They Just Don't Get It

Digby is one of the most perceptive commentators around, whatever you may think of his politics. (I'm always amazed at the awe shown toward blowhards like Charles Krauthammer, who makes sense about once a year, and David Brooks, who does not live on this planet.) This post, on Eliot Spitzer's commitment to introduce legislation legalizing gay marriage in New York, is a case in point:

I assume from the tone of the article that this is not likely to pass, which is a shame. But I admire Spitzer for doing it, getting it on the record and standing behind his promise. Most politicians learned the wrong lesson from Bill Clinton's gays-in-the-military battle in which he came into office and did what he said he would do in the campaign and was burned at the stake for it. He backtracked with "don't ask don't tell" but it at least changed the status quo, which is worth something even if it's not everything. Since then, too many Democratic politicians have shied away from saying they would do anything concrete on social issues at all.

Spitzer seems to understand that you have to keep plugging away at these things from different directions in order to make progress, regardless of the liklihood of passage, and that it's incumbent upon progressive politicians to use some of what Bush likes to call "political capital" to do it. It's only by constantly coming back to first principles on social change again and again that people internalize that they have become mainstream. Good for Spitzer for keeping this on the agenda.

This is something that the far right fringes learned a long time ago -- think about the various guises and angles that creationism has assumed over the past -- how many years is it now that they've been trying to insert Bible studies into high-school science classes? Twenty? Thirty? It's something that the Black Civil Rights movement learned. It's something that anyone who has ever succeeded in bringing about change in this country learns. You have to get behind it and push and push and push. And our political leaders, if they are going to remain our leaders, have to make a commitment.

They don't listen. I don't recall a single instance of a Democratic leader responding to the likes of Limbaugh, Colter, Malkin, O'Reilly, Dobson, Wildmon, or any other filth-spewing demagogue. The Democratic leadership should have someone on staff tracking these idiots and coming back, loudly and publicly, with facts. They're all liars -- call them on it. The Democrats have the resources. It's not the RNC shaping discourse on these issues -- it's the Dobson Gang and the right-wing talk radio hosts. It took twelve years for the Democrats to find issues they could pound away at, and the Republicans handed them to them on a silver tray with a pretty pink ribbon -- Iraq and corruption. Pelosi, Dean, Clinton, Obama may think paying attention to the wingnuts is beneath their dignity, but the problem is that everyone else is hearing it.

As it is, the Democrats have handed the social issues planks to the Republicans and their wingnut base. Moral cowardice? Or just the general garden variety? Do they just not give a damn? Or just a simple inability to frame an argument on the basis of law and tradition? These are questions I shouldn't be able to ask. From any angle, the Democrats are an almost-complete failure right now on social issues. I'm wavering between "almost-complete" and "complete" on this one -- yes, they're pushing through stem cell research funding, which will be vetoed, and it's their reaction to the veto that I'm waiting for. DADT repeal, same thing, and that one I'm watching like a hawk -- if they drop it, they're dead, in my book. The only Democrat on the national stage who has come out for same-sex marriage is Russ Feingold -- every Democratic candidate for president has deflected questions on that issue.

When they start showing the savvy and the guts to take the debate back, then maybe I'll consider them a serious political party.