even with owners you detest, because your community will stay in the shitter if you can't find jobs for people who need them. You're going to need to hit up corporate donors for after-school programs and before-school programs and Head Start programs so you'd best be nice to them. You need to talk to slumlords or you're going to strike out on improving housing options.
You learn to control your temper, to play nice with people who haven't played nice with your constituency, to celebrate every step forward, to recover your balance after every hit, to strive for long-term gains rather than short-term fixes.
The quick fix is emotionally satisfying but rarely leads to lasting change, so the problems remain intractable, and you fail.
President Obama's start as a community organizer meant he learned all those skills, and he's brought them to the White House. He's talking to corporations because there are some good people out there running businesses who can be brought into saner ways of doing business. He's talking to the money people because they control teacher's retirement funds, and your IRA, and a whole lot of other money. Without them, unfortunately, we're a really large Somalia, with a whole lot of guns. Talking to the Chamber of Commerce gave him an opportunity to lay out his agenda again, to be the point man for job creation in this country. Since it's true that Republicans and their corporate overlords have no interest in you and me, every chance he takes to stand in front of them and tell them what he wants them to do for us is time well spent. He may reach a few people, he may only make it clearer who our enemies are. I'm okay with either.
Being the President of everyone means you try to understand the passions of people you disagree with passionately, because you represent them, too. It means you take the shit your opponents dole out because your citizens have told you how everlastingly tired they are of the fighting and the ugliness, and they deserve your best shot at changing that dynamic, even if you fear it's hopeless. It means you respect the fears of the people who don't want to lose their company-provided health care benefits, even though you know it's shit coverage, getting more expensive every day. It means you don't destroy the only industry that's adding jobs during the worst recession in most people's lifetime. It means you funnel money to people who really belong in jail, because if you don't you'll be presiding over a black hole, not a nation.
It means you take life on life's terms, and do your best to gradually change those terms that are changeable. It means you study the consequences of your decisions hard, while knowing that there'll still be pitfalls you couldn't foresee.
President Obama is amazingly consistent, amazingly effective, and he's managing to change things while part of his so-called base lapses into dithering and despair.
I suspect that most of the dithering isn't coming from his base at all, a lot of it is fomented by the Koch/Murdoch/Rove cabal and some from the people who have hurt feelings because they're not being respected as much as they think they should be. And there are the people way over on the edge who serve to keep lefties leaning left. I value them from a distance, I don't much want to hang out with them.
Been there, done that, burned the T-shirt.