A good night for Democrats but a bad night for gays
Book Guy
I write it like I mean it, but mostly they just want my money.
Interesting how the votes shook out. Democrats elected or re-elected in large number. But simultaneously, many ballot initiatives which would generally previously have been called "typical left-wing fare" struck down: prop 8 in California (no gay marriage); same in Florida (by huge margin); Arkansas now prevents gay couples from adopting. So, is this a left-wing re-centering? A re-assertion of "family values" and "social conservatism" by the American Black voter? New signs of our increasingly conservative view of social mores? Just a mish-mash that doesn't mean anything?
Actually, my best analysis is this: the election doesn't "mean" much about Obama or his policies. It means people are ready to hate George W. Bush, and blame him (and the unitarian-ists, primarily Rove Cheny) for all our current woes. It was a referendum on not-Bush.
Actually, my best analysis is this: the election doesn't "mean" much about Obama or his policies. It means people are ready to hate George W. Bush, and blame him (and the unitarian-ists, primarily Rove Cheny) for all our current woes. It was a referendum on not-Bush.
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Guess that's why parody and MisterGay are so quiet.
Obama is recentering the party.
The republicans in general have brought this on themselves. Note I said "republicans" as in - the people in the party. Not just one person in particular.
The California vote, however, stunned me. Why? Well, the fact is that gay marriage has been legal there for several months-- and obviously, society has not crumbled because of it. Also, it was trailing in the polls pretty much up to the night of the election, from what I can tell.
From what analysis I've read, it seems (ironically?) that Obama being on the ballot for President may have led to the California anti-gay-marriage measure passing. Black and Latino Californians came to the polls in record numbers to vote for Obama, but those tradtionally Democratic group are often quite conservative socially, in part for religious reasons. (A lot of African Americans come from the southern baptist traditions, while most Latinos are Roman Catholics).
Although I'm saddened by the overturning of gay marriage in CA as a step backwards, I think it *could* be a good thing for the Democratic party to realize that its future success depends on it standing for something other than defending women's right to abortion and being on the pro-tolerance side of the so called culture wars (of which gay marriage is just a facet). Afte rall, that really is what the Democrats have been about for the past 20 years. The Democrats, if they want this to be something more than a one-off fluke, need to offer the AMerican people a broader, populist vision of the American dream being realizable-- a vision of hope, and a forward-looking vision of change for all Americans.... and they need to be sure that vision is something that can include-- no, not just 'include', but can IMPASSION those Americans religious and social views on things like homosexuality and abortion may be quite different from the liberal base of the party.
Was Obama's election just a referendum against Bush? I'm torn. On the one hand it must be; I can't believe we would endorse the last eight years by voting for McCain. But on the other hand, I have to also believe that if the Democratic nominee was white, he or she would have a much easier time of overcoming any prejudice in winning the presidency. Voters knew that repudiating Bush meant they were going to take that last step and elect a black man president.
Book Guy, I could be wrong, but the symbolism of this historic moment in American history (and it is, as much as the Obama haters on the Internet denounce it -- damn bigots) isn't impractical; people around the WORLD were cheering Obama's victory. That has to stand for something momentous, no? My fear, though, is that some people voted for Obama with the enthusiasm we saw Tuesday night, while others who voted for him did so only practically or as a rebuke to Republicans. I fear that we may not be as "united" as many of us right now want to think.
But you raise a great question. Americans are a slippery, inconsistent lot.
In the long run this is probably a good thing. I've often argued that it does the country no good for the Democrats to be pulled so far to the left and to engage in a demonization campaign against people who simply don't agree with their philosophy. Now the Democrats will actually have to take responsibility for running the government, and I think that the decisions they make will be nowhere near the rhetoric we've heard for the last few years. This is probably going to be good for the country in the long run. I do think however we're going to get some very bad short term decisions, and a few very bad long term decisions along with the re-centering of the Democrats.
The idea that a "judge shouldn't legislate from the bench" is like the idea that a "Senator shouldn't make up legislation from the floor." With a few modifications to the specifics, and a few vocabulary changes, that sentence is exactly what they DO. What they're SUPPOSED to do.
As for incompetent legislators I agree, as politicians they feel they can evade responsibility by being vague enough to require litigation to define exactly what the mess they wrote means, thus ceding their power to the courts, in which case why are we paying them?
I actually think they do support it, but their focus groups have shown them that it's a losing issue, even in Cali.
Prop 8 was a burp. An emotional outburst, not a carefully considered piece of legislation.
This of course addresses in no way whether the courts "should" legislate, or "merely interpret," and what the distinctions between the two are. I don't disagree, AN, that there's a MAJOR distinction between tasks appropriate to legilatures as opposed to courts. I just wanted to point out, that most American citizens "don't get it" when they say they don't "want courts to legislate." Sure, their point may be accurate, to some highly technical interpretation of the term "legislate," but that's not the term they're thinking of. What they want, is for courts to just "get out of" any business of interpreting law; this desire is preposterous in any common-law jurisdiction.
So, for example, when a lower court "interprets" that Roe v. Wade denies access to voluntary abortion in (for example) Mississippi, the anti-abortion people say the court isn't "legislating" but rather "interpreting." Then, a year later, when a similar question arises in a more liberal jurisdiction, the same people object to how a court is "legislating" if it decides that Roe v. Wade allows access to medically necessary abortion. They use different terms ("legislating," implying inappropriately; versus "interpreting" appropriately) depending on whether the political upshot favors or opposes them. Yet, as in my example, most of the acts are identical and not mutually exculsive, IF you understand the proper role of the courts.
Deciding about laws from the bench? How can this possibly be a problem?