>On Behalf Of Doug Henwood
> Clinton's the goddam Commander in Chief. He could have imposed a new
> standard but he didn't, because the only people he feels the need to
> compromise with are those to his right.
First, he could have imposed a new standard and it would have been overruled by legislation passed by Congress, which has the power to overrule any decision by the Commander in Chief through its power of the purse. And that is exactly what would have happened-- the legislation was in committee and the votes lined up. That's just reality.
As for compromise, you can only compromise towards a majority of votes. Again, you bang the table with rhetoric but it's empty of any political reality. The Left cannot demand concessions when we don't have a majority- we have to build a majority of votes that agree with us. Then you can demand compromise. On trade, that has been happening. In 1994, NAFTA was passed, but a few years later, fast-track authority was defeated. This is an unstable result because it depends on the labor-enviro-left teaming up with the racist xenophobic Right, but that just shows the problems of compromise-- one way or another, you have to have the votes.
On gays in the military and gay marriage, we don't have the votes, either in legislatures or at the ballot box (as Hawaii showed and California will likely show in the next two weeks). So in the meantime, you educate and agitate to increase the votes, while winning in the areas where you do have majorities-- on ending civilian discrimination against gays and a range of other pro-gay appointments and initiatives.
> >And like your disdain for the intelligence of labor leaders,
> black leaders,
> >and environmental leaders who have endorsed Gore (or Bradley in a few
> >cases), you have to assume that the gay rights groups that have endorsed
> >Gore are also idiots who cannot balance gains and failures to make a
> >rational endorsement.
>
> Idiots? That's not the word I'd use. Some of them are opportunists -
> they'll cut any sort of deal in exchange for "access." Some of them
> are remarkably self-deluded, but that's a deformation professionelle
> of liberals, no?
Idiots. Opportunists. Whichever. You decide that you have the right to speak on behalf of gay interests more than activists you have spent their lives on the issue and represent often hundreds of thousands of gay activists who contribute to their organization. Its arrogant intellectual chutzpah.
It's fine to sketch an argument for why another strategy would make more sense or be more successful, but this "gayer-than-thou", "more rank-and-file than thou" rehtoric from a straight, middle class married intellectual is just ludicrous.
-- Nathan Newman