Letters to the Editor
BryanS
Published Letters: 365 Editor's Choice: 1
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You will be missed
[Read the article: Passing back the baton]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Thanks for a good couple of weeks of frequent updates and quality articles, Steve. I definitely appreciated your approach to the War Room, and I'm sorry to see you go.
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Way to make "perfect" the enemy of "good"
[Read the article: Is Obama really standing up for gay rights?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Let me get this straight (pun not intended):
Among all presidential candidates with a realistic shot of winning the White House (sorry, Mike Gravel), Obama has made more of an effort to acknowledge and engage the gay community in a realistic debate about the best way to secure equal rights in the current political climate. But he's still not as good on the issue as he could be, because:
1) He's not willing to lie to the community and say that, by presidential edict, he'll be able to make gay marriage legal and everyone will be cool with that.
2) He thinks its a better idea to back initiatives that push for equal rights but don't get social conservatives up in arms, instead of initiatives that would never have a chance of succeeding, because they'd bring all of the fundamentalist crazies out of the woodwork.
3) A guy who had a passing affiliation with his campaign holds moronic views about gay people.
Great to have you back, Alex. This is the kind of crap I didn't miss at all while you were gone.
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@ sajwan
[Read the article: Is Obama really standing up for gay rights?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Any person or politician that supports equal rights but not gay marriage is yanking your chain, including serpent tongued Obama.
Well, as an "Obama cultist," I'm going to try for once to not take the bait and get sucked into a flame war.
That being said, I don't see any contradiction between being for gay marriage, but being realistic enough to realize that it's not politically viable in this day and age. Any equal/human rights campaign is a series of compromises that slowly moves the ball down the field toward the goal. It took a hundred years after the Emancipation Proclamation to ban workplace discrimination on the basis of race, creed, or color.
So when Obama says that he wants to start by pushing for civil unions, because that would give same-sex partners most of the legal rights of marriage, while avoiding the use of the "M-word" itself to prevent fundamentalist douchebags from launching an all-out assault, I think that's in keeping with pretty much every other successful rights campaign.
But when Hillary cozies up to the GLBT crowd but won't publicly say that homosexuality is not immoral, or when she runs on her husband's record, which includes don't-ask-don't-tell and the Defense of Marriage Act, that's a different matter altogether.
As for allegations of bias and howling reactions from the pro-Obama crowd to this article, that seems to stem less from the fact that it doesn't deify Obama as the One True Voice of Reason, but more from the fact that it contains inaccurate information about Obama, doesn't give Hillary's history nearly as thorough of a going-over, and is just generally shoddy journalism (I mean really, citing yourself as a source in your own article?!).
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What's wrong with this strategy?
[Read the article: Top Dems consider intervening in race]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]We've got two incredibly popular candidates, each of whom draws support from just about half of Democratic lawmakers and voters. Neither one will win without superdelegate support, and there's a real concern that any overt attempt to influence the race before it's run will make it look like party insiders rigged the primary (at least to the losing side). Many of the superdelegates themselves are torn between the candidates, and some are probably hoping for some sort of bolt from the blue to make their decision easier, like a huge stumble or scandal that disqualifies someone, or a game-changing victory that proves that one of the candidates is clearly the superior choice. It's an incredibly sensitive political issue, and it needs to be resolved in a way that doesn't rip the party in half.
So what's wrong with exerting some gentle pressure now, and ramping it up once the primaries have come to an end? I, for one, would rather that Dean, Pelosi, and Reid keep their distance for the next 5-6 weeks and remain as impartial as possible, rather than have them stir up bitterness in the party by strongarming superdelegates who really, really don't want to decide right now.
You can make the argument that an extended primary risks permanent damage to both of the candidates, but Obama needs the seasoning of a tough primary fight. And as long as McCain can't do any better than poll even with them when they're not even focusing on him, I think we can afford to let things play out for a little while longer.
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@ CTMorling
[Read the article: Top Dems consider intervening in race]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The chances of Hillary Clinton winning are very, very low. If you disagree with me, I (non-rhetorically) invite you to put money on the prospect. Obama will be the candidate in the fall.
I absolutely agree with you, so there's no bet to be made there, unless we can find some sucker who wants to put their cash on Hillary. I've already sent plenty of mine to Barack.
I still don't see it as a bad thing that the Super super-delegates are staying out of the fray until June. All of this hand-wringing about the primary tearing the party apart overlooks just how strong both Obama and Hillary are as candidates against McCain. And if there's even a whiff of superdelegate manipulation of the primary (other than, y'know, the fact that there are superdelegates in the first place), we risk all of this energy and momentum being turned against itself, instead of being channeled into party healing and the ass-kicking of many Republicans.