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, LOSTin 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.
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?
Even if you don’t like your own personal Democrat, you should still be voting for the Democrats to retain control of Congress. Why? The simple numbers are out, and according to the HRC’s new scorecards:
Republican congressional opposition to gay issues, such as repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell,” strengthened over the last two years and will likely continue in the next Congress with more conservative GOP lawmakers being elected. The Human Rights Campaign, the top gay lobby, has issued a score card that graded 32 Republican senators and 139 House members with a zero on gay-issue voting. By comparison, 17 Senate and 91 House Democrats scored 100. Overall, the average score for all 435 House members was 50.8; among the 100 senators, it was 57.3.
Sounds like a no-brainer to me. Follow the above link to see the scorecards for yourselves.
I mean, by all means, if it makes you feel better to Teach Your Democrat A Lesson by handing power to bigots who have also proven their incompetence on most other issues*, knock yourself out, but if you’re a serious voter, those are the cold, hard facts.
Finding itself in a strange legal position, the Obama administration filed an emergency request Wednesday with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to stop the military from allowing openly gay troops from serving.
In effect, the administration wants to continue barring gays from the military even though it ultimately favors repealing the policy known as “don’t ask, don’t tell.”
“They are in a very bizarre position, frankly of their own making,” said CNN senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin.
[...]
The administration argued that changing it abruptly “risks causing significant immediate harm to the military and its efforts to be prepared to implement an orderly repeal of the statute.”
B.S.
Toobin said the administration would like Congress to deal with the issue on a political level and doesn’t want the courts to take it on unilaterally.
Funny thing about having three co-equal branches of government: when two of them fall down on the job, it’s actually perfectly natural for the third to step in and get the job done.
The other day, The Rude Pundit actually laid out pretty succinctly, as he is wont to do, the best and politically smartest thing Obama could be doing at this point. Of course, as it is The Rude Pundit, it’s, um, kind of rude, but that’s the point. Obama should have said, in response to the injunction handed down against DADT:
“Groovy. The Senate can go fuck itself now. Let’s move on.”
Oh, but of course not. By the way, that entire Rude Pundit piece above is well worth the reading, just to alleviate the exasperation. His description of the 20% dead-enders who actually really oppose DADT is one of the most beautiful, spot-on analyses I’ve ever seen, by which I mean that it’s gloriously rude and to the point.
WILMINGTON, Del. — Republican Senate nominee Christine O’Donnell of Delaware on Tuesday questioned whether the U.S. Constitution calls for a separation of church and state, appearing to disagree or not know that the First Amendment bars the government from establishing religion.
The exchange came in a debate before an audience of legal scholars and law students at Widener University Law School, as O’Donnell criticized Democratic nominee Chris Coons’ position that teaching creationism in public school would violate the First Amendment by promoting religious doctrine.
Coons said private and parochial schools are free to teach creationism but that “religious doctrine doesn’t belong in our public schools.”
“Where in the Constitution is the separation of church and state?” O’Donnell asked him.
When Coons responded that the First Amendment bars Congress from making laws respecting the establishment of religion, O’Donnell asked: “You’re telling me that’s in the First Amendment?”
I am speechless like Watertiger, who posted this before me. Like, are we all clear on the fact that when we elect people, we’re actually giving them jobs that are sort of dependent on their understanding of basic civics?
The mid-term elections are now just under a month away. LGBT people are, understandably, frustrated with the slow progress of things like DADT repeal, ENDA, and the continued reticence among elected Democrats when it comes to supporting the now very mainstream position of marriage equality. I agree with those who feel betrayed by leaders whose greatest weakness, I believe, is their utter lack of a spine when it comes to taking their own side in a fight.
I also understand why gay donations to Democrats are way down this cycle. But I’ve been hearing a bit of noise from some quarters about gay voters either A. staying home, or B. voting third party in order to “teach the Democrats a lesson.” I understand these sentiments, the lack of motivation that can come when the Democratic party does everything it can to woo gay voters, and then magically forgets about all of that when it comes time to govern.
All of that being said: Letting Republicans take either or both houses of Congress is worse. You know it is. I’ve heard the arguments that to continue voting Democratic is to be pussywhipped by that party, and I agree that it can be, if the wrong lessons are learned. But I can’t imagine any scenario where the right lesson is to cut off your nose to spite your own face. It seems to me that the best choice at this point is to make sure the GOP doesn’t take Congress and then after the November elections, work our asses off to be smarter in our lobbying and in our activism. Smarter does not necessarily mean louder, by the way; loud is good if there is a plan behind it, but it can also seem to the average bystander to be little more than shrill screaming. We may not have gotten as much done with Obama and a Democratic Congress than we would have liked at this point, but we’re certainly further ahead than we would be under a McPalin administration, and we’re certainly going to make more progress in the next Congress if it remains in Democratic hands. How much is an open question, but I’d rather have that than stagnation, or worse, a regression in the fight for equal rights. At least in the first scenario, we aren’t cutting our own power off.
With that in mind, having pissed off some of you while making others happy, I want to highlight two pieces which really drive home where we are, in my opinion. One is recent, and the other is from 2008.
The first comes from StrangeAppar8us at Rumproast, just a couple weeks ago, entitled “Why I Am Abandoning Obama and the Democratic Party Forever.” It’s spectacular, and deserves to be read in its entirety, but I’ll pull a few of the most relevant passages here:
? Notwithstanding the fact that I knew when I voted for him that there was no way out of Iraq and Afghanistan that would not further destabilize Central Asia, enhance Iran’s influence, encourage the collapse of Pakistan, challenge the cohesion of the NATO alliance and invite predictable power-play gambits from India, China and Russia that would totally recast the definitions of “victory” and “defeat,” I am upset that Obama has not brought all the troops home.
? I can’t believe he saved the US auto industry, because nobody cares about US cars or the people who make them.
? PS: Why would Obama not make Gay Marriage and Abortion the centerpiece of his agenda going into a November election where the Dems stand to lose the House and possibly the Senate to Extreme Social Conservatives?
Heh. Yeah. And the other one is truly one of the classics of liberal blogdom, from the 2008 election, when certain liberals were talking about protest voting for Ralph Nader, because the Democrats, quote, “aren’t helping the Left, so why should the Left help them?” Tbogg, that master of wit and sense who blogs in his own happy, sane corner of FireDogLake, replied:
Let me see if I can explain it this way:
Every year in Happy Gumdrop Fairy-Tale Land all of the sprites and elves and woodland creatures gather together to pick the Rainbow Sunshine Queen. Everyone is there: the Lollipop Guild, the Star-Twinkle Toddlers, the Sparkly Unicorns, the Cookie Baking Apple-cheeked Grandmothers, the Fluffy Bunny Bund, the Rumbly-Tumbly Pupperoos, the Snowflake Princesses, the Baby Duckies All-In-A-Row, the Laughing Babies, and the Dykes on Bikes. They have a big picnic with cupcakes and gumdrops and pudding pops, stopping only to cast their votes by throwing Magic Wishing Rocks into the Well of Laughter, Comity, and Good Intentions. Afterward they spend the rest of the night dancing and singing and waving glow sticks until dawn when they tumble sleepy-eyed into beds made of the purest and whitest goose down where they dream of angels and clouds of spun sugar.
You don’t live there.
Grow the fuck up.
“The Fluffy Bunny Bund.” I cannot read that without giggling uncontrollably, but it’s so true!
Politics is, unfortunately, a game. That’s the system we have. And we’re not playing it well if we’re seriously considering taking power from a party that is, in many areas, annoying, reticent, and slow, and giving it to a party that is just plain old batshit insane, on all issues, but especially on Our Issues. It does no one any good, and really, our nation is still in a pretty precarious place. I know that American voters on both sides of the aisle have a particular talent for forgetting history beyond ten minutes ago, but it would do us good to remember, on all issues, just how bad things were between 2000 and 2008. By almost every metric, things got worse and worse and worse.
Do the Democrats need to wake the hell up and grow a backbone and all of that? Sure. Do a lot of Democrats suck, in general, due to being basically Conservatives? Sure. We don’t have a Left party in this country, all the moaning and groaning of the Teahadists notwithstanding. We simply don’t. We have a far right insane wingnut party, and we have a centrist party which includes a good number of right-of-center conservatives. So liberals are left sort of underrepresented. But the answer, as usual, is to elect better Democrats; giving the country a couple years of Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell is counterproductive, and again, Americans aren’t all that smart. It takes exactly twelve minutes in this country for the GOP to establish a completely fake counter-narrative that takes root in the hearts and minds of people with double-digit IQs from sea to shining sea. This is what happens when one of the parties has a major cable network which is 100% committed to spreading its talking points and calling it “news.”
Feel free to argue with me about this, because I probably agree with a lot of what you’ll say. But on a meta level, from the air — I still see no good reason for gays to stay home this year. Make your displeasure with the Democratic party known in every way short of handing John Boehner the job of Speaker of the House. Absolutely. But it’s election time now, and we have to be grown-ups. If you live in a district where there’s actually a competition going on between the Democrat and the Republican, throw up in your mouth a little bit if you have to, but pull the lever for the Democrat. If you live somewhere that a protest vote or staying at home would be noticeable without being counterproductive, then by all means, go for it. But make sure you know what you’re doing.
It’s all about strategery, to quote a certain infamous American.
Speaking of gays [imagine that], gays can kiss longer than straight people, so nyah. Good thing, because two polls now show that marriage equality has majority support, so there’s a lot of kissyface in our future. The Religious Right are victims now, in Canada and Indianapolis, where they were asked to make gay cupcakes. I discussed the need for minorities to stand up for each other, specifically as regards moderate and liberal Muslims vis a vis the gay community. Oh, and I went off on Chris Barron of GOProud, which led to a Twitter Fight, which led to a nice discussion about BBQ. He’s a fun sparring partner, I’ll give him that.
Then a crazy guy in Saxby Chambliss’s office decided to leave threatening anti-gay comments on JoeMyGod, so that was embarrassing for big old homophobe Saxby. Speaking of homophobes, HomoCon is tomorrow! YAY! Okay, that’s all.
Music this week is from that old gay classic musical RENT. I happened to be listening to the Original Cast recording last night, and I really don’t have to set it up for you, because you’re all gay and stuff, so you can probably sing the entire show all the way through in your sleep, and some of you probably know the blocking. Anyway, one of my very favorite moments in all of musical theater is after the first “La Vie Boheme“, when Mimi and Roger sing “I Should Tell You” to each other. [Insert flutter, sigh and single tear here.] So we’ll start with that, hit shuffle on the old iTunes machine and, oh look, it’s like, my favorite Tori Amos song ever, and also some other stuff. More videos after le jump.
1. Jay Brannan – “Bowlegged and Starving”
2. Tokyo Police Club – “Tessellate” [Remix by Tom Campesinos!]
3. Banjo or Freakout – “Joy to the World”
4. 10,000 Maniacs – “Gold Rush Brides”
5. Tori Amos – “Lust”
6. Fever Ray – “If I Had A Heart”
7. Lightning Dust – “Never Seen”
8. U2 – “Numb”
9. David Mead – “Girl on the Roof”
10. Port O’Brien – “In the Meantime”
Saxby Chambliss’s office has admitted it. Here’s Joe Jervis with the latest from this crazy story that started this afternoon:
I’ve just gotten off the phone with Atlanta Journal-Constitution political writer Jim Gallaway who says that Sen. Saxby Chambliss has confirmed that the “All faggots must die” comment left here on JMG earlier today did indeed come from his Atlanta office. Galloway reports that Chambliss told him his office is now conducting an internal investigation.
“We have seen the allegations and are moving quickly to understand the facts. This office has not and will not tolerate any activity of the sort alleged,” Chambliss spokeswoman Bronwyn Lance Chester said. “Once we have ascertained whether these claims are true, we will take the appropriate steps.” The comment was posted on Joe.My.God., a blog dedicated to gay and lesbian issues. “All [gays] must die,” wrote a commenter identifying himself as “Jimmy.” Blog author Joseph Jervis of New York City used the Internet Protocol address attached to the comment to trace the slur to “the neighborhood” of Chambliss’ office in Atlanta. Readers quickly helped. “Among the fields in which gay people are over-represented is the IT field,” Jervis said. The office of U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson is in the same area. But a spokeswoman for Isakson said his staff quickly ascertained that the message did not originate with them.
Crazy, crazy.
Also: the person who did it will probably be identified by tomorrow, but let’s just go on record right now saying that whoever the person was who did it is not only a bigot, but also mindnumbingly stupid. From a Senate computer?! Really?! My god.
It’s sad watching a man succumb to God-Knows-What right in front of our eyes. Kerry Eleveld and Chris Geidner went after McCain on the issue of the military actively going on witchhunts for gay servicemembers, and Walnuts! just sticks his fingers in his ears and doesn’t want to hear it, no he doesn’t!
MCCAIN: We do not go out and seek. Regulations are, we do not go out and seek to find out if someone’s sexual orientation. We do not!
ELEVELD: But senator, that’s not…
MCCAIN: That is the fact! That is the fact. Now ma’am, I know the military very well, and I know what’s being done. And what is being done is that they are not seeking out people who are gay. And I don’t care what you say, I know it’s a fact.
ELEVELD: It’s not what I say.
MCCAIN: I dont’ care what you say! And I don’t care what others say. I’ve seen it in action. I’ve seen it in action. I have sons in the military, I know the military very well. So they’re not telling you the truth.
ELEVELD: Senator, just to make sure…
MCCAIN: Just to make sure. We do not go out and seek out and find out….
ELEVELD: Private emails are not being searched? Private emails are not being searched?
MCCAIN: …See if someone is gay or not. We do not go out and see whether someone is gay or not.
ELEVELD: There are documented cases…
MCCAIN: They do not, they do not, they do not. You can say that they are, you can say [inaudible] it’s not true!… Yea, I’d like to see…
GEIDNER: It is the case of Mike Almy, Senators.
MCCAIN: Bring them to our office. It is not the policy, it is not the policy, it is not the policy.
GEIDNER: But it is the case that it’s happening, Senator.
MCCAIN: It is not the policy, it is not the policy, it is not the policy You can say that it is the policy, sir if you choose to. It is not the policy. I would be glad to get that to you in writing.
So John McCain is a hypocritical homophobe with no principles and he’s becoming completely unhinged from reality. Does that about cover it?
I didn’t have the television on when the vote happened, so I missed this at the time, but here’s what Rachel had to say when the vote went down. She points out the much overlooked insanity of the fact that the Republican Party, which stupidly fancies itself as the party that supports the troops, despite all evidence to the contrary, freaking filibustered the Defense Authorization Bill. She also gives a little bit of historical context to the Republican lies about how this is all about “amendments”:
UPDATE: The vote fails 56-43. The United States Senate remains the most incompetent, useless debating body on the face of the earth. Of course, it would help if the President would lift a finger, instead of letting himself be shown up by a pop star. Of course, if this were reversed, and the Democrats were filibustering a bill for defense spending, the wingnut trolls would be screaming to high heaven on Fox News about how unpatriotic the Democrats were for Not Supporting The Troops. But instead, we’re dealing with the Democratic party, which cannot, shall not, will not take its own side in an argument, no matter the cost, so we have a situation where the supposedly “Pro-Murka” GOP is filibustering defense spending [my god], and they’re getting away with it.
UPDATE II: By the way, I’m hearing that GOProud is saying that Lady Gaga should have had her rally in Nevada, because Harry Reid voted no. I’m not sure whether GOProud is full of morons [they are], or they think that other wingnuts are stupid [they are], but Reid’s vote was procedural. Jeez.
