A Line Crossed

I don't write this with any joy.

I thought about it in the last week, and I have come to the conclusion that the Clinton campaign crossed an impermissible line in the weeks leading up to the South Carolina primary and the days immediately following.

I've decided that I will not vote for Hillary Clinton in November, and I will not vote Republican. If Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee, I will not vote for President.

I've not done this before. I have voted in every Presidential election since I was able to vote, with more or (usually) less enthusiasm.

I am no stranger to bare knuckle politics, or the politics of race. I fought political battles in Chicago that were no holds barred, and fought as hard as I could. I fought through the Harold Washington years, and I am no stranger to racial politics.

I'm experienced enough in political hardball to laugh at the memory of Ervin France's campaign workers voting Ralph Metcalfe's own mother against him by absentee ballot from her nursing home. Whatever you may think of Mother's Day, that is hardball raised to an art form.

But I have had enough. I will not cross the line that the Clinton campaign crossed, nor tolerate it.

I will not vote for a campaign that turned its back on fifty years of Democratic support for civil rights, and sneers at the price paid by the Democratic Party for standing firm on civil rights, losing the South for fifty years, as Lyndon Johnson predicted would come to pass.

A Democrat in the White House is not worth the price the Democratic Party will have to pay to elect Hillary Clinton. And a Democrat in the White House is not worth the price I will have to pay -- tolerating what I believe is intolerable -- to cast a vote for Hillary Clinton.

Hillary Clinton has been tested, and she is not worthy.

1968 Redux

Mayor Richard Daley, 1968 Democratic Convention

It looks like 2008 is going to be 1968 redux in my case.

I first became active in national politics in 1968, part of the "Children's Crusade" to end the war in a number of primaries.

I believed in Bobby Kennedy, believed that he had the capacity to be a great President, a much better President than his brother.

When all was said and done, after Hubert Humphrey sold out and the "Politics of Joy" brought us to the disaster of Chicago, after the Democratic party's establishment was done with us all, I ended up voting for Hubert Humphrey.

Hubert Humphrey, however principled he might have been during most of his political career, turned out to be unprincipled. When confronted with the conflict between a thirst for the presidency and the politics of principle on the Vietman War, Humphrey chose to sate his thirst.

I voted in November 1968 with about as much enthusiasm as I looked forward to a visit to the dentist. It took, quite literally, an act of will for me to vote for Humphrey. But Humphrey, as bad as he was, was better, in my eyes, than Richard Nixon, who I considered dangerous.

It looks like I'm going to face a rerun in 2008.

I believe in Barack Obama, based on years of experience with him. I believe that he has the capacity to be a great President, a much better President than any Democrat I've seen on the national stage since Bobby Kennedy.

And it looks like, when all is said and done this year, I'm going to end up voting for Hillary Clinton in November.

As was the case with Hubert Humphrey, Hillary Clinton has turned out to be unprincipled. When confronted with the conflict between a thirst for the presidency and the politics of principle on race, Clinton has chosen to sate her thirst.

And as was the case with Hubert Humphrey, I'll be voting for Hillary Clinton with about as much enthusiasm as I look forward to a visit to the dentist. My vote this year will be an act of will, not an act of willingness.

The only reason that I'll be voting for Clinton is that of the certainties in life, the certainty that the Republicans are going to put up an even worse candidate this year is as immutable as death and taxes.

The difference between 1968 and 2008 is that dentistry has gotten a lot better in forty years. The ugly, divisive politics of race has not.

I've been watching the Clinton campaign's careful marginalization of Barack Obama as "the black candidate" with fascination and disgust.

I've been watching with fascination because the Clinton campaign has been playing the race card with rare skill, slowly but surely painting Barack Obama into "the black candidate" corner to destroy his chances of national electability, and doing so with typical Clintonian "now you see me, now you don't" skill.

I've been watching with disgust because the Clinton campaign has been playing the race card as raw and ugly as the late Mayor Richard Daley used to play it in Chicago. The Clinton campaign has been engaging in "plantation politics", using race as a wedge to gain political advantage, betting that, in the end, African-Americans will have nowhere else to go in November and will come around.

The Clinton effort to marginalize Obama started in earnest on January 7, after the Iowa primaries. Hillary Clinton, seeing Obama's rise in the polls and popularity among white voters despite the racial divisions that continue to plague our country, opined: "Dr. King's dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. ... It took a president to get it done."

Clinton's statement did not, as the talking heads have been suggesting, denigrate Martin Luther King. Denied the vote, African-Americans needed sympathetic white politicians to break through the barrier of disenfranchisement. Dr. King's campaign to force Lyndon Johnson and other white politicians to enfranchise African-Americans was brilliant, and successful.

Lyndon Johnson's heart might have been in the right place -- he had a long history of doing what he could, given the political realities of the Senate in the days when he held sway in that body, to ease the burdens of segregation. But in the end, he moved to enfranchise African-Americans only when it became politically impossible for him not to do so, and Dr. King's leadership of "the movement" created that reality for Lyndon Johnson.

So her remarks did not denigrate Martin Luther King. Nor, I believe, were her remarks intended to say anything about Dr. King or President Johnson.

The fury over Clinton's remarks, although I have seen little commentary along these lines, is about the present.

The Johnson/King analogy was about the present, and was more damning than anything Hillary Clinton could have said about the past.

What Clinton was implying -- an implication not missed by whites in the rural community in which I live, because a half dozen folks have raised it with me in the last two weeks -- was this: "I'm like Lyndon Johnson; Barack Obama is like Martin Luther King. I may not dream, but I am a powerful white politician who can get things done. Barack Obama may dream, but he is black and is not a powerful politician. Like it or not, white politicians hold the levers of power, and can get things done, while black politicians do not hold the levers of power, and can talk but not do. If you want change, you need me."

Notwithstanding the denials coming out of the Clinton campaign, I believe that was the intended subtext of Clinton's statement, the subtext underlying the fury. We may be reluctant to speak in such raw terms, but I think we should.

The Clinton campaign, as noted, denies this interpretation, and accuses those of us who speak of it as "fanning the race flames". Instead, the Clinton campaign would have us believe that Hillary Clinton misspoke, not meaning what she implied, not suggesting anything of the sort.

Maybe that's true. But I don't believe it.

I might believe the denials but for one thing: In the week following the uproar, Clinton and her surrogates, from her husband to Robert Johnson to a variety of campaign spokesmen, have played a dangerous game of demeaning and dismissing Barack Obama as the "black candidate", and suggesting that African-Americans are nothing more than pawns in the political arena. As recently as the other day, Senator Clinton herself made patronizing remarks to the effect that she will understand it if African-Americans in South Carolina decide to vote for Barack Obama because he is black. What until tomorrow's primary and the follow up "spin", which I am certain will include remarks from the Clinton campaign dismissing the results in South Carolina as a "racial identity" vote.

What is so dangerous about the Clinton campaign's game is that it resurrects the white empowerment, black disempowerment model of politics that existed forty years ago.

Forty years ago, in the 1960's, African-American dependence on white politicians was necessary because discrimination denied African Americans political options and political power. A man like Barack Obama couldn't even vote in many states, let along be a serious candidate for President of the United States, appealing to white voters in large numbers.

Today, that model -- white politicians "getting things done" for African-Americans in exchange for political loyalty -- is an anachronism.

The candidacy of Barack Obama has amply demonstrated how much an anachronism it is.

Slogging through the months and months of campaigning necessary to be a viable candidate for the presidency, Barack Obama caught hold among a significant number of voters, white and black. He caught hold because of the quality of his ideas and the quality of his mind and character.

Barack Obama's candidacy does not demonstrate that racism is dead in our country -- it is alive and well, as any number of conversations I've had in the last year demonstrate. Instead, Barack Obama is a candidate who has able to move forward despite his race, because of the quality of his ideas and the quality of his mind and character, and his appeal to a broad spectrum of Americans.

Think about that. Until the Clinton campaign, alarmed that his candidacy was being taken seriously by whites in the way that previous campaigns by Jesse Jackson were not, began its own campaign to paint Obama as "the black candidate", Barack Obama had been seen as "a candidate who was black" rather than "the black candidate".

The Clintons are doing none of us a favor by changing that ...

Hillary Clinton, as far as I am concerned, is digging a hole for herself. She has high negatives -- about 45% of the voters in this country will not vote for her under any circumstances -- and she is likely, for that reason, to be in a tight race this November, despite disgust over the Bush administration. Clinton cannot afford to turn off any more voters. And from what I am hearing, the Clinton campaign of the last few weeks has turned off many voters.

Most, I suspect, are voters who are turned off but might vote for her anyway, simply because the alternative is much worse, but a significant number of voters may well elect to sit it out. If even 5% of Democrat and independent voters stay home on November 4, Clinton is finished.

Be that as it may, nothing, I think, so clearly demonstrates that Hillary Clinton is caught in the "old politics" as the campaign of the last few weeks. I do not believe for a minute that Hillary Clinton believes in white supremacy, but it does seem that she believes in the "old politics" of white entitlement.

And that, in this day and age, should not stand. In this day and age, that kind of thinking may well cost Hillary Clinton the presidency. And it should.

Ready on Day One

The politics of race and gender are delicate, as we've been finding out in the last couple of weeks. I wish that there were a way for me to ask Hillary Clinton a question without triggering the "men piling on" issue.

Democrats are lucky this year. The party has three strong candidates, each of whom is similar in outlook and approach, the differences between then shadings along the moderate to liberal scale.

Each is a lawyer, each is a Senator or former Senator, and none have executive or senior management experience, either in government or private industry.

And yet Hillary Clinton runs as the "experienced" candidate, the "President who will be ready on day one ...", the President best suited to act as "chief operating officer", in, I guess, contrast to the other two candidates.

But what is it about her resume that gives any credence to this claim?

I'd like to have an explanation, frankly.

Huckster or Huckabee?

Mike Huckabee created a stir over the weekend by opining: "I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution. But I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God. And that's what we need to do, is to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards so it lines up with some contemporary view of how we treat each other, and how we treat their families."

Huckabee went on, in an interview with Beliefnet.com a few days later, to explain his remarks: "Well, I probably said it awkwardly, but the point I was trying to make– and I've said it better in the past – is that people sometimes say we shouldn't have a human life amendment or a marriage amendment because the Constitution is far too sacred to change, and my point is, the Constitution was created as a document that could be changed. That's the genius of it. The Bible, however, was not created to be amended and altered with each passing culture. If we have a definition of marriage, that we don't change that definition, that we affirm that definition."

This, from many perspectives, an interesting take on both the Constitution and on scripture.

It is interesting because it shows Huckabee's flawed understanding of scripture. Scripture, supposedly not subject to amendment, demonstrates an evolution in an understanding of marriage -- from polygamy to monogamy, from free divorce to no divorce. Changes in understanding -- development or amendment if you will -- is a key element in scripture. Huckabee, like most evangelical Christians -- bent, as they are by "proof texting" -- is totally tone deaf to scripture as a story of a developing understanding of God.

It is more interesting, however, because it demonstrates what those of us who follow the Religious Right have long understood -- the Religious Right is working toward a theonomy in our country, changing our Constitution and our laws to conform to their understanding of God's word.

I've noted, in other recent posts, that Huckabee is the only Republican candidate who is honest about marriage. Romney, McCain and Giuliani's stance on marriage appears, to the more or less objective eye, to be more a matter of pandering than belief, and none of them has so much as touched the "for life" issue when it comes to marriage. Huckabee, on the other hand, forthrightly speaks of marriage as "one man, one woman, for life".

You would never catch the so-called "leaders" of the "protect marriage" movement standing "for life" in marriage. None of them -- James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Tony Perkins and Wisconsin, uh, Alabama's own Julaine Appling -- would touch the Christian prohibition on remarriage with a ten foot pole. Most of them won't even talk about straight marriage at all, beyond pabulum and platitude. They know better. If they told their "followers", who have the highest divorce and remarriage rate in the country, that the realproblem with marriage is that straight folk -- particularly religious straight folk -- treat marriage like underwear, something to change frequently, their funding and political power would evaporate.

Compared to the other Republican candidates and the "leaders" of the Religious Right, when it comes to "family values" and "protecting marriage", Huckabee is a shining light amongst hucksters.

But Huckabee's rock-solid religious take on marriage leads to an interesting question -- would we be better off with a pandering charlatan like Romney or a true believer like Huckabee?

C.S. Lewis had an interesting perspective on this question. A devout Christian, Lewis preferred the hypocrite to the theocrat:

"I am a democrat because I believe that no man or group of men is good enough to be trusted with uncontrolled power over others. And the higher the pretensions of such power, the more dangerous I think it both to rulers and to the subjects. Hence Theocracy is the worst of all governments. If we must have a tyrant a robber baron is far better than an inquisitor. The baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity at some point may be sated; and since he dimly knows he is doing wrong he may possibly repent. But the inquisitor who mistakes his own cruelty and lust of power and fear for the voice of Heaven will torment us infinitely more because he torments us with the approval of his own conscience and his better impulses appear to him as temptations.

And since Theocracy is the worst, the nearer any government approaches to Theocracy the worse it will be. A metaphysic held by the rulers with the force of a religion, is a bad sign. It forbids them, like the inquisitor, to admit any grain of truth or good in their opponents, it abrogates the ordinary rules of morality, and it gives a seemingly high, super-personal sanction to all the very ordinary human passions by which, like other men, the rulers will frequently be actuated. In a word, it forbids wholesome doubt. A political programme can never in reality be more than probably right. We never know all the facts about the present and we can only guess the future. To attach to a party programme -- whose highest claim is to reasonable prudence -- the sort of assent which we should reserve for demonstrable theorems, is a kind of intoxication."

Inversion

The Republican National Committee's logo is an elephant with inverted stars. I don't know if the inversion is intended, but it is symbolic.

I watched a fascinating discussion yesterday on Chris Matthews' "Hardball". The discussion highlights the mess in which the Republican Party finds itself, and it is worth taking a few minutes to watch.

The dominion of social conservatives in the last decade of Republican politics has alienated fiscal conservatives within the party. Things have gotten to the point where social conservative issues -- abortion, same-sex marriage, school prayer and stem cell research -- have almost entirely preempted Republican focus on free markets and fiscal responsibility. The Republican Party has become the party of big government and big deficits, and constitutional irresponsibility.

I am not along in believing that the Republican Party has abandoned itself in recent years. Alan Greenspan, in a new book, "The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World", faults the modern Republican Party for out-of-control spending, noting the difference between the party now and the traditional party: "I was brought up in the Republican Party of Goldwater. He was for fiscal restraint and for deregulation, for open markets, for trade. Social issues were not a critical factor."

The "Goldwater Republicans" Greenspan speaks about are Republicans who believe in small government, fiscal responsibility and constitutional conservatism -- keeping government out of the lives of Americans to the extent reasonable.

In contrast, the modern Republican Party is driven primarily by a thirst for power, a thirst that has been sated, beginning with the "Southern Strategy" devised by President Nixon and accelerated by President Reagan, by catering to the cultural biases of Southern "Dixiecrats" and the Religious Right.

As a result, the Republican Party, under President Bush, has become the worst of all possible worlds in the eyes of traditional "Goldwater" Republicans -- big and big-spending, reckless government, and intrusive, dismissing the Constitution as "a piece of paper", as President Bush famously remarked.

As the Matthews' segment illustrates, this is not a sustainable strategy. The Republican Party could get away with it only as long as both camps kept their eyes wide shut.

The 2008 Republican primaries have exposed the divisions in the Republican party. It might be possible for the party to paper over the division one more time, with John McCain or Mitt Romney, but it won't, in the long run, last.

Change

"Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. ... It took a president to get it done." -- Hillary Clinton, New Hampshire

Without taking anything away from the moral and political courage of Lyndon Johnson, who bucked the "Dixiecrats" in his own party in 1964 and 1965, knowing, as he stated at the time, that Democratic support for the Voting Rights Act and Civil Rights Act would deliver the South to the Republican Party for a "fifty years", I think that the statement is wrong.

I am of an age to have been acutely aware of the civil rights movement, which began in earnest in the school segregation cases in the 1950's and culminated in the "movement" politics of the 1960's. The Civil Rights movement was created, whole cloth, from the bottom up, and the presidents of the time had to be kicked to get them jump started on the issue.

It wasn't that President Eisenhower, President Kennedy and President Johnson favored segregation so much as it was that all were, as politicians almost inevitably are, practitioners of the possible rather than of the right. Until the situation became untenable, none of them acted decisively. When the situation became untenable, President Johnson acted with rare political skill, tying the Civil Rights movement to the martyrdom of John Kennedy, turning the moral tables on those who favored "all deliberate speed".

I think that there is a lesson in all of this for those of us who are gay and lesbian, a lesson that is as clear as a goat's ass from the political misadventures of 2007, when both ENDA and the Matthew Shepard Act sank into the political quicksand.

We cannot depend on Democratic leaders to foster change, no matter how much Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama or John Edwards talk about change. We need to make the change ourselves, kicking and pounding at our society until the situation becomes untenable. When it does, then they will act.

And take the credit, no doubt.

It is entirely fitting ...

It is entirely fitting that Governor Lee Dreyfus of Wisconsin died today, the day on which the nation awaits the outcome of the Iowa caucuses, in which Mike Huckabee, who is outfront about his belief that homosexuality is "aberrant and unnatural", and Mitt Romney, who turned on his earlier moderate beliefs after he "found religion" and became a crusader against equality for gays and lesbians, are contending for the Republican Presidential nomination.

Neither would recognize Governor Dreyfus as a Republican. Like Barry Goldwater, Governor Dreyfus was a throwback, a Republican "business governor" who did not share the dark and intolerant views of modern Republicans.

Governor Dreyfus signed the nation's first statewide anti-discrimination law in 1982. The law, which remains in effect despite Republican attempts to overturn it in recent years, made it illegal to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation in housing, employment and public accommodations.

Governor Dreyfus also was a vocal opponent of Wisconsin's constitutional ban on gay marriage and civil unions, which was approved by voters in 2006.

I'd like to remember Governor Dreyfus in his own words, in an opinion article written in July 2006:

With all the controversy swirling about the proposed constitutional ban on civil unions and marriage, let me write my thoughts on the matter. I am opposed to amending our state’s constitution in this way. Why? First, let me define the terms involved as I see them. Marriage, in my opinion, is not a covenant to be dealt with by the state. Marriage is a sacrament of the church. That sacrament should be defined by theology and by the churches alone!

For example, I personally do not approve of same-sex marriage unless a church says it is acceptable. The state, in my opinion, has no say in this matter whatsoever; and I certainly would not approve the use of the constitution to limit the freedom of churches to practice their religion, as they see it. Make no mistake; that's what this amendment would do.

Federally, such an amendment would never pass muster with the Supreme Court. The very First Amendment of the Bill of Rights clearly states, "Congress shall make NO law respecting an establishment of religion, OR prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Such an amendment nationally would do that very clearly. We wouldn’t put up with that as Americans, so why would we as Badgers in this state?

I would warn church leaders to be very resistant to inviting the government into your tents. If you let the camel's nose in, the hump will surely follow.

Now let me move on to the term "civil union." Actually, all of us who are married before an altar of God signed on to a civil union as well. Do you remember that after the wedding you both probably went into the cleric’s office and signed some papers? That was the civil contract aspect of marriage, and the state has granted the power to execute such a contract to both clerics and judges. You may call that your marriage license, but it is actually a union recognized under civil law.

Why do we do this? Because it is in the best interests of society and of the common welfare to do so. It is beneficial to give tax advantages, property rights and tax deductions for children so that men and women are encouraged to live together, be responsible for each other and produce the next generation of citizens. That civil contract is quite binding and requires an involved legal procedure to undo it.

Now what about those couples who do not wish to or cannot physically produce children? The state covers them in a civil contract as well. The church also gives them the sacrament of marriage if they are a male and female.

The question remains: What if the couple are the same sex who obviously can't produce children but will do everything else, such as share a domicile, care for each other and share property and wealth? They deserve the same civic benefits as the usual male-female couples, and for exactly the same reasons.

When I was president of the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, I had quite a few female couples who lived together, committed to each other, shared everything including property ownership and they were NOT gay, as far as I knew. As it stands today, one of them could not even receive hospital information about the other in the event of a usual physical crisis that occurs in the last period of life. That's not right!

If you can separate civil union from the concept of marriage and keep the former as a function of government and the latter as a function of churches, then you will understand my position. I know that neither the gay organizations nor the conservative right is happy with my position because it threads right down the middle. With both groups unhappy, I'm probably where I should be. That's why I hope people would not support amending our state's constitution with this ban.

Governor Dreyfus was a good man, a decent man, an honest and honorable man. He wouldn't be tolerated for a New York minute in the modern Republican party. And that's why it is fitting that he died today. The Republican party that he and Barry Goldwater and other men of good will worked so hard to nurture died long ago.