Thoughts on the “public option”: bad policy and bad politics

“I also understand the term used often by our hero Ted Kennedy, that “the perfect is the enemy of the good”. However, in this case, I’d like to turn that spin around and say that, in the instance of the public option, half-assed and inadequate is the enemy of the necessary and the acceptable.” -Steve Steffens [article link]

In comments to my last post dealing with healthcare, I was criticized (rightly, as I’ll explain) for supporting a public option. I thought it would be a good idea to expand on my thoughts on the issue.

I’m definitely a single-payer supporter, and while I’ve never been one of those progressives who says “Single-payer isn’t going to happen right now, so lets not even bother talking about it,” at the time of that post I thought the public option was an acceptable compromise, at least better than doing nothing. But the more I’ve read about it, the less sure I’ve been.

These days, I’m of the opinion that it might be better to just hold out for single-payer, and that as terrible as the status quo is, the substantial risks associated with even a well-designed public option (let alone the crappy bill that will almost certainly come out of Washington) could make doing nothing the better choice. I wouldn’t say I’m opposed to the public option, more like ambivalent; I wouldn’t see it as a bad thing if a decent public plan passed, but I’m not really willing to expend any effort on its behalf.

It’s amazing to me how virtually everyone who believes in the basic concept of universal healthcare agrees that single-payer is the best way to achieve it, and yet even among very progressive people it’s seen as almost taboo. If they mention it at all, it’s almost always along the lines of, “Well yeah, in a perfect world we’d have single-payer, but…”

But what? But, as “progressive” Congressman Henry Waxman put it when asked why he removed his co-sponsorship of H.R. 676, the House single-payer bill, “It isn’t going to happen.” We see this often from politicians like Waxman, and Obama as well: they support single-payer when they’re out of power, but once they get any actual ability to implement it they suddenly start backtracking, talking about how “we need to be realistic”. Gosh, it’s almost as if they aren’t really serious about it and they’re just telling us what we want to hear!

Still, he’s absolutely right; I think we can be pretty certain that a single-payer bill, even if by some miracle it passed the House, stands little-to-no chance of surviving the Senate. But instead of insisting on what they know is right, many like Waxman are rallying around a “compromise” plan that’s far more complicated and expensive, and far less effective, even in the best case scenario.

I think progressives made a huge mistake in giving up on single-payer so easily, in not even putting it on the table. There is no “right” time to start talking about it. It might not pass today, but if we want it to pass in the future then we need to be laying the groundwork now, and at least keep the idea alive until then. This is the position of Dick McCormack, one of my state senators and primary sponsor of a single-payer bill here in Vermont. Even though by his own admission the bill is going nowhere, he says it’s important to keep people talking about it, and keep its failure from becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. As I’ve said before, if nobody’s at least talking about a given position, that alone guarantees it will never happen.

Even if you disagree with me on the efficacy of the public option, I think it’s clear that by compromising so early, progressives ensured that they’d have trouble getting even that much, that the final plan would be watered down even further. Progressives have a long proud history of ignoring one of the basic rules of negotiation: asking for twice as much as what you want in the hope of bargaining down to something you can live with. Instead, we start from a compromise position, and then we’re surprised at being expected to tone things down further. As a result, instead of single-payer being the Left position and a strong public option being the compromise, the public option is the Left position and Blue Dog position is the compromise.

But isn’t the public option at least a step in the right direction? I won’t get into the specifics of what I think its problems are, because others have done it a lot better than I could. Here is a great article from Physicians for a National Health Program explaining the problems with the public option and why we should insist on single-payer instead.

Generally, I think the public option is very hard to do right, and given the current Congress anything that could actually pass will almost certainly not be done right. In fact, it’s looking increasingly unlikely that the final plan will even have a public option, or do much of anything other than funnel money to the insurance and drug companies. (Some, like Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald, argue that Obama and the Dem leadership were never really serious about having a public option in the bill and planned from the beginning to bargain it away in order to placate the lobbies.)

In addition, as the PNHP article points out, there’s no reason to believe that incrementalism would somehow lead to single-payer, as some proponents of the public option argue. That hasn’t happened anywhere it’s been tried; I would argue that minuscule reform of this type just has the effect of delaying real reform. Democratic politicians are the experts at this: doing just enough to shut people up for a little while, without seriously challenging the interests of their corporate backers.

If the public option does fail, then in addition to creating an enormous, entirely deserved backlash against the Democrats it will probably sour the public on the basic idea of universal health care. This is already happening in regard to the stimulus and government intervention in the economy, as Chris Bowers argues at Open Left:

Whether or not the Democratic trifecta actually passes progressive legislation, the legislation that is passed and the policies that are followed will still be perceived as progressive. We simply can’t avoid that.

For example, right now the stimulus package pretty much equals left-wing economic philosophy in the eyes of the American people. If it doesn’t produce results, we are all going to see our ideas become discredited in the eyes of the American public, even if we thought policies of the Democratic trifecta did not go nearly far enough. The country is never going to say “well, that idea didn’t work, so let’s try a more extreme version of it.” People just don’t think that way in America.

Given the inadequacy of the public option and the improbability of passing single-payer on the national level in the near future, where do we go from here? I think we need to shift attention to the state level, where there’s often a much greater possibility of getting real reform. The main thing to do on the national level is to keep the federal government from standing in the way of state efforts to do the right thing. A key part of this is making sure the Kucinich amendment, which would make it easier for states to pass single-payer, makes it into the final healthcare reform bill.

We also need to work on reforming the Senate, which is obviously the main obstacle to real healthcare reform (and progressive reform in general) on the national level, pretty much no matter which party is in charge. David Sirota points out that it’s unresponsive by its very design, giving enormous weight to a group of Senators representing an extremely small number of Americans. As a result, Sirota says, the healthcare debate is being controlled by a small handful of legislators from small, rural states. The first step to reforming the Senate, Tom Geoghegan argues, is to get rid of the filibuster, the primary weapon of the opponents of reform. This entails a bloody battle, but it’s absolutely necessary.

And, of course, we need to ignore the false promise of bullshit “incremental” reform that just tinkers around the edges, and support policies that go to the root of our problems. In addition, we need to be suspicious of politicians like Obama who care more about ensuring a legislative victory for themselves than they do about actually doing something substantive.

Joe Arpaio, Skip Gates, and our authoritarian culture

“I’m an equal-opportunity law-enforcement guy – I lock everybody up.” -Sheriff Joe Arpaio

[in reference to the Skip Gates arrest] “…to me, this situation actually has far broader implications about all citizens’ relationship to the police and the way we are expected to respond to authority, regardless of race. I’ve watched too many taser videos over the past few years featuring people of all races and both genders being put to the ground screaming in pain, not because they were dangerous or threatening and not because they were so out of control there was no other way to deal with them, but because they were arguing with police and the officer perceived a lack of respect for the badge.” -Digby

I always cringe whenever Joe Arpaio’s name pops up in the news. I have trouble even saying his name without throwing the phrase “that fucking fascist” in front of it.

For those who don’t know, Arpaio is sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, and somewhat of a national figure. His reputation as “America’s Toughest Sheriff” has gotten him multiple book deals and a reality TV show, and made him a hero to the right. In the present instance, he’s the subject of a profile by William Finnegan in the July 20 issue of The New Yorker, which unfortunately isn’t available online. But if you can find it, it’s an excellent read. A couple good summaries can be found at Feministing and Immigration Impact.

I don’t want to go into much detail (you can find plenty of info at the sources previously cited), but basically, the problem with Arpaio is his brutally inhumane county jail, his flagrant abuses of power (including harassment of critics by his deputies), his transformation of the sheriff’s department into an immigration enforcement agency (and his subsequent racial profiling of Hispanics), and the fact that he’s a total publicity whore. His office is currently under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice, and there have been thousands of lawsuits alleging abuse filed against the department (resulting in $43 million in costs for the county). In one outstanding example, Finnegan writes that the family of an inmate killed by deputies received an $8.25 million settlement “after the discovery of a surveillance video that showed fourteen guards beating, shocking, and suffocating the prisoner, and after the sheriff’s office was accused of discarding evidence, including the crushed larynx of the deceased.” Even the mayor of Phoenix has denounced what he describes as Arpaio’s “reign of terror.”

In short, Arpaio is a sadistic, racist, authoritarian thug. I wasn’t kidding when I called him a fascist.

So why do I care so much about this? I don’t have any personal attachment to Arpaio or Arizona politics. But it bothers me what Arpaio’s popularity says about us as a culture. He’s not just some obscure backwater nutjob. As Finnegan notes:

Maricopa County is not a modest, out-of-the-way place. It includes Phoenix, covers more than nine thousand square miles, and has a population of nearly four million. Joe Arpaio has been sheriff there since 1993. He has four thousand employees, three thousand volunteer posse members, and an over-worked media-relations unit of five.

Finnegan further points out that Arpaio remains the most popular political figure in Arizona, despite his scandals. In fact, it might be because of them. As Ann at the Feministing article I linked to argues:

Arpaio is popular because he’s hateful. He racially profiles Latinos, his ratings go up. He divides families and goes out of his way to deport peaceful people who are just here to make a living, his ratings go up. He treats jail inmates — some of whom have not even been convicted of a crime — as subhuman, his ratings go up. He sort of functions as a conduit for the worst impulses in our society.

And Arpaio’s message clearly resonates with a lot of people outside Arizona. I don’t know if it’s a majority, but it’s undeniably widespread. Our country is still very much in love with his brand of “tough on crime” horseshit. I remember the first time I heard about Arpaio: it was through a chain email from my grandparents talking about how cool he is and how they wished we had a sheriff like him. (MyRightWingDad has an example of this) And at the time, I thought, “Wow, what a fucking fascist.” But my family loved it. The people he abuses are just criminals (and mostly brown), after all, so who cares what happens to them? [Actually, many of the people detained by Arpaio are awaiting trial and haven't actually been convicted of anything, but I doubt this is a distinction many of his supporters care about.]

So what does this say about us as a culture? To me, it says that there are some ugly authoritarian impulses in the American psyche, and a lot of inhuman callousness toward certain classes of people – criminals, foreigners, the poor, etc. We think the authorities should have a mostly free hand, and that if they target you then you must have done something to deserve it. We don’t think we’ll ever end up someplace like Arpaio’s tent city – we’re good people, and only bad people get sent there. Think this has something to do with our relative lack of outrage about civilian casualties in our wars, or the torture and abuse of detainees in the “War on Terror”? When the Abu Ghraib scandal broke, Bill Maher drew attention to the parallel between that issue and our prison policies [this is from his book New Rules, which in turn is from his show Real Time with Bill Maher]:

[Abu Ghraib happened because] we’re also comfortable pretending that anyone in America who winds up in prison deserves not just loss of freedom but a brutalizing, terrifying trip to hell…

In a way, we are all Lynndie England because we know what’s happening in our prisons and we clearly don’t care. We tell ourselves the convenient lie that anyone who bears the label “criminal” or “terrorist” is irredeemable, subhuman psycho scum, and so whatever happens to them behind bars is justified, when the truth is that millions of nonviolent Americans have been traumatized for life in our prisons simply because they either did drugs or made a bad judgment, usually when they were young, stupid, and drunk – you’d think President Bush could relate.

Another example of our authoritarian culture can be found in the response to “Gatesgate.” I’m sure just about everyone reading this has heard the story by now, where Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. was arrested in his own home for “disorderly conduct,” in other words for failing to show proper deference to a police officer. Not for threatening Officer Crowley, or refusing to comply with his orders, but rather just for talking back. One could argue Gates was being a jerk – but who wouldn’t be mad in that situation? And how does that justify arresting him? Is there any law requiring him to respect police officers?

This sort of thing happens all the time, and unlike Gates a lot of people don’t get off with just an arrest; they get beaten, tased, or even shot. And cops often face little to no consequences for doing it. As Ian Welch at OpenLeft points out:

My interactions with police in the US have all reinforced to me that even something as simple as a question is interpreted by many policy [sic] as a direct assault on their authority, and that they have no tolerance for any such thing. If a policeman in the US asks you to do something, or tells you, you’d best do it, right now, whether he has the right to order you around or not. And if you don’t, be ready to deal with the consequences.

The real problem, though, is the complete lack of public outcry over stuff like what happened to Gates. There’s a lot of people out there who see no problem with this. Some of Officer Crowley’s defenders, like the one quoted in Digby’s post on the matter, explicitly argue that either we give police a completely free hand, or we content ourselves with living in a Mad Max-style lawless wasteland; as if those are the only two options. And it’s not at all uncommon for people to say things like, “Well, Gates should’ve known better than to mouth off to a cop; he got what he deserved.” As Digby put it, “I have discovered that my hackles automatically going up at such authoritarian behavior is not necessarily the common reaction among my fellow Americans, not even my fellow liberals.” Even if they don’t necessarily agree with Crowley, they think it’s pointless to resist. The only reason anyone even notices is this case is because the victim was someone prominent.

We as a culture often mindlessly submit to authority, and don’t place much value on civil liberties. Hence the non-outrage over torture and warrantless wiretapping; and hence you get even many progressives arguing that it’s okay that Obama isn’t doing more to roll back Bush admin abuses of power, and is even embracing or expanding them, because health-care, the economy, etc., are so much more important. Who cares if we live in a dictatorship as long as the guy running it has a (D) next to his name?

So why should civil liberties and the rule of law matter? To quote Digby’s post yet again, “Police are emboldened when they repeatedly get away with using bullying, abusive tactics against average citizens who have not been convicted of any crimes.” Even if the officers have the best of intentions, that kind of power inevitably leads to abuse, because there’s nothing to keep it in check. And it never stops at just the “bad” people, but quickly spreads to anyone they deem a problem. If they can do it to poor blacks and Hispanics (let alone a Harvard professor), they can do it to you too. That’s something to keep in mind since, as Ted Rall points out, many white people have police horror stories of their own.

That’s why I care so much about Joe Arpaio or the Gates arrest, and why I’d deny that I’m trying to undermine the police when I complain about violations of civil liberties or abuses of power. Instead, I’m trying to keep the cops honest.

Were progressives duped by Obama?

Lately, some progressives have been ceasing their rationalizations of President Obama’s blatant corporatism and militarism, and are starting to speak up about how little “change” the Obama administration really represents. However, this welcome transition also frequently comes attached to the problematic notion that they were somehow duped or mislead into supporting him, or that he betrayed the progressive movement.

This is essentially the argument made by Marie Marchand, executive director of the Whatcom Peace & Justice Center in Bellingham, WA, in an article at CommonDreams titled I Want My Money Back! (Pres. Obama!) From the article:

…I thought I was supporting change I could believe in, not more of the same bloodshed and war!

Betrayal is a part of life. After awhile, you just come to expect it. Yet, the initial shock always hits you as a surprise. Alas, the nature of betrayal. Humans are vulnerable to being betrayed because underneath our husky shells, our pain and hardened hearts, we are soft and trustful creatures. We want to believe in people.

I’m not that young, so I possess some cynicism. But I’m not that old either, so I manage some idealism. Sure, I am used to being betrayed by my government. But I thought my days of calling the White House in tears were over. To think that Barack Obama preyed on this naive hope in me and millions like me is unforgivable.

I expect the Republicans to throw money at the Military Industrial Complex. Yet, from the Democrats, I was promised a different direction (like OUT of the Middle East). Regrettably, there has been miniscule change. There is still nothing to believe in.

You know, it’s great that she’s saying this, that she’s seen the light. But I can’t help but feel frustrated when I hear arguments like this. In my opinion, there was ample evidence from the beginning, if you looked past the sunny rhetoric to what Obama actually proposed doing, to suggest that he was very “conventional” in his views. As Jeremy Scahill put it recently in an interview with Socialist Worker:

What people, I think, misunderstand about Barack Obama is that this is a man who is a brilliant supporter of empire–who has figured out a way to essentially trick a lot of people into believing they’re supporting radical change, when in effect what they’re doing is supporting a radical expansion of the U.S. empire.

I think that it’s a bit disingenuous for people to act as if though they were somehow hoodwinked by Barack Obama about this.

If people were playing close attention during the election–not just to the rhetoric of his canned speech that he gave repeatedly, and the commercials, and the perception of his supporters was that he somehow was this transformative figure in U.S. politics, but also to the documents being produced by the Obama campaign and the specific policies he outlined–you realized that Barack Obama was very much a part of the bipartisan war machine that has governed this country for many, many decades.

What we see with Obama’s policies in Iraq, Afghanistan and the broader Arab and Muslim world, as well as his global economic policies, are a continuation of the most devastating and violent policies of the Bush administration–while placing a face on it that makes it easier to expand the iron fist of U.S. militarism and the hidden hand of the free market in a way that Republicans, I think, would have been unable to do at this point in history.

A similar point could be made about Obama’s economic positions; how could anyone really think he was going to stand up for the downtrodden or radically restructure the system when he was surrounding himself with neoliberal economists like Larry Summers and had advisers privately tell people he didn’t really mean all that stuff he was saying about free trade? [A very telling anecdote: I remember how when news about the latter came out, the problem for my very pro-Obama in-laws was not Obama's bullshitting, but how it would effect his chances of winning.]

There were some exceptions to this rule, areas where Obama supporters can legitimately claim to have been betrayed, such as Obama’s embrace once in office of Bush’s radical secrecy doctrines (which he had strongly campaigned against). As David Sirota notes, Obama hasn’t exactly been shy about blowing off campaign promises, and in fact expresses borderline surprise about actually being expected to follow through on the stuff he said to get elected. “It’s true that politicians have always broken promises, but rarely so proudly and with such impunity [as Obama]“, Sirota said. And even I have to admit to being surprised about the degree of Obama’s badness, of how totally Obama embraced Bush’s policies on some issues.

But for the most part, I don’t think it’s right to speak of Obama as having “betrayed” progressives. It’s not betrayal if he didn’t agree with you in the first place. He was pretty clear about where he intended to lead the country; the idea of him being this great progressive was almost entirely wishful thinking on the part of his supporters. That’s what’s so frustrating: the preponderance of evidence pointed to Obama being a kinder, gentler face for American Empire, but supporters like Marchand chose to tune that out in favor of hopenchange.

Also, at the risk of sounding bitter, my sympathy is dampened somewhat when I think back to how, as a Green Party supporter, I was treated like a buffoon by people like Marchand when I questioned whether Obama was really the closet lefty that many seemed to think he was. When they weren’t rationalizing his positions, the best defenses I would get were along the lines of: “Come on, he can’t be that bad!” “Yeah, [insert position here] is horrible, but he doesn’t really mean that; he has to say that to get elected.” “You’re being such a Naderite purist; wouldn’t anyone make you happy?” “Don’t you understand, we can’t let McCain win! It doesn’t matter how horrible the other guy is!” It’s hard not to take the asshole route and say, “I told you so!” An acknowledgment of wrongdoing on their part would be nice, but probably too much to expect from people trying to justify why they supported Obama in the first place. It’s just easier for them to say, “No one could have seen this coming!”

I know some will say it’s too early to be talking about 2012, but is Marchand’s realization about how shitty Obama is going to translate into a vote against his reelection? Or is she going to blow off her concerns and fall for the hype again (or at best hold her nose and vote for him anyway)? How long until we start hearing that Obama can’t really start getting things done until his second term?

My point in all this is that I don’t think progressives were tricked or duped by Obama (just as I don’t think they themselves were stupid or uninformed); rather, they fell for him because they wanted to believe.

[Certainly, there are other progressives who knew exactly what they were voting for with Obama, but did it anyway for various reasons. I disagree with them too, but this post isn't about them.]

That said, it’s important that we try to understand why people like Marchand wanted to believe if we ever want them to drop their support for the Democrats. There are possibly a lot of people out there like her who are becoming disillusioned with Obama (although as The Nation’s Eyal Press argues, it’s not clear how much of the Left this represents; there’s still a lot of people out there, like Press, for whom nothing can seem to shake their support for Obama). Sounding smug and superior, putting them on the defensive, isn’t going to win their support for an independent progressive movement that won’t allow itself to be an arm of the Democratic Party. We need to recognize that some of the reasons they wanted to believe are legitimate, if unfortunate, and work from there.

The most important thing to realize is that none of us are perfectly rational, coolly and calmly weighing the pros and cons of candidates/positions. People choose candidates in large part based on how those candidates make them feel and then justify that gut decision after the fact. For people desperate to believe that change within the two-party oligopoly is possible, Obama made them feel pretty good. Marchand says as much in her article:

I knew I was naïve; yet like millions of Americans, I had no choice but to believe. Our hearts were desperate for hope. We saw Barack Obama as an oasis in the desert. To think that he may be just a mirage is heartbreaking.

At least Marchand has the guts to look within and admit that the object of her hope is just a mirage, even if she can’t go all the way to realizing that she should have known that in the first place. It’s good that it’s happening this soon into Obama’s term. As for the numerous progressives for whom it seems Obama can do no wrong (or who like Press blow off that wrongdoing by talking about how we need to be “pragmatic”), bear in mind that it took six years after Bush was elected for conservatives to turn against him. I’m not holding my breath waiting for the Obama lovers to wake up.

“Moderate” Democrats are the problem, not the Right

Chris Bowers of Open Left (via AlterNet) has a great post on heath care reform, the “public option,” and how it’s more important for progressives to go after the so-called “moderate” Democrats in Congress (a totally misleading term referring to Dems whoring themselves out to the health insurance industry; i.e. the Blue Dogs, Evan Bayh, Arlen Specter, and so on) than it is to attack conservatives. From Bowers:

Here is a message that progressive organizations and media outlets need to start sending to all Democratic party committees and members of Congress:

We are done attacking Republicans until you pass a public option for health care.

Until a public option is passed, I don’t want to hear about the latest hate and idiocy spewing from Limbaugh, or Tancredo, or Palin, or Gingrich, or whoever. And to tell you the truth, I don’t want to attack them for it, either. Because, right now, Republicans are not the obstacle to progressive governance. Instead, Democrats who refuse to support a public option are the obstacle.

I recommend reading the whole post, with which I couldn’t agree more.

It’s the Democrats that control most of the levers of power these days, so failure to enact progressive legislation lies entirely with them. They can’t blame opposition from the Republicans anymore, who have almost no influence at the national level (although you wouldn’t know that from media coverage). Rather, the blame lies entirely with the group of corporate Dems frequently described as “moderates” or “centrists” (thanks to whom conservatives still essentially have a majority in Congress), and with the party that refuses to challenge them.

The Democratic leadership’s excuse du jour for watering down legislation is the need to appease these “moderates,” yet they steadfastly oppose any public pressure on them from the progressive movement, let alone primary challenges aimed at replacing them with progressives. A case in point is Arlen Specter, whose reelection Obama has said he’ll support literally no matter what Specter does. Why do they work so hard to keep people like this in office? Is it perhaps because it offers a convenient way to avoid doing the right thing, like in the current health care debate?

As Bowers puts it:

We should be naming names, flying to their home states to hold large rallies, and lining up primary challengers against public-option averse Democrats. Instead, our leaders are holding fundraisers for them, pressuring their primary opponents, and hosting dinners in their honor. Kind of makes you wonder how serious even those Democrats in favor of the public option are about change. [emphasis added]

If you doubt this, then consider that the tolerance by Obama and the rest of the Democratic leadership of opposition from the “moderates” on issues like the public option stands in stark contrast to their willingness to bully progressives on war funding. As the Huffington Post reported just today, administration officials are threatening to withhold support at reelection from freshmen in Congress who vote against the supplemental war spending bill. This dynamic – coddling of “moderates,” bullying of progressives – demonstrates loud and clear the real priorities of the Democratic establishment.

All of this perfectly illustrates why I come down so much harder on Democrats and their progressive enablers than Republicans. I hate Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly as much as the next progressive, and I can see the appeal in attacking them due to the easy target they present and how egregiously offensive they are, but focusing on them while treating corporate Dems as a lesser evil isn’t going to bring us any closer to change. As I’ve said previously, the Dems are “frequently in a position to implement progressive policies, or to stop conservative ones, but choose not to.” On many issues right now, the Dems are the ones standing in our way; they’re the ones we should be fighting.

Does Barack Obama actually believe in anything?

“But I have a sickeningly familiar feeling in my stomach, and the feeling deepens with every interaction with the Obama team on [LGBT] issues. They want them to go away. They want us to go away. …

…the overwhelming sense – apart from a terror of saying anything about gay people on the record – is that we are in the same spot as in every Democratic administration: the well-paid leaders of the established groups get jobs and invites, and that’s about it.” -Andrew Sullivan

It’s pretty hard to defend Obama’s inaction on gay rights issues, but that doesn’t stop people from trying. Reader tiradefaction recently sent me this article on the subject by Emma Ruby-Sachs entitled Obama’s Public Opinion on Gay Marriage Doesn’t Matter. From the article:

“I would love to see Obama stand up and say that LGBT Americans deserve equal rights in all areas of the law – something he stated publicly many times before he was President and a sentiment he has now retracted. After all the time spent campaigning for Obama, my own little heartbreak would be mended if Obama would tell the entire country that people like me are worthy of full rights.

But as a political junkie not only do I know that won’t happen, but I don’t care if it does.

I believe that Obama’s public opinion on gay marriage is particularly irrelevant. As well, any public statements made by his office, while comforting, will not translate into actual gains for our movement.

So excuse me for adhering to real politik here, but our focus should not be on whether or not Obama is commenting on Iowa marriage decisions or making public statements about UAFA. They are not the kind of actions that will win this fight.”

Instead, Ruby-Sachs says, we should “pressure members of Congress to stand up and publicly support gay rights issues. Those votes, those individuals, are the ones that matter. They can attain critical mass, can change the accepted discourse in the U.S. and lead to easy votes on equal rights legislation.”

She’s right to an extent. The president isn’t singularly important, and we do need to be pressuring Congress (leaving aside the issue of whether certain segments of the LGBT movement are actually willing to pressure any Democrat, let alone the president). But I still have serious reservations about the article.

First of all, she’s trying to have it both ways. Obama’s cool if he stands up for gay rights, but even if he doesn’t that’s still okay. One frequently sees this among Obama lovers: there’s no way he can possibly screw up in their eyes. Taken to extremes, it can become a quasi-religious “Obama works in mysterious ways” argument, wherein every disappointing action is taken to be part of some super-secret plan to do the exact opposite of what he appears to be doing – like the claim from some quarters that the real reason Obama has embraced many of Bush’s legal justifications for state secrecy is because he’s actually hoping the courts rule against him.

Or, in many other cases people just change what they think to be in line with who they’re supporting – as Ruby-Sachs is possibly doing with Obama on LGBT issues. An example of this line of thought can be found in the response of the Obama lovers to his flip-flop on releasing torture photos, for which they’re now scrambling to provide excuses. Glenn Greenwald had an important question for these people:

“…if you actually want to argue that concealing these photographs is the right thing to do, then you must have been criticizing Obama when, two weeks ago, he announced that he would release them. Otherwise, it’s pretty clear that you don’t have any actual beliefs other than: “I support what Obama does because it’s Obama who does it.” So for those arguing today that concealing these photographs is the right thing to do: were you criticizing Obama two weeks ago for announcing he would release these photographs?”

Likewise, Ruby-Sachs says she “would love to see Obama stand up and say that LGBT Americans deserve equal rights in all areas of the law,” and then promptly turns right around and says it’s fine that he hasn’t. Does anyone really think that if Obama did start publicly supporting gay rights, she’d say, “Maybe it’d be better if he stayed quiet on the issue”? There are much worse offenders than her (she at least recognizes the need to apply pressure to Obama), but still, cognitive dissonance anyone?

As to the main point of her article, that Obama’s opinions and actions are “irrelevant” and “will not translate into actual gains for our movement,” I totally disagree. While the president may not be able to push legislation though by himself, there’s still quite a bit he could be doing. For one thing, Ruby-Sachs rightly alludes to backroom arm-twisting Obama could be doing to advance legislation, although she makes no apparent attempt to explain why he isn’t doing that already.

Presidents play a major role in framing the debate and defining the “conventional wisdom.” If the president isn’t engaged in an issue, much of the media will take that as a sign that it’s not important, and many Democrats in Congress will be less willing to stick their necks out for fear no one will be there to keep their heads from getting chopped off. Frank Rich of the New York Times commented recently on a significant factor holding back the Democrats on LGBT issues:

“As [Freedom to Marry executive director Evan] Wolfson said to me last week, they lack ‘a towering national figure to make the moral case’ for full gay civil rights. There’s no one of that stature in Congress now that Ted Kennedy has been sidelined by illness, and the president shows no signs so far of following the example of L.B.J., who championed black civil rights even though he knew it would cost his own party the South…

‘This is a civil rights moment,’ Wolfson said, ‘and Obama has not yet risen to it.’ Worse, Obama’s opposition to same-sex marriage is now giving cover to every hard-core opponent of gay rights, from the Miss USA contestant Carrie Prejean to the former Washington mayor Marion Barry, each of whom can claim with nominal justification to share the president’s views.”

LGBT-friendly legislation is much more likely to pass if a president, especially one as (inexplicably) popular as Obama, keeps it from being moved to the back burner. This is especially the case on the issue of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”. It’s clear that at best repeal of DADT is a low priority for the Obama administration, and as Kerry Eleveld reported in The Advocate, there are signs that they might not follow through with it. This is a problem, because as Eleveld notes:

“Aubrey Sarvis, executive director of SLDN, indicated that a bill was unlikely to be introduced without support from the president. ‘Congress will likely not act without a nod from the commander in chief. Congress often defers military personnel matters to him. And Obama is the ultimate enforcer of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’’ he said.

A Democratic strategist who spoke on the condition of anonymity pressed the point a little harder: ‘No one wants to push this without the backing of the White House,’ he said.”

DADT is also one of the few areas of LGBT policy where Obama could take concrete action himself, without waiting for legislation from Congress. Granted, a repeal from Congress would be necessary in the long-term. But Aaron Belkin argues at The Huffington Post that Obama could de facto kill DADT with an executive order. So… why doesn’t he? Instead, he’s choosing to fire Arab linguists, while writing notes to the fired soldiers about how upset he is with doing it, even though he hasn’t done anything to stop it.

And this brings me to my last issue with Ruby-Sachs’ article. Even if I were to concede her point that public statements from Obama “will not translate into actual gains for our movement,” I’d still argue that it would be nice to know for once that Obama actually believes strongly in something, actually has a backbone and is willing to take a stand for something or someone. I’m not being hyperbolic; I’m really not sure. You have to admit that Obama isn’t exactly the most courageous politician out there (although that’s probably something a good chunk of his supporters like about him; it would seem that one person’s doublespeak is another person’s political realism).

On the contrary, there doesn’t seem to be much that he isn’t willing to sacrifice for the sake of political expediency. He appears completely opposed to radically restructuring the system, and definitely isn’t willing to take risks to do so. In fact, one of the few things he’s showed any degree of backbone on is handing the treasury over to Wall Street in the form of bailouts, standing up for neoliberal economic policies in the face of widespread public opposition.

On issue after issue, including LGBT issues, Obama has taken mostly symbolic steps to appear slightly less monstrous than his Republican opponents even while doing little to substantively alter the status quo. This is especially true on civil liberties/national security issues. He is admittedly showing real courage on closing Guantanamo in the face of an absurd fearmongering campaign (to which all too many other Democrats gave in)… but is pretty much just using it as a cover for embracing slightly modified Bush/Cheney policies, like abuse of state secrets, “preventive detention,” and a “kinder, gentler” form of military commissions. Not to mention, he wants to keep the prisoners at Bagram Air Base, a place every bit as bad as Guantanamo, stripped of their rights. Even Jon Stewart joked recently, in the context of poking fun at Dick Cheney’s hysteria over Obama’s positions, that there’s really only a 3-5% difference between the two.

Obama frequently utilizes one of the oldest tricks in politics, saying that he “supports” a given policy or position, and then doing nothing to advance it. David Sirota argued that this was the case with “cramdown” (allowing bankruptcy judges to modify home loans to prevent foreclosure, which subsequently failed in the Senate), and increasingly seems the case with the Employee Free Choice Act. He campaigned on EFCA to get union support, but his financial backers and many of his advisers are completely opposed to it, and he doesn’t seem willing to expend any “political capital” to see it through. “The motive for the two-step is obvious,” Sirota said. “Obama aims to get public credit for populist positions, while wink-and-nodding his way to moneyed-interest appeasement”.

So I reiterate: is there anything Obama is strongly committed to aside from the path of least resistance? It would be nice to know that he sees the LGBT community as something other than a source of votes and money; for a self-described “fierce advocate” for gay rights, he seems awfully willing to throw gays under the bus.

Check out my Twitter page

[Update 5/12/09: The widget's working now, so you can check out my feed on the left sidebar if you want.]

Well, I finally gave in and made a Twitter account, despite my intense hatred of Twitter. I have a specific purpose in mind for it, though, so that might make my decision slightly better. (It didn’t stop my wife from giving me a confused look when I told her, though.)

I’m planning to keep the content focused on politics/religion/whatever else you might find here. I’ll probably use it to share links, which I’d been looking for a way to do.

There’s a widget in WordPress which is supposed to add my Twitter feed to my blog, but I can’t get it to work yet. In any case, you can check it out here.

On moderate believers in hardline churches

[from atheistcartoons.com]

AlterNet recently had an interesting article by Tana Ganeva on new statistics about the attitudes of American Catholics: Most American Catholics Far More Liberal Than Church Leadership. From the article:

“The Catholic Church leadership continues to render itself more and more irrelevant with out-of-date and loudly proclaimed stances on abortion, reproductive rights, gay rights, AIDS policy, stem cell research… [but a new Gallup poll] shows that the views of practicing Catholics on a range of social issues are more or less in line with American non-Catholics.”

It’s of course heartening to see that so many Catholics reject church doctrine. But that to me raises the question as to why they still publicly identify with the church when they reject so many of its stances. I’m not surprised that they’re not embracing atheism, but I don’t get why they don’t at least switch to a more tolerant denomination, or even split off and form their own parallel church.

This brings be to the conclusion Ganeva draws from the data, with which I highly disagree:

“But it also points to the fact that often the most vocal spokespeople for a religion are not the most representative of that denomination’s adherents as a whole, but rather a crazy fringe given a platform by our sensationalist media. This is another pretty obvious point to bring up, but it is an important one, since often liberal reactions to the crazies is to trash all religious people — when many of them, as revealed by the Gallup poll, don’t give a damn about how other people choose to live their lives.”

It may be true that the Pope and the church hierarchy don’t represent the views of American Catholics. But it’s not “our sensationalist media” that keeps them in a position of power and influence; it’s the acquiescence of millions of liberal American Catholics who pay lip service to church leaders, keep going to Mass, and keep giving the church money, even as in private they completely blow off the church’s teachings. I’d be willing to cut liberal Catholics some slack if they were doing more to publicly oppose their leaders.

A little while back I stumbled on a great comment on this post at Pharyngula that perfectly illustrates my concerns here. The post was about this sickening story on a brutal Mormon prep school in Utah, and some of the commenters argued along the lines of, “Yeah, that’s horrible, but the majority of Mormons aren’t like that.” To which a user named asteranx responded:

“It simply doesn’t matter if a majority of Mormons are nice people – if the nasty ones are in charge, it’s because the nice ones are allowing an extremist minority to speak and act on their behalf. And just stepping up and saying ‘Most of us don’t agree’ is a rather impotent response while the ones you don’t agree with (after being elected by majority vote) are beating children in your name.”

I wouldn’t say I oppose religious moderates; I’d much rather people be that than fundamentalists. It’s more like I’m uneasy with the concept. There are many reasons for that uneasiness, but one of the main ones is the role moderates play in legitimizing religious fundamentalism/extremism. The primary way they do that is by refusing to oppose the extremists publicly and strongly; and by continuing the unthinking respect given to religion, the idea that it’s wrong and “intolerant” to criticize people’s religious beliefs, no matter how crazy or harmful. [for further reading on the latter point, check out this post from Greta Chrstina: Does The Emperor Have Clothes? Religion and the Destructive Force of Asking Questions]

Many moderate believers, when faced with criticism of their association with a hardline church, or more generally when people in mainline churches are confronted with crazy fundamentalism, think it’s enough to just politely say, “Well I don’t agree with that,” and then move on. I don’t think they should be let off the hook that easily.

“Common Purpose” and the co-optation of the progressive movement

Probably the thing that disgusted me the most about the 2008 election cycle was how many so-called “progressive” organizations seemed to be basically just appendages of the Democratic Party. It’s not a new phenomenon, of course, but I hadn’t realized the extent previously. Even now, many of the campaigns of groups like MoveOn are framed around “supporting President Obama’s agenda.” There really isn’t much of an independent progressive movement in this country, which is why we’re having so much trouble gaining traction on any number of issues.

If you doubt that all too many “progressive” organizations are slaves to Obama and his corporatist agenda, this article from Ben Smith at Politico should dispel any illusions you had. It describes a group called “Common Purpose,” which brings together “the top officials from a range of left-leaning organizations, from labor groups like Change to Win to activists like MoveOn.org” and White House officials. The purpose is message coordination, which is not something to which I’m inherently opposed, but it’s evident that in the present instance it’s a mechanism for keeping “progressive” groups toeing the White House line.

It’s not hard to tell how successful Common Purpose and similar groups have been in stifling progressive criticism of Obama. The major “progressive” organizations (to my knowledge at least) have largely ceded anger over the increasingly kleptocratic bank bailout to conservative teabaggers. And Jeremy Scahill reminds us that they’ve similarly sold out on Iraq and Afghanistan:

“…groups like the Center for American Progress and MoveOn, which portrayed themselves as anti-war during the Bush-era, are now supporting the escalation and continuation of wars because their guy is now commander-in-chief. CAP has been actively pounding the pavement in support of the escalation in Afghanistan, the rebranding of the Iraq occupation and, more recently, Obama’s bloated military budget, which the group said was “on target.” MoveOn has been silent on the escalation in Afghanistan and has devoted substantial resources to promoting a federal budget that includes a $21 billion increase in military spending from the Bush-era.

As another example, Smith’s article describes how several groups – including the Campaign for America’s Future and USAction – backed off from a campaign against the Blue Dog Democrats and the Evan Bayh faction in part at the urging of the White House: “The White House, however, was in the midst of discussions with members of the congressional Blue Dog caucus, and objected to the slogan, which was promptly changed, and the page describing the drive is gone from CAF’s website.”

“What is clear here is that CAP and MoveOn are now basically psuedo-official PR flaks targeting ‘liberals’ to support the White House agenda,” says Scahill. Why are the “progressive” groups doing this? As Jane Hamsher argues, they enjoy the illusion of having the ear of the President and they fear retribution if they don’t go along:

There’s a big problem right now with the traditional liberal interest groups sitting on the sidelines around major issues because they don’t want to buck the White House for fear of getting cut out of the dialogue, or having their funding slashed. Someone picks up a phone, calls a big donor, and the next thing you know…the money is gone. It’s already happened. Because that’s the way Rahm plays.

So what should we do about it? I don’t exactly know. I suppose some could argue that we need people like them working inside the system, but I’m not really convinced that it’s actually accomplishing anything in the current environment besides tarnishing ourselves by propping up the kleptocrats and giving their ideas a veneer of respectability. It would seem to me that one thing we need to seriously consider is whether to stop supporting the organizations involved with Common Purpose and similar groups who are selling us out to Obama and other Establishment Dems – i.e. stop donating money to them, unsubscribe from their email lists, stay away from events organized by them. I’ve already done that with several groups, such as MoveOn and Democracy for America, that I became disgusted with during the campaign because of their cheerleading for the Dems.

These “progressive” groups’ coziness with the Obama administration is the exact opposite of what needs to happen if we want to bring about real change. Currently, the pressure only seems to be coming from one direction, with Obama having every incentive to avoid radically restructuring the system. Instead of providing a fig leaf for status quo Democrats, we need to as Naomi Klein argues, “stop hoping and start demanding.” There needs to be an independent progressive movement focused not on electing Democrats, but on creating conditions under which whoever is in office has to implement progressive policies if they want to stay there.

On my semi-closeted atheism

Lately I’ve been thinking about whether to come out as an atheist to my family. As I’ve written before, I don’t hide my beliefs from people, but I don’t really advertise them either. And yet I don’t think anyone in my family (aside from my in-laws) knows I’m an atheist, whereas pretty much everyone outside my family who’s in any way close to me does.

It’s mostly because they’ve never asked about it; I think for the most part they assume I share their beliefs, or at worst that I’m apathetic about religion. If they asked, I wouldn’t deny it. For instance, I came out to the pastor who was to preside over my wedding. Rebecca and I were meeting with him about the ceremony, and he asked me, “Oh, by the way, what religion are you?” And I told him. It didn’t seem to bother him at all, although my mother-in-law later mentioned that he said he was “shocked.” No negative consequences came of it, though, except possibly for the uber-long sermon at the ceremony. [BTW, it wasn't my idea to have a religious ceremony. Long story.]

But still, I worry about what might happen if my family knew. I’m reasonably certain I wouldn’t be disowned or anything, but any atheist will tell you that there can be real social consequences for coming out, since a large number of Americans pretty much expect atheists to have horns and cloven hooves. I worry that they won’t understand, or they’ll think I’m a bad person. In some cases, I’m worried I’ll have to argue about it constantly.

So, why did I suddenly start thinking about this? It happened a couple weeks ago, when I went to a speech on campus by Cheryl Jacques, former Massachusetts state senator and president of Human Rights Campaign. She mentioned that one of the reasons gay rights and/or marriage are becoming more acceptable is because more Americans, especially young Americans, know (or know that they know) gay people than ever before, and once you know gay people it’s harder to not think of them as real people, rather than just negative stereotypes.

It occurred to me that maybe the same thing could apply to atheists, which got me thinking back to those all those right-wing chain letters I get from my dad and grandmother (a subject I’ve written about here and here). Sometimes I get ones demeaning secularists, as I briefly mentioned here.

Maybe the next time I get one of those I should write back saying that I’m an atheist and it’s incredibly hurtful when they forward me stuff like that. Maybe they’ll reconsider their positions. I have no illusions that any of them will let go of religion anytime soon, but perhaps it will dispel some of their myths about atheism. Or maybe they’ll just stop bashing secularists in earshot or filling my inbox with it. That in itself would be a nice change; at least then there would be a lessened sense of impunity for attacking nonbelievers.

Mostly, I’m tired of feeling like a coward, like my atheism is something to be ashamed of when I’m around certain people. It feels like I’m hiding a big part of my life from them. In all other aspects of my life I’m proud to be an atheist, and I’m not sure I have a justifiable reason for keeping it hidden in this case. How proud of it can I be if the people closest to me, whose opinion of me I value a great deal, don’t know about it? As I said, it’s not like I have to worry about being cast out. There are many people who have come out and suffered far worse consequences from their families than I would likely face. It’s kind of dickish of me to stay in the closet out of fear of a stern talking-to.

I don’t really know when or how I’m going to do it, but Rebecca suggested that I come out to my dad first as a sort of trial run; he would probably be a bit more understanding than my grandparents. I’m already used to all of them looking at me like a dog that’s just been shown a card trick when I speak my mind on political issues; this couldn’t be much worse.

Gay marriage wins in Vermont!

Ok, I’m a day behind with this. But, as everyone reading this is probably well aware by now, the Vermont legislature voted yesterday to override Gov. Douglas’s veto and legalize same-sex marriage, becoming the first state to do it without a court order. I may not be a native Vermonter, but I’m incredibly proud of the state, and it was exhilarating to be able to play a small part in this.

This victory, along with the court decision in Iowa and the decision by the city council in Washington, DC, is a reminder, which I think we needed after recent years, that we’re on the right side of history, that it’s only a matter of time until we have marriage equality throughout the country. It may not happen anytime soon, and there are still going to be setbacks, but I’m hopeful that one day we’ll look back on opponents of gay marriage the same way we now look back on opponents of interracial marriage. Some people here wondered why the fundies were so angry when they seemed to have the upper hand, and I think now that the reason why is because they realize deep down that ultimately they’re fighting a losing battle.

Coverage is pretty easy to find, so I won’t link to it, except to point out this great article in The Nation. Also, if your blood pressure is too low today, Hemant has some reactions from the religious right over at Friendly Atheist.

I was in the House chambers that day – that’s one of the few advantages of being an unemployed househusband, that I could spend a day at the Statehouse waiting for a vote to come down. The place was packed with supporters; I was surprised that there weren’t any opponents in the crowd that I could make out, unlike pretty much every other day of the proceedings. I probably looked pretty confused as people in the gallery started murmuring “I think we got it!” while the roll call was being tallied. Honestly, I was surprised it passed; I didn’t think the House had the votes to override the veto. Needless to say, I was overjoyed to be proven wrong. I was afraid a loss here would be a big setback for the movement nationally – “Even those dirty fucking hippies in Vermont couldn’t do it; what the hell chance does my state have,” some might have argued.

As far as the Douglas’s veto goes, I agree with Jon Stewart when he reportedly asked during a speech at UVM, “Why is your governor such a shithead?” A shithead he is, probably because he’s trying to secure his right flank for election time. However, I think the veto was a net benefit for our side. The supermajority we got with the override probably gives the law much more legitimacy than it would have otherwise had. I can promise you that there are people wouldn’t have risked their seats voting for it if it hadn’t been for the need to override the veto. A few Democrats who voted against the bill even switched their votes on the override, in part because of pressure from party leadership but also in part to screw Douglas. And some House Republicans were publicly pissed that Douglas threatened the veto before they’d even voted on it.

So what’s next? Here in Vermont, the next step is making sure the legislators who voted for marriage equality keep their seats. The next dominoes to fall will likely be in New England as well. But it might take awhile for marriage equality to spread elsewhere, and from what I’ve heard, Prop 8 is likely to be upheld in California. There’s just too many places in the country held hostage by religious nutjobs and old people afraid of change.