Tanden, Democrats, And Living One Mistake Away
Lessons From The Past
One of the things that being gay ingrained on me was the notion that I was never any more than one mistake away from disaster. When I was in the closet, I was never more than one lingering stare in a locker room, or one joke that I either didn't get because of my homosexuality, or found funnier than I should have because of it. Now that I'm out, the risk of saying the wrong thing, saying too much too soon, or just generally being something that other people don't want to associate with.
The risk - that you're just one mistake away - manifests itself in a defensiveness. Don't make the joke you want to make, in case it lands wrong. Don't get too drunk, you might make too much of an ass out of yourself, or be too loose lipped. "Sure, he says he's fine with me being gay, but what if he merely tolerates my sexuality?" is something I've thought about way too much in my life.
It's hell, because even if you trust someone not to be that way, the consequences of being wrong are so high that you often hide part of who you are. The stakes of a straight mate making an ass of himself is such that your group chat makes it into a meme. The stakes for gay people can be the creation of a second, everyone but you, group chat.
It's easier for people my age than it was for older generations, and I expect for those a decade younger than me it's even easier still. But it's a hard place to live. It causes crises of confidence, enforces safety over authenticity and slowly steals all the interest and value out of you.
Somehow, much of both the Democratic establishment and their centrist supporters have also internalized that they are living one mistake away from failure.
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Do we all remember the weekend that Jon Ossoff went to the (Black-owned) vegan burger place in Atlanta and had Bernie Sanders endorse him? More importantly, do we all remember all the idiotic takes about how that weekend cost Jon Ossoff the election, because that wouldn't play in the South?
Now, I never bought the fundamental premise of those arguments - that either event was actually a mistake - but the idea that showing up at a fucking vegan restaurant was going to move tens of thousands of Georgians one way or another was laughable from the start. And yet supposed Serious People who Know The South intoned from on high and said Ossoff had cost himself the race, because of fucking nothingness. I got why then, and I still get why now - I'm the guy who wrote that "Cold and broken are the best ways to describe Democrats, tired of getting their hopes up" before the Georgia runoffs. I get it. But the problem is, it's the timidity that causes the losses.
The Democrats have been overly timid in how they articulate their message and their vision for years now, and the way that it expresses itself is in the kind of consultant led campaigns of drivel that the 2017 Jon Ossoff race is but the best example. Some Democrats were so scared of socialism in Georgia that the Sanders endorsement was seen as a catastrophic failure. Turns out, they won. Either the centre of the party doesn't actually know what's electable, in which case they should shut up, or the things that they perceive as mistakes actually aren't mistakes to the wide expanse of people who aren't terminally online. Hell, I am terminally online and I barely know who Neera Tanden is.
Here's the fundamental truth - Joe Biden is gonna fuck some shit up, guys. I'm sorry to tell you this, but he will. It seems pretty clear to me that nominating a terminally online shitposter to head up OMB was a mistake, because it turns out the people she shitposted get to vote on her nomination. Exactly none of this matters in a broader sense, especially when you consider there cannot be that big of a gap between what Tanden or whoever the replacement OMB Director could accomplish. DC is full of wonks, I'm sure she isn't the absolute best in the city.
If I sound bored by the Tanden dialogue, it's because none of this matters, and yet, there are people claiming the only reason Joe Manchin supported an entirely different nomination is because of Tanden backlash, to which my response is what the fuck are you high on, and where can I get some, because that shit clearly makes you lose your damn mind. Absolutely nothing of any of this - Tanden, impeachment witnesses, complaints about the speed of checks - represents any form of political problem for the Democratic Party. And yet so many are trying to act like it is the end of days.
I came to internalize this dangerous poison, the idea that I'm one mistake away from failure, because of five years in the closet and watching the bigotry of anti-gay marriage politicians across the globe, and it has taken 8 years out of the closet, and countless therapy sessions, to even begin to get to a place where I realize it as the paranoia it really is. I get that Democrats have had bad recent luck in the Senate, but this isn't the same. The Democratic Party is not consistently one mistake away from losing power, and everyone who peddles the myths and lies that small issues with no consequence will hurt them greatly is just mendacious scum.