What can be said about last night’s election that hasn’t been said about malignant tumors?  Okay, let’s look at the good, the bad and the ugly.

Good

Lexington, Kentucky, has an openly gay mayor!  His name is Jim Gray, and his election is a nice silver lining for a state which elected an ophthalmologist with a distaste for the Civil Rights Act to represent them in the United States Senate.  Also, the new Congressman from RI-1 is Providence’s mayor David Cicilline, who is also openly gay.  And perhaps sweetest, Barney Frank beat back his opposition, Sean Bielat, who had inexplicably been endorsed by GOProud, and retained his seat in the House.  In all, 106 openly gay candidates were elected around the country last night.

NOM spent a ton of money trying to get rid of the Democratic governor of New Hampshire, John Lynch — they think he is terrible because he signed the marriage equality law there — but voters there gave Lynch an unpredecented fourth term in office.

California has a Democratic governor again in Jerry Brown, and Meg Whitman is $141 million poorer.  So that’s funny.  Tom Tancredo will decidedly not be the governor of Colorado.  Sexist, anti-gay wingnut freak Carl Paladino lost, lost, LOST in his bid to become governor of New York; that job is for Andrew Cuomo, thanks.

House:  Democrat Loretta Sanchez squeaked out a victory in California, thank goodness.  New Orleans is back in Democratic hands, though the Republican who lost was probably the most decent guy on that side of the aisle.  Marcy Kaptur is still with us in Ohio; her challenger, Rich Iott, who like, dresses up in Nazi garb or something on Saturdays, is filling out job applications today.

Senate:  At least we still have the Senate.  Carly Fiorina is a loooooser; Barbara Boxer keeps her job.  Democrats hold Connecticut, while sending wrestling wingnut Linda McMahon back to find a different job.  Christine O’Donnell, of course, will not be the Senator of anything, ever; that job is for Chris Coons.  Harry Reid brought it back to defeat Sharron Angle, which has to make wingnuts insane.  One of the LGBT community’s staunchest allies, Kirsten Gillibrand, has been elected to a full term in the Senate, and Chuck Schumer’s still with us too.  Also, Joe Manchin pulled it out in West Virginia.

Those are the good things from last night.  Now…

Bad/Ugly

A majority of Iowans, thanks to the Religious Right, apparently are illiterate when it comes to the role of the judiciary, having ousted three of the Supreme Court judges who granted same-sex couples the long overdue right to marry.  The judiciary, of course, is not intended to be run by partisans, but don’t expect anything short of a preschool-level understanding of civics from groups like the National Organization for Marriage and the Family Research Council, which spent hundreds of thousands of dollars that could have been spent feeding impoverished children on hurting gay families in the state.  Silver lining there, though:  if you’ll remember, the Iowa Supreme Court decision was unanimous, which means that seven judges voted for it.  Regardless of who gets those jobs, we still have a majority on the court.

Jan Brewer has now been elected as Arizona’s governor.  They’re workin’ real hard to make sure everybody knows Arizona as the Alabama of the Southwest, aren’t they?  The proposition to legalize marijuana went down in California, continuing California’s pattern of doing really good things and really bad things, all at the same time, when they go to the polls.

Senate:  Welcome wingnut senators Marco Rubio in Florida, Mark Kirk in Illinois — we’ll get that seat back easily, by the way — , Dan Coats in Indiana, Rand Paul in Kentucky, Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania, and welcome back the biggest yokel in the Senate, Jim DeMint, who somehow pulled out a massive win over his handpicked opponent, Alvin Greene.  Sadly, Russ Feingold lost his job, to pave the way for new wingnut Ron Johnson in Wisconsin.

And the House.  Oh, the House.  Enjoy wingnuts, all y’all who thought voting To Teach Democrats A Lesson was a good idea.  Thanks for taking the stalemate in Washington up nine or ten notches.  It’s not like government is supposed to do anything, is it?  My favorite Congressman, Alan Grayson, lost his job last night, due to the confusion and stupidity of voters in his district.  Michele Bachmann won again, proving that district is likely one of the most frightening in the nation when it comes to reading comprehension, etc.  Virginia Foxx is also still with us in North Carolina, so that will continue to make for hilarious television.

Still too close to call: Michael Bennet (D) or Ken Buck (Wingnut) for Senate in Colorado?  Kinda scary.  Mark Dayton (D) or Tom Emmer (OMG) for governor of Minnesota?  Scarier.

Just funny: The wingnuts of Oklahoma have overwhelmingly chosen to make English their official language, which means those voters have a LOT of basic grammar to study, and they’ve also chosen to ban Shari‘a law within their borders.  So, um.  Did not know that was a threat!  Also, Tennessee has now enshrined in its Constitution the God-giv’n right to hunt and fish, as if that was somehow threatened.

Anyway.  That’s what I find significant from last night’s election.  What are you happy/sad/enraged by from last night?

Today’s New York Times had a feature on Republican Tea Bagger candidate Sharron Angle and her race to replace Harry Reid (D) in the Senate. The newspaper stated her radical positions and one can only conclude she is out of her mind:

Since Ms. Angle won, her campaign has been rocked by a series of politically intemperate remarks and awkward efforts to retreat from hard-line positions she has embraced in the past, like phasing out Social Security.

But some of her conservative positions could prove a hurdle come November. She has, for example, called for the elimination of the Energy Department and the Environmental Protection Agency, denounced the BP compensation fund for victims of the oil spill as a slush fund…”

The is also the disturbing question of her God complex. Instead of a U.S. Senate race, her candidacy seems more like an ego trip:

According to the Times, Angle suggested that her candidacy was a mission for God.

That sound very much like George W. Bush, God’s other brilliant selection to serve the American people. Just like the former president, Angle is incredibly arrogant and can’t admit to mistakes:

Yet Republicans have found that Ms. Angle is not particularly open to suggestions from outsiders. Asked if her campaign had done anything wrong, she responded, “I don’t think so.”

And asked if she would be doing anything differently going forward, Ms. Angle paused again and said, “I can’t think of anything like that.”

I guess when one is hand-picked by God, one can do no wrong. However, this divine selection by the Creator has failed to infuse her with the confidence to speak to the local media on a regular basis:

There have also been a staff shake-up and run-ins with Nevada journalists, including one in which a television reporter chased her through a parking lot trying to get her to answer a question….The interview itself was a break from past practice, and after that, she took a few questions from reporters at a brief news conference.

Isn’t Angle supposed to represent the Tea Baggers who are the anointed party of the people? So, why won’t she talk to voters in interviews? And, when she is forced to speak publicly, Angle reveals she has no clue what she is talking about and resorts to lies:

Her appearance was filled with sharp attacks on Mr. Reid, including an assertion that it was Mr. Reid who was a threat to Social Security (though she offered that line only upon being prompted by an aide after she said she was done with her remarks).

Her recent advertisements have been sharper and more focused, including one accusing Mr. Reid of wanting to raid the Social Security Trust Fund. Jon Ralston, a political columnist for The Las Vegas Sun, wrote that the advertisement was “quite well done. It’s also totally disingenuous.”

Do the voters of Nevada want a self-righteous, uninformed nut with a God complex as their Senator?

(Weekly Column)

Also On The Huffington Post

Last week, I attended the Net Roots conference in Las Vegas. This is a yearly event where bloggers and grassroots activists meet to network and discuss strategy for advancing progressive issues. Net Roots began with fireworks, as the gay organization Get Equal staged a major protest on the Las Vegas strip that stopped traffic.

The demonstrators were demanding that hometown Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which would prohibit firing people based on their sexual orientation. A total of twenty activists endured 106-degree heat to unfurl a large banner over a pedestrian walkway. Activists Robin McGehee and Lt. Dan Choi were among 7 people arrested during the protest.

Some, who believe Reid should not be pressured during a tough reelection race against loopy Tea Bagger Sharron Angle, questioned Get Equal’s action. However, I support their advocacy and believe it brought much needed attention to a bill that seems to be languishing in the Senate. The pressure and media exposure created by Choi and Get Equal is crucial for several reasons.

First, LGBT issues should not be considered radioactive. Politicians ought to be held accountable for their promises and proudly support equal rights at all times. With the American people overwhelmingly in support of ENDA, there is no excuse for timidity. The time to end discrimination in the workplace is today.

Second, there will always be tough political battles and there seems to never be a convenient time for elected officials to take a stand. The LGBT community was told to wait its turn when Obama was elected because there were complicated issues – such as the economy and two wars. But now, defenders of the status quo still say we should hold off to avoid causing waves during the contentious midterm elections.

If the Republicans win over one or both houses of Congress we will surely be told that nothing can be done because the Republicans are in charge. If the Democrats win, we might be asked to take one for the team because President Obama has a difficult reelection campaign in the near future. And if Obama wins, we may be informed that he does not have the power to act because he is a lame duck president?

There will always be excuses why apprehensive leaders, who gladly take LGBT money and votes, should not act. Meanwhile, as the politicians dither and justify inaction, more gay people are fired from jobs every day. And, an even larger number of workers remain closeted, fearful of losing their careers and facing financial ruin in this dreadful economy.

Third, there are those who claim that groups such as Get Equal should not be targeting “friends” of the LGBT community. I happen to agree with this logic, but believe one is only a true friend in the House or Senate if they are taking bold action to end discrimination. When Harry Reid moves ENDA through the Senate he will be amazed that protesters are no longer causing traffic jams in Las Vegas.

Fourth, some critics say that we should take a go-slow approach and only end one form of state-sanctioned bigotry at a time. This crowd says, we should not push for ending Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and ENDA in the same year.

This is nonsense and the notion of incremental action on LGBT issues is absurd. It is just as wrong to fire a person in the military, as it is to end a person’s career in the civilian workforce because he or she is gay. If a politician states anti-gay discrimination is morally repugnant, it is his or her obligation to seek out and end all forms of official bigotry at once.

Indeed, contrary to conventional beltway wisdom, eliminating anti-gay discrimination on the same day, through one bill, would be simpler than the current plan of having several protracted fights. It makes sense that once a single vote on a comprehensive LGBT rights bill is taken – the battle would be over with. The American people would see they have nothing to fear and life would move on. No one in Washington has been able to rationally explain how having Congress take one difficult vote on gay rights is more challenging politically than taking multiple tough votes.  Only in DC is 10 bloody fights considered “easier” than one.

Finally, critics of Get Equal and Dan Choi, who also confronted Reid on stage in Las Vegas, like to portray these advocates as publicity seekers. However, I can’t understand how effectively using the national media to draw attention to broken promises is bad for the LGBT movement. These activists should be universally applauded for not allowing ENDA or Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell to suffer quiet deaths on Capitol Hill. The more noise they make, the more likely these bills will become law.

Choi and McGehee headline the best young crop of activists the movement has seen. They are smart, engaging, brave, media savvy and politically aware. Most of the criticism against them stems from jealousy or a need to defend failure to get the job done. As someone who has served in this movement for two decades, I am proud to have these advocates on my side and thankful for the vitality and verve they bring to the LGBT movement.

Yay, traditional values!

Known insane teabagger lady Sharron Angle, who thinks she should take Harry Reid’s seat in the Senate, was asked about abortion, and this is what happened:

Stock: What do you say then to a young girl, I am going to place it as he said it, when a young girl is raped by her father, let’s say, and she is pregnant. How do you explain this to her in terms of wanting her to go through the process of having the baby?

Angle: I think that two wrongs don’t make a right. And I have been in the situation of counseling young girls, not 13 but 15, who have had very at risk, difficult pregnancies. And my counsel was to look for some alternatives, which they did. And they found that they had made what was really a lemon situation into lemonade. Well one girl in particular moved in with the adoptive parents of her child, and they both were adopted. Both of them grew up, one graduated from high school, the other had parents that loved her and she also graduated from high school. And I’ll tell you the little girl who was born from that very poor situation came to me when she was 13 and said ‘I know what you did thank you for saving my life.’ So it is meaningful to me to err on the side of life.

What a sick, twisted woman.  If life hands your child rape, make child rape brownies!  (Don’t get any ideas, Roman Catholic Church.)  Or as Alex Balk said at The Awl, “When Life Gives You Incestuous Sexual Assault, Make Incestuous Sexual Assaultade.

I do hope somebody in Harry Reid’s campaign is paying attention and making campaign buttons and commercials right now.  Harry Reid:  He’ll never make your daughter eat a rape brownie.

Building on Wayne’s post below about Harry Reid’s dumb comments, and the way that Republicans with segregationist ties and long arcs of public racism are trying to create false equivalencies in an effort to show that the Democrats are the real racists, we have the LGBT community’s lowest common denominator, B. Daniel Blatt of Gay Patriot, making the following assertion:

Some might say that given [Trent Lott's] history with the segregationist group “Council of Conservative Citizens,” Lott’ statement had been part of pattern. Well, Reid too has a pattern of denigrating intelligent African-Americans, having disparaged the writing skills of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Click through those links. I dare you. Go back to the original quotes and marvel at the way Republicans just cold lie any time it serves their purpose.*

All that Harry Reid said was that Clarence Thomas was not too bright, and that he was a crappy writer, to boot. Both of those things are painfully true.

To make the mental leap required in assuming that Reid’s comments about Thomas were racist in nature, Blatt has to first be operating from his own assumption that black people are crappy writers. Because in the normal human world, you can criticize a person’s writing skills without considering their skin color. So, let’s call this one a study in projection, one that’s all too typical in the conservative world.

It’s Gay Patriot, so of course there’s a bit of internalized self-hatred on display:

Note how often Republicans are tarred as “anti-gay” for holding the same position on gay marriage as the Democratic President of the United States.

Yeah, just because they don’t support our dignity as human beings and as equal citizens, it doesn’t mean they’re anti-gay, you guys! I mean, you guys, we’re supposed to be second class citizens, right? And really, it’s our fault for wanting to be treated equally. Why won’t we ever learn that Our Lord in Heaven appointed heterosexual white males to lead society?

And perhaps Blatt has missed this, but the politically active liberal LGBT community has been giving the Obama administration absolute hell for the way they’ve been breaking their promises. I guess that little fact doesn’t fit the Gay-triot narrative about how they’re the real maverick-y tuff guy cowboys.

*Beware, though. The links take you through first Glenn Reynolds and then to Ann Althouse, two of the other stupidest people on the entire internet. Oh, no, am I being racist against dimwitted white people?

No one doubts that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) made a huge gaffe when he said that Barack Obama could become the nation’ first African American president because he was “light skinned” and had “no negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.”

Obviously, this was a poor choice of words and Reid expressed immediate regret — offering an apology that was accepted by President Obama. Reid will continue his efforts this week to be contrite and make things right, as he should.

However, the reaction by leading Republicans who called for Reid to resign was nauseating. It was astounding to witness a party built on a “Southern Strategy” of appealing to disaffected white males suddenly pretending to be the NAACP.

On ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Liz Cheney called Reid’ comments racist and played the tiresome conservative victim card.

“Can I just point out, I think one of the things that makes the American people frustrated, time and time again, liberals excuse racism from other liberals,” Cheney said. “The comments were outrageous…I don’t think racism is OK, George, whether you’re saying it in private or in public…”

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele said that Reid should resign from office and accused the Democrats of hypocrisy, because Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS) was forced to step down from his perch as Senate Majority Leader in 2002 after he made racially insensitive remarks.

“There is this standard where Democrats feel that they can say these things and they can apologize when it comes from the mouths of their own,” Steele said in an interview with Fox News Sunday. “But if it comes from anyone else, it is racism.”

In today’ Republican Party, all is cynical and nothing is sacred. There is little profound and much that is profane. Such political pathology is reflected in the mindless attacks on Reid. To buy the GOP’ indignation, one must be completely ignorant of history, devoid of basic reasoning and have no understanding of context.

In the case of Reid, his comment was an aberration that contrasted with his history of supporting equality. Indeed, the actual comment was in favor of Obama’ candidacy and spoke to his viability. A true racist would never have endorsed the idea of an African American president, because by definition such a person believes that other races are inferior and not capable of leading this nation.

Conversely, Sen. Lott (pictured left) had a history of flirting with racism and other forms of bigotry. He began his political career in 1968 working for Rep. William M. Colmer, a segregationist from Pascagoula.

The Washington Post revealed that Lott had appeared as the keynote speaker at a 1992 meeting of the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC) in Greenwood, Mississippi. This was a racist organization that barely concealed their belief in white supremacy. The organization’ magazine, The Citizens Informer, had featured a large photograph of Senator Lott at the CCC conference and quoted him as telling attendees that “we need more meetings like this” and “the people in this room stand for the right principles and the right philosophy. Let’s take it in the right direction and our children will be the beneficiaries.”

So, by the time Lott appeared at former Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond’ (R-SC) 100^th birthday party on December 5, 2002, an unmistakable pattern of intolerance had already been established. At this celebration, Lott said: “When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over the years, either.”

Thurmond’ presidential campaign in 1948 had explicitly been about racial segregation. So, there was no way that Lott could have been “proud” of this presidential run and conclude that America would have been better off with a Thurmond victory unless he believed that segregation was good for America. This was more than simply a poor word choice. It was the seeming endorsement of a noxious, overarching worldview that had nearly destroyed this nation.

Lott denies that he supports discrimination and is a racist. However, one cannot separate his comments from the context in which they came. Compare this to Reid, who did no more than use an old fashioned, anachronistic vocabulary word. His comments were regrettable for sure, but certainly not part of a pattern of racism.

To criticize Reid in a vacuum is vacuous and the histrionics of Liz Cheney and Michael Steele blatantly ignore history. The GOP has long trivialized genuine racism and used crass political opportunism to exploit race for political gain. Now, they are doing the exact same thing, except this time they are pretending to be the guardians of diversity. Their act is embarrassingly transparent and the only “races” these phonies care about are the ones that will put Republicans back in power.

Is there nothing this amoral crowd won’t say or do to win elections?