REALITY CHECK

While everyone else is celebrating the Democratic victory in the House, I'm going to throw a big old bucket of cold water on the party.  That's my job: town grump.

A majority of Americans did not vote for human rights, civil rights and the Constitution; they voted against the Iraq war and Presidential arrogance.  Yes, gay rights supporters now hold a majority in the house, but they did not win elections because they are gay rights advocates they won despite that fact.

And, speaking from a very selfish gay rights perspective, nothing has really changed.  The good news is that things can change.  But the Democrats have two years to force the President into solving the Iraq disaster or they will not win the White House in 2008 and things will be worse than they are now--or were before yesterday's election.

Social issues must be temporarily back-burnered.  Once Pelosi has gained the trust of the former Bush supporters through a Democrat-driven solution to the Iraq crisis, she can lead Congress in a very different social direction.  But Iraq must first be fixed.

Santorum went down because of Iraq and his high-profile Republican leadership position; not because he linked homosexuality to bestiality.

And while the same-sex marriage ban was defeated in Arizona, it was only one of eight states that had such bans on the ballot to do so.  Colorado, Idaho, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia and Wisconsin passed the bans, bringing the total number of anti-gay marriage state constitutional amendments up to 27--much closer to the numbers necessary to make it federal law.

Voters made it very clear that while they may be furious with the President over Iraq, they've not budged an inch on their mission to reshape America in a fundamentalist Christian image.

With very few exceptions, margins of victories were tighter than (imagine me saying something gay and vulgar about Rumsfeld.)  Minus the Iraq factor, nothing has changed.

We're looking at a very fine line between Democratic victory and a set up for defeat in 2008.  If the Dems don't make some progress on the Iraq mess and fast, the Republicans will easily transfer blame for Iraq to the Democrats "who obstructed the Republican plan that just needed more time while they had no plan of their own."  And yet another social fascist will march into the White House come 2008.

Comments

[Tom]

Richard,
Bravo, very important distinctions you draw. There is one aspect here though that I think is being overlooked: if the Democratic party takes control of the Senate, which it appears they have, we have some protection against the appointment of another Scalia-type Supreme Court justice if, any God forbid, we lose another one in the next two years.

On a technical point, State constitutional amendments have no impact on Federal law-- there already is a Federal law banning gay marriage. There is no cumulative legal effect if one or six more States pass State constitutional amendments. However, if Congress were to pass a US Constitutional amendment, then the States would have the chance to ratify that amendment and we can use the current number of State amendments to divine how that would play out.

The goal we should have is to make sure Congress keeps a US Constitutional amendment off its agenda.

[Richard S]

As usual you cut to the reality of the "WIN". People still don't like to admit there are Gays everywhere. On another note, have you considered an Enemies List? I think we need to track the worst of the worst. Maybe you could start awarding prizes for cruelty and malice, just a thought.