Compromise And Complicated Conversations
On Grifters And Liars
"Should Democrats have gone for civil partnerships instead of equal marriage?"
I've probably thought about this question more than I should have, because I'm a gay man who should be happy - hell, elated - to see progress on a question of rights for people like me. And, I am. The day Obergefell was decided I cried tears of joy. And yet, in the 5 years since, I've always wondered if that decision - and the series of decisions Democrats took on marriage - ended up allowing the Trump Presidency.
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The 2016 election was so narrowly decided that in some ways, everything was to blame for the loss. Name anything, and it probably would have moved the needle enough to lose the three midwestern states that Trump won by less than 1%. And, so, at many times I thought that had Democrats gone for civil partnerships, and not marriage - all the legal status, just not the name - then maybe they'd have won. Maybe we would have Hillary, and not a fascist, in office for the last four years. Maybe a lot of other things would be better.
I think about this often, in the context of conversations about whether or not Democrats can win back rural white Americans, which I don't think they can, given their choice to be a pro-gay marriage party. I think about the idea that elections create choices, but that those choices are often false choices. Sure, Joe Biden could try a pivot for the hearts of social conservatives, but it won't work without ditching their support for equal marriage, which they won't do. Democrats, by the nature of decisions previously taken, cannot wind back the clock, which makes the event that shaped politics not just in America but across the western world - the left broadly moving in support of gay marriage - even more momentous.
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It's obviously nonsense to think that Democrats should accept a form of separate but equal policy on issues related to homosexuality, given the way that separate but equal was a disaster in its original state, but there is still a part of me that wonders if the party would be in a better shape electorally if they had settled on that halfway house, as opposed to the way events had turned out. It's a counterfactual with no answer, obviously, but it still eats at me.
But, in thinking of that, it's clear to me that this sort of thinking has been common for Black Democrats for decades, as they sought to win power both nationally and internally within the Democratic Party. These conversations - about how far to go, how fast to demand action, and how to weigh the needs of a community against the electoral viability of the broader party - have been happening for decades, every time a Democrat gets control of power. And every time, it's a fight.
Many on the American Left are, of course, unwilling to fight that same fight. In recent weeks, we've seen Chuck Schumer broadly agree to the policy demands of the Sanders/Warren wing of the party, and Bernie and Warren are going to be prominent leaders in the party for as long as we have the Senate. And yet, the chorus of grifters and frauds grows louder every day, led by people who either do know better or should know better.
Progress is hard fucking work, and the battle to make progress lasting - as opposed to something that is just immediately overturned when elections are inevitably lost - is a war that takes years. The left is full of serious thinkers and smart people, and fortunately many of them have avoided the cabal of uselessness that so many are choosing to exploit. Democrats are, actually, a fundamentally helpful political party that wants to do good, and you want to know how I know?
I've spent a decade wondering if they'd be better off electorally if they weren't so fucking committed to that.