In the poll, I’m assuming that federal workplace and housing protections will be easier than DADT, and that DADT will be easier to get done than repealing DOMA, so I assume that they will happen in that order.
Please read the options and choose the best one.
It doesn’t mean that you don’t want him to accomplish more… I want to know what minimum he must accomplish to earn your active support in 2012.
Please share widely!
due to his bigoted DOJ opinion.
<
p>I probably would have been happiest with Hate Crimes and DADT this year. Now I want DOMA and ENDA too. Nothing less will appease me — or the vast majority of the glbt community.
<
p>He can sign an executive order on DADT tomorrow. That’s all on him. The other bills (including some DADT work, to make it permanent) should take the form of an omnibus bill. Jared Polis (D-Colorado) already wrote a bill that would do. Obama, if he wants to save face, needs to a) apologize and b) call for an omnibus bill this year.
What’s the minimum?
<
p>“Now I want (Hate Crimes and DADT and) DOMA and ENDA (this year) too.”
<
p> – or –
<
p>Obama, if he wants to save face, needs to a) apologize and b) call for an omnibus bill this year.
<
p>AFAIK, the omnibus would contain language regarding hate crimes, employment non-discrimination and “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” as well as language from other LGBT rights-related bills. That suggests that Hate Crimes and DADT (and an apology) in 2009 would be a minimum for you, with DOMA and ENDA welcome additions but not required (in 2009) for your 2012 support.
Typo. I’ll better explain myself.
<
p>I probably would have been happy with DADT and Hate Crimes this year.
<
p>That was obviously before the DoJ case. The fury in the glbt community is nothing like I’ve seen before — even accounting for prop 8 (that was a case of shock and sadness as much as anger). I don’t think the community can be appeased unless there’s a complete and utter reversal on DOMA and the thing’s repealed, in its totality, this year… with waves of action starting now. That probably extends to DADT, ENDA and Hate Crimes, too.
<
p>Seperate from all of that, Obama should apologize for the DoJ brief, as well as fire the nitwits that allowed it to happen. That would be the first and most logical things to do so at the very least he can work with the gay community in passage of these other bills.
<
p>I will say this: nothing is acceptable in 2012. That is far too late on anything important to our community. Wait = never.
You get less, so you demand more? Isn’t that the opposite of a resolution? Usually you demand more first, knowing that you may have to settle for less. The temper-tantrum politics of “I want my way and I want it now” has never been part of my style on any issue. Besides, if you come right out and declare that nothing could please you at this point, then what incentive does any politician have to even try?
It’s that Obama’s DOJ actively supported DOMA and DADT. People are furious and rightly so.
<
p>I’m not convinced issuing a list of demands is appropriate, but do think Obama has got a lot of rebuilding to do. Promises of action in the future are no longer credible. He’s basically starting over.
Not sure I subscribe to this, but it’s worth putting out there for group analysis. MTMB:
<
p>
I’m still not sure POTUS can issue an executive order that directly contradicts a statute, unless he wants to take a case to SCOTUS regarding his powers as Commander-in-Chief.
<
p>As we are not a parliamentary system and Obama is not Prime Minister, Congress does not have to wait for the President to decide when he wants to move on legislation. I say let’s see if we can get the items you’re calling for through Congress and then the very basic acid test will be does he sign or does he veto. My money is still on signing even if he hasn’t exerted any effort himself to get them passed.
I think BHO would love for Congress to “force” his hand… he could get credit for signing without having to make a big public effort about it. He’d get lots of cred with the pro- folks, he’s not getting any love from the anti- folks anyway (check his GOP approval ratings), and he wouldn’t have to use news cycles or his bully pulpit chits for that issue.
<
p>One thing I wonder is: do those issues have 50 votes in the Senate? Do they have 60? I have no idea, but I suspect the House could throw them in the Senate’s court with no movement. I think that’s bad strategy… there’s no sense in making GLBT issues national headlines if we’re not going to get tangible advancement on those issues. The GLBT community will rightfully be upset they didn’t get their civil rights, and the anti- folks will get lathered up about how Obama and Pelosi are supporting teh gayz!!/1/1! It’s a lose-lose if it fails.
<
p>Frankly, Reid needs to line up the senators and find out which GLBT issues he’s got 50 votes for, and which issues he’s got 60 votes, and then let Pelosi push exactly that. I don’t really see how Obama can be much help on the national stage.
last congress. it has the 51 votes. So does ENDA. 70-75% of the country is against DADT according to the polls… it has 51 votes. (many of these bills would even pull some republican votes, like Snowe and Collins, esp. enda and dadt).
<
p>Why should I ever be willing to allow the President to not use the bully pulpit, though? If he’s having trouble passing these bills, he should host town halls across the friggin country demanding congress pass his reforms. It worked for the stimulus bill, it’ll work now.
<
p>Honestly, if we don’t have the votes on the issues, I’d rather see Reid try. At the very, very, very worst, we’d know who was voting for bigotry and could muscle up huge efforts to switch votes at the last minute.
Please read this reply I wrote above http://vps28478.inmotionhosting.com/~bluema24/s…
<
p>Nothing is going to get through congress unless Obama demands it — using the bully pulpet, holding town meetings across the nation and making this a major issue.
<
p>This in particular sums up the situation, from the link above:
<
p>
<
p>And, yes, the POTUS can issue an executive order to – at the very least – address DADT. That’s within his power. He may not be able to grant health benefits because of DOMA, but he can issue a stop loss to prevent gay american heroes from being thrown out of the army — and another exec order to stop the military from investigating DADT claims. He can do that for as long as he’s President, whilst demanding Congress pass a full repeal.
But for right now:
Obama’s legislative agenda is huge. I have no idea how one figures out how to get all the stuff through Congress that has to get through it. On a lot of things, he has disappointed.
Th. One is a mathematician iff one uses abbreviations like “w.r.t.”
<
p>Pf. Trivial. Left as exercise to reader.
surviving spouses should not collect the social security that their spouse paid in to the system? That would be a harsh thing to do all of a sudden.
<
p>And since when do we ask the public about military issues? The public is against shooting people too, and dropping bombs, but do we let them tell the commanders what to do?
<
p>Weaker anti-discrimination laws would probably do more good.
<
p>
(and taking all the risks therein)
<
p>
<
p>Precisely the opposite — that like opposite sex couples, a same sex surviving spouse should collect the social security that his or her spouse paid in to the system.
<
p>
<
p>Specific tactics? Not often. Big picture stuff? All the time. It’s that whole “elections have consequences” stuff. Truman’s 1948 Executive Order integrating the military didn’t happen in a vacuum either.
<
p>
<
p>For whom? Bigots?
Let me add to stomv’s risky but useful answer.
<
p>Yes, there should be full equality for LBGT Americans. But we also don’t want the ice caps to melt, the neo-Hoovers to destroy the economy, and people to die or suffer from lack of health coverage. I wish all these things could be achieved quickly without effort.
<
p>Unfortunately, getting them through involves an amount of political calculation. The sequencing is a key aspect of it.
<
p>However, even having said all that, I am disappointed with the Obama Administration:
I don’t buy into the fact that passing ambitious gay rights legislation takes a single thing away from any other issue. The Obama administration has hundreds of employees. There are hundreds of members of Congress – and thousands of staffers. All of these people can walk and chew gum at the same time and all these staffs have point people working on numerous issues at the same time. We can pass legislation on DADT, DOMA, Hate Crimes and ENDA in the very same year that we pass an environmental bill, a health care bill and untold numbers of other pieces of legislation.
If it were, I’d agree with you.
who work in DC, with their millions upon millions of constituents and lobbies helping them, can’t come up with the details? Why the heck not? I’m sorry, I just don’t buy that. There is absolutely no reason why we can’t pass all these bills, this year. Most of the details are already hammered out. It’s not like they’re starting from scratch: there have been people working on these bills for years decades.
… there’s one really big reason.
<
p>”There is absolutely no reason why we can’t pass all these bills, this year.”
<
p>The Senate.
<
p>
That there are political reasons that make certain bills hard to pass. But if it would help if we could a) pressure the Democrats and b) make the Republicans actually filibuster and use every rule/trick in the book to get our way, as they did for years. If we were to do those two things, we could pass almost all of the bills mentioned in this thread over the next year or two.
… your premise that this is very doable. If you make them pull out every trick in the book, you’re asking to drag this out a long time. Not that it couldn’t be done, but it’s clear that if you live with these problems or attack them, the result is hardly a situation where “There is absolutely no reason why we can’t pass all these bills, this year.”.
We just got to demand that the weak-kneed Democrats in DC cut the bull shit.
<
p>Actually, the opposite. Go through the hoops to use the procedures that bypass the filibuster in the senate. It passes NP. It may mean Conrad and Baucus have to listen to Rush Limbaugh curse them on air for weeks on end — which would hurt their obviously delicate sensibilities — but so what? They still haven’t learned the lesson that the fringe-right will never, ever, in a million years, vote for us… however loud and angry they are.
<
p>Want to pass DADT? Attach it to war funding. Etc. etc. etc.
<
p>These are things that — as you well know — the Republicans did at every opportunity. You gave me the book on it. I don’t know why we aren’t demanding the risk-adverse twats in the Senate do the exact same, excepting the fact they do it with policies that will help Americans.
Democratic Senators just don’t play that kind of hardball.
<
p>Even if they did, Democratic Senators just don’t do that kind of hardball for their left-wing. (See Iraq War, torture, FISA.)
<
p>Yes, we want to change that. But come on. The Majority Leader is Harry Reid, not Barbara Boxer.
I don’t think that means they can’t.
<
p>The left wing will not tolerate the weak-kneed stuff that much longer. If, for example, single payer is not passed… expect holy hell in the left wing the likes of which you haven’t seen. At some point, the Blue Dog (and Dumb Dog) wings of the party will get the memo.
… the left wing’s tolerance won’t effectively push a long agenda list ‘by next year’.
No, we can’t get “everything” passed in a year. We don’t even know all of our problems yet. I think you’re confusing what I’m saying, first said several replies ago. “Everything” referred to this: Health care reform, energy/environment reform and gay rights.
<
p>It’s June, 2009 right now. I see no reason why we can’t pass health care reform, energy/environment reform and serious gay rights legislation between now and June of 2010. Those are the big, hefty things facing the Democratic Camp. If we pass reforms, does that suddenly fix all of our issues? No. The best energy reform bill will only make a dent into how sleeping our changes must be to combat global warming. Do I think we can knock off all the various evil aspects of DOMA in a year? No, but we could start with the entire bill and compromise down to allowing the federal government to recognize and abide by state decisions — including granting federal benefits to legally partnered couples. That we can do. We can also pass a public option (which is what I meant when I said single payer in my last reply), as well as legislation on DADT, Hate Crime and ENDA. We can pass half a dozen other fairly important bills, as well.
<
p>Is that “everything?” No. But it was “everything” I was referring to in my original conversation with KBusch. Is it fixing “everything” on that list? No, but it’s passing substantive reform on all of it, making life better for the entire country. Even if we pass a robust public option in health care, that doesn’t solve health care: it’s just a helluva good start. I’d like to pass legislation in all of the areas I listed in the thread with Kbusch that may not permanently solve all the issues, but makes a helluva good start.
included “DADT, DOMA, Hate Crimes and ENDA in the very same year that we pass an environmental bill, a health care bill and untold numbers of other pieces of legislation.”
<
p>In a latter comment you asserted: “There is absolutely no reason why we can’t pass all these bills, this year.”
<
p>Now your saying: “No, we can’t get ‘everything’ passed in a year. We don’t even know all of our problems yet. I think you’re confusing what I’m saying, first said several replies ago. ‘Everything’ referred to this: Health care reform, energy/environment reform and gay rights.”
<
p>Ok, so we’re dropping the ‘untold numbers’.
<
p>Hate Crimes and ENDA should be able to go reasonably quick. I’m not even sure what the constituent parts of an environmental bill are, so no way to gauge it’s prospects other than being assured that if it is at all effective there will be plenty of money spent against it. DOMA and DADT is likely to be a protracted fight. Between Health Care and the SC nomination, that’ draw 80% of the oxygen from capital hill over the summer and probably into the fall. I don’t see all this wrapping up by the end of the year at all. DADT is a little hard to gauge. It could go reasonably fast or be very protracted. Which it will be will largely be up to the level of energy opponents wish to expend on this. I figure they’ll spend a lot of energy fighting DOMA repeal, but they may see caving on DADT as the start of a slippery slope for them strategically.
We can’t expect the bills to be perfect.
<
p>And we pass “untold numbers” of bills every year. Invariably, we will do so again this year.
<
p>I don’t think I’m being inconsistent.
… the left wing’s tolerance won’t effectively push a long agenda list ‘by next year’.
I dunno. The left-wing cannot even get itself on TV. The biggest recent target of the left-wing remains a Senator from Connecticut.
<
p>The left-wing may have gotten LBJ not to run for another term, but 1968 was a while ago.
<
p>Or put differently: The left-wing needs to become big and scary. Your scenario presumes it is already. There’s no evidence for that.
It seems like the Left Wing just fueled the election of a certain someone who lives in the White House. Or, were you under the impression that it was some other wing of the party/country that did that?
<
p>The party apparatus will never respect the leftwing/netroots until we make them. We scared them with Lieberman. We’ll make them in the years to come. They live under the misconception that we’ll sit down and shut up while they screw up what this country elected them to do. We won’t allow that.
So on other occasions, you tell us how Obama is screwing up health care. I’ll tell you he’s screwing up banking. I suspect he’s screwing up Afghanistan. You know why?
<
p>Cuz he’s not listening to the Left Wing.
<
p>He was not from the left wing of the party. His appointments and policies demonstrate that.
<
p>Look, I’m strongly in favor of building up the left side of the party, but jeez let’s have some reality about how little clout we have now.
I just think we’re more powerful than he thinks we are. We have to think of ways to make the point. Talking about how powerless we are on internet forums doesn’t seem to be the way to do that, or even inspire confidence in those who may be willing to do that.
This diary on Daily Kos offers four bills one can support:
The Domestic Partner Benefits and Obligation Act. Cosponsored by Lieberman and Collins (!) in the Senate, this amends DOMA to remove restrictions on benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees.
The Employee Non-Discrimination Act (“ENDA”). This one is likely to be trans-inclusive.
The Matthew Shepard Act The bill passed the House and is sitting in the Senate. It has 43 sponsors at this point.
The Military Readiness Enhancement Act repeals Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.
with LIEberman’s bill at all. If that bill passes, mark my words, there will be lots of self-congratulatory back-slapping and a very convenient excuse to national democrats to not touch DOMA with a 10 foot poll for a solid decade to come. Lieberman’s bill is just as likely to be a set back for our rights than something that’s a boon to the community.
I’d say the repeal of DOMA, however necessary and laudable, cannot be achieved in the next few years anyway.
<
p>Unfortunately.
<
p>There are enough Democrats that will oppose repeal and not very many Republicans at all that will support repeal. Unless you have a different whip count, I just don’t see it.
<
p>Until then, what happens tot he same-sex families of federal employees.
<
p>”Sorry, people, we wanted to poke Senator LIEberman in the eye and funny capitalization wasn’t enough for us. Wait ’til we can get all of DOMA repealed.”
I think DOMA could be repealed, but it’d take a massive insurgence campaign with a massive expenditure of political capital, including the full force of advocacy from the executive.
<
p>Could happen, but unlikely. Not to mention that the expenditure of this capital would actually come with a cost that would compromise other initiatives. Unfortunate, but that’s what I see.
But gets healthcare coverage for the 50 million today who are struggling without it and meaningful action on climate change, and gets the economy turned around, I will think my weekends spent in New Hampshire last year were well spent.
<
p>If by the end of his first term, he signs ENDA, repeals DADT, gets rid of the provisions of DOMA that nix federal benefits for same-sex couples, and doesn’t do anything to get in the way of the states that have offered or are ready to offer marriage equality, I’ll be extremely happy.
<
p>If he appoints Ellen DeGeneres to the SCOTUS, I’ll take it as a sign of the imminent end of the world, as great a job as I’d think she’d do making fun of pompous a**es like Scalia and Thomas.
<
p>I don’t want or need Obama to tilt at windmills (I’m not expecting federal action on marriage equality), as nice as it would feel to have the President in my corner. Congress needs to drive the legislative remedies, and I’m fine if it waits until after healthcare and energy, as long as it happens before the end of Obama’s first term.
it’s a choice?
<
p>And, I’m sorry, but just because you’re okay with a lack of GLBT rights reform doesn’t mean others are.
<
p>And, btw, you may want to spend more attention on health care. Obama’s already made it perfectly clear that he’s willing to sell out on health care reform if that’s what he gets. The problem with the apologistic attitude re: Obama supporters in the blogosphere is that suggests it’s okay for our community to suffer if it means others get what they want – that it’s okay for the President and DNC to pick and choose which democratic camps deserve to have their promises kept. The problem there, of course, is that if they’re willing to abandon one camp, they’re willing to abandon others — and they will abandon others if they abandon us. Guaranteed. Health care included – maybe even especially.
<
p>I don’t think it’s acceptable if this administration fails to perform on health care, gay rights or other issues, either. And continuing to support an administration willing to do that isn’t a recipe for success — he will lose the next election if he doesn’t have the base’s support and volunteers, all of them. It won’t be anyone’s fault but Obama’s: You can’t ask people to actively support an administration that’s doing little or nothing for them. You may be able to ask them not to actively support the other guys, but it’s hard to ask for their money and hours upon hours of work if you’re not even going to seriously try to help them.
<
p>But Obama let the gays roll easter eggs on the White House lawn and just gave rights that (gay) federal employees actually already had – complete with a 3 minute speech. SUPER!!
As a comment, I thought Bean in the Burbs was being substantive. Your downwrating was based on what exactly?
<
p>Disagreement?
<
p>Your bad mood?
<
p>A desire to open a discussion on meta?
<
p>Your own response is full of attributing opinions that I’d be surprised BITB holds.
And gave her a 4.
<
p>I did not give her a 3 – that would have been ratings abuse.
<
p>Pardon me for thinking acceptance or tolerance of the “just wait” meme is a pattern for community self abuse – as well as an absolutely morose argument given the evidence at hand.
What I’m saying is that my priorities put some things ahead of GLBT issues. I’m not supporting or not supporting a politician or a party over those issues alone. Getting us on a path to a sustainable energy economy, one that isn’t destroying the planet – what, in more apocalyptic moods, might be asked, “is there going to be a human future?” – seems more important to me than whether the 5% minority I belong to can get married everywhere, gets an equal return on our taxes, enjoys protection from employment discrimination or can serve in the military. Similarly, whether the American economy stays in the crapper, or whether people who need access to healthcare get it rather than profit-oriented medical professionals taking a bigger and bigger slice of GDP, seem like more pressing matters to me.
<
p>Even though I am part of the GLBT community, I’m also a middle-aged person who works in this economy and has health problems and needs access to health care like millions of others in this country. This doesn’t mean I think the GLBT issues I identified aren’t important, just that I’m giving Obama until 2012 to make good on his promises, and that I get it, and I agree that climate change and energy, the economy and healthcare have much bigger constituencies and should be tackled first. As we come up on the next election, I’ll look at the available candidates and Obama’s results, and back whoever seems closest to and most able to continue to advance my goals and values. I won’t sit out if none of the choices is a perfect fit, or if the Democratic party has disappointed me on some things as usual, because that’s just how our system works. You win some, you lose some, and you keep working on the latter.
<
p>I’m not asking you or anyone else to do the same. We all have our personal priorities and have to act accordingly.
I don’t know why you’re so willing to rank them and make it as if not getting to certain of those issues is suddenly acceptable. We have government-sponsored/cheered civil rights abuse against a certain group of Americans. It is not tolerable that their civil rights wait. I don’t need to tell you that gay people lose everything because a spouse dies and they’re denied their partner’s pension, or because their thrown out of the military they were risking their very lives to be apart of. It is a falsehood to say that we can’t solve these problems at the very same we solve others.
<
p>There’s always problems — and even when things are good, it doesn’t mean Democrats will work on our behalf unless they get the memo it is unacceptable to wait. The economic situation was pretty damn good in the 1990s — they just found different excuses while they wrote discrimination into the law books.
<
p>Giving any time to solve any of these problems is just asking for them to be delayed, ignored or abused. We must demand that all these problems be solved now, that the old way of doing business ends and that our politicians get serious about doing what’s right, not preserving their delicate risk-adverse sensibilities. Patience, in this case, on any of the major issues we need to solve, is only a recipe for disaster. If elected leaders can’t handle the jobs we pay them to do, they need to get the frak out or we’ll take them out, one primary at a time. There can be no tolerance in accepting their intolerance.
You’re thinking morally not politically.
<
p>To me, Bean in the Burbs is asking the excellent question, “How do we get the maximum amount of progressive goodness out of the current federal government?” That means we pressure Congress for some things; we pressure the President for others. It means we make noise now about healthcare because Obama is squishy on it and “moderate” Democratic Senators squishier and it is the issue that’s up.
<
p>The New York Senate is perhaps a case in point. Many have argued that Governor Patterson’s timing on marriage equality was terrible. He pushed it before it had a chance of passing and risked losing Democratic control of the Senate. And he lost Democratic control of the Senate. I’m hopeful that marriage equality will pass but, with Republican control, it may not even get to the floor. Lots of other things could suffer as a result.
<
p>According to an anti-nuance position of bracing moral clarity, marriage equality legislation should never wait.
<
p>But it seems to me, the point is winning and not being first on the legislative docket.
The Senate’s loss of control had nothing to do with marriage equality. Nothing. It had everything to do with two crooked politicians trying to stay in office/out of jail.
<
p>I’m sorry Kbusch, I’m not willing to wait half my life for equal rights. I reject your notion that it’s tolerable to do so. Being willing to wait is only a recipe for actually waiting more. I’m not exactly calling for a revolution on the streets — shutting off the gayTM and stopping our volunteering efforts on behalf of the candidates and operations not willing to put our issues up for a vote this year (or ever) seems well enough to me. They need our money and time way more than you give credit for — if they want it, they need to earn it.
Ryan, I think you’re simply talking past BITB and me — either because you don’t understand what either of us is saying or because, well, maybe you haven’t worked through what you yourself are proposing. For example, one could say, “I’m not willing to wait half my life before getting a college diploma” because that decision lies mostly in one’s own hands. “I’m not willing to wait half my life before seeing a four leaf clover” is a little less so. “I’m not willing to wait half my life for equal rights” really does lie mostly outside your hands. Maybe you’re saying, “Beam me up! I cannot tolerate it here!” In terms of practical action, what really does the appeal to the notion of tolerableness entail? That one is going to be really hard to be around until this is fixed?
As an abolitionist, William Lloyd Garrison was remarkably impractical. He regarded the Whigs and the Democrats as too corrupt to work with. He eschewed electoral politics most of his career. Throughout the 1840s the position of abolishing slavery (the “immediatist” position) was regarded as dangerously radical. Nonetheless, Garrison’s contribution played an important role in swinging the North toward opposition to slavery in the 1850s.
<
p>So, yes, there is a role for moral witnesses.
<
p>Do we read you then as saying that, like Garrison, you are giving up on electoral politics to play more of the role of a moral witness?
Primary challenges are in order. I would think you would know me well enough that thinking outside the political system is almost an impossibility. (A private joke for Mr. Lynne; I have a minor flaw: Ability Block there.)
<
p>Am I angry? Yes. Am I angrier than I’ve ever been before? Of course. However, I have neither lost the years of experience and grounding, nor the training, in electoral politics. I know a winning campaign when I see it. Our civil rights is a winning campaign, but only if we actually fight for it, like it’s a pressing matter that’s ruining lives every day. The good news is that it’s an actual pressing matter that’s ruining lives every day. The bad news is we suffer from too many people in this community who are way out of touch because they’re either used to being treated this way their entire lives, or their lives are just too comfortable to be willing to recognize that there really are lives being destroyed every day, just because they’re gay.
<
p>In essence, we suffer from a problem that — for another historical reference — Samuel Adams and other American Revolutionary Heroes ran into. There are way too many people who are unhappy with the way things are, but are completely unable to do what’s necessary to change it. We may have to hurt feelings, or make a fuss, or stand up for our rights in a way that may be somewhat inconvenient to our lives. It’s been a while since I took my course on the American Revolution, but only something like 25% of the population were vocally with the separatists — and an almost equal sum were quite content to stay part of His Majesty’s Kingdom… everyone else essentially wanted to stay out of it, or for things to go back the way they were, or to hold a nice little conference and cocktail party with those persecuting them. That silent/scared majority were dragged along, kicking and screaming, whether they liked it or not. I’m quite content to drag along anyone in this community who thinks we should just wait, or be polite little apologists, or have a cocktail party with the Obama administration.
<
p>I think you should read what Pam Spaulding had to write this weekend. She’s the voice our community needs to be listening to right now.
I don’t know why you’re so willing to rank them and make it as if not getting to certain of those issues is suddenly acceptable. We have government-sponsored/cheered civil rights abuse against a certain group of Americans. It is not tolerable that their civil rights wait. I don’t need to tell you that gay people lose everything because a spouse dies and they’re denied their partner’s pension, or because their thrown out of the military they were risking their very lives to be apart of. It is a falsehood to say that we can’t solve these problems at the very same we solve others.
<
p>There’s always problems — and even when things are good, it doesn’t mean Democrats will work on our behalf unless they get the memo it is unacceptable to wait. The economic situation was pretty damn good in the 1990s — they just found different excuses while they wrote discrimination into the law books.
<
p>Giving any time to solve any of these problems is just asking for them to be delayed, ignored or abused. We must demand that all these problems be solved now, that the old way of doing business ends and that our politicians get serious about doing what’s right, not preserving their delicate risk-adverse sensibilities. Patience, in this case, on any of the major issues we need to solve, is only a recipe for disaster. If elected leaders can’t handle the jobs we pay them to do, they need to get the frak out or we’ll take them out, one primary at a time. There can be no tolerance in accepting their intolerance.
Maybe my willingness to give the administration a a full term to keep its promises is just because I’m older. Four years doesn’t feel like I’m waiting so much as providing a fair opportunity.
<
p>I also realize that to get progress on climate change and healthcare is going to be hard and will require the votes of some centrists to get through the Senate. It seems like good tactics to get those votes in the bag for the big issues before putting those same centrists in the hot seat on GLBT issues that may be tough for them in their home districts.
including 58% of Republicans and a majority of weekly church goers. These aren’t “tough issues” back home; these are “tough issues” for risk-adverse politicians stuck back in the 1990s, whilst having the cover of far too many equally risk-adverse glbt people willing eager to tell them to wait, also stuck in the 1990s. I do agree that age is a factor in here, but not for the reasons you imply.