Good point.
Here's the email John excerpted. I apologize for its length, but a lot is at stake here:
<<When I was in Portland a couple of weeks ago to address the Maine Democratic Party, I didn’t know how directly and forcefully to speak about No On One. One of our key allies there had asked me not to stress the “national significance” aspect of the vote, saying that Mainers don’t like to be told by outsiders what to do.
So during cocktails, speaking with a potato broker and his wife from outside Bangor, and others – even as I wore my No On One button – I was trying to figure out just where the audience’s head would be on marriage, and how much, as the keynoter for the Party dinner, I should make it specifically an LGBT speech and how much it should be about health care and the economy and OFA and all the rest.
Well, the dinner began and Governor Baldacci, Representatives Pingree and Michaud, and the chair of the Maine Democratic Party – all of them straight – spoke before me . . . and they spoke almost exclusively about the importance of No On One, to what appeared to be not just “widespread” but in fact unanimous and rousing applause.
This made me very proud to be a Democrat . . . very proud of the work Equality Maine and so many others had been doing . . . and optimistic about our chances. (And freed me of any fear of overemphasizing the issue.)
Needless to say, like you, I was very disappointed last night.
So now let’s talk about the DNC.
1. An email went out asking activists to make calls to New Jersey. It was insensitive not to omit Mainers from that email. I apologize that no one thought to do that. I can’t imagine it could have cost No On One even a dozen votes, but I still wish someone would have thought of this in time to catch it. Mistake noted.
2. A different email went out to Mainers urging them to vote. As the only thing of substance anyone was voting on in Maine was Question One, and as Democratic activists vote our way, this was a small but positive effort to be helpful.
I would have liked to see that email discuss No One One directly, in case there may have been an email-enabled Organizing for America activist someplace in Maine who did NOT know where Maine Democrats stood on this issue. (Out of the country without Internet access until the night before the election?) But I’m told there was concern that advocating specifically for a ballot initiative, whether LGBT or otherwise, would set a precedent for every other ballot initiative. Bureaucracies are nervous about setting precedents.
Which brings me to the precedent of the $25,000 out of $84 million (if that $84 million figure is accurate) that the DNC gave to fight Prop 8. I thought it was a mistake.
My view is that it’s unwise to use precious federal dollars, limited by law, to fund non-federal efforts. (The logic: a billionaire can legally wire $25 million into fighting Prop 8 or Question 1 overnight. That same billionaire can give the DNC only $30,400. Federal money is like the blank in Scrabble or the Queen in chess. You should use it, or sacrifice it, only when there’s no alternative.) Many of you disagree, and believe it would have been smarter to divert to the California Prop 8 fight millions of federal dollars being used = to turn out votes to win the White House, increase our majorities in Congress and in state legislatures. You may be right; but please know those of us who disagree with you do not do so out of disregard for equality.
So what DO you get for your money?
Well, you get a President and First Lady who promised to include us in their vision of America – and have.
You get a President who tells the NAACP and virtually every African-American minister in the country watching that speech – a key audience we need to move – that “the pain of discrimination is still felt in America.” And who, in making that statement, full-throatedly includes “our gay brothers and sisters, still taunted, still attacked, still denied their rights.”
You get Democrats up and down the ticket (in Maine and elsewhere) who are close to unanimous in their support of almost all our issues – instead of Republicans who are almost unanimously opposed. (Wouldn’t it have been nice if Olympia Snow and Susan Collins had joined Baldacci, Pingree, and Michaud in opposing Question One?)
You get an Administration with scores of proudly gay employees in meaningful posts . . . an Administration that actively looks for ways to advance equality, as with the recent HUD and HHS administrative actions posted here (defining “family” to include us in housing regs and providing funds to assist in elder care issues).
You get a President who promised to sign gender-identity-inclusive hate crimes legislation, the first federal LGBT legislation in the nation’s history – and has.
You get a President who has promised to lift the HIV travel ban, sign ENDA, repeal DA/DT and repeal DOMA – and will.
Yes, it’s taking longer than any of us – including the President – would like. But the commitment is there, and real.
Meanwhile, it’s no secret that in Congress, not all Democrats are perfect on our issues.
Indeed, in New York-23 we almost had that infinitesimally rare situation where the Republican was actually BETTER on our issues than the Democrat (Scozzafava favored marriage, Owens favored civil unions; she wanted to repeal DA/DT, he wanted to hear what the military said first).
But look what happened. The Republican Party would not STAND for this, and so threw its support against their own party’s candidate.
(What’s more, even before Scozzafava dropped out, Owens had already learned enough about the DA/DT issue to have publicly changed his position. He saw that President Obama’s Secretary of the Army favors lifting the ban, and that was all the reassurance he needed. I fully expect that, now that he’s won, we have picked up another House vote to repeal DA/DT. My hope is that, given a little time for him to get to know us, he will be with us on DOMA as well. This will be a priority for me.)
But I think those who attacked the DNC for helping Owens miss something. The decision to help him had nothing to DO with his LGBT positions (which as soon as we found out about them we began to try respectfully to enlighten). Instead, it was about trying to elect a Democrat to vote with the Democratic leadership on most things -- and also, not insignificantly, to try to have a good showing in this heavily scrutinized off-year election. The better last night’s showing had been, the more leverage it would have given the President.
The DNC tries, in all things, to strengthen the President’s hand. Strengthening the President’s hand helps him succeed at the things, LGBT and otherwise, most of us want to see him succeed at.
That’s really what an awful lot of this comes down to: do we want to strengthen the President’s hand? Or not?
I would argue that, as imperfect as his Presidency will inevitably be – on the economy, on health care, on the environment, on equal rights, on foreign affairs, on election reform – on anything and everything we care about – it will be CLOSER to perfect if we help strengthen his hand, FURTHER far from perfect if we choose not to help . . . and more imperfect still if we actively encourage OTHERS not to help.
Those who advocate weakening his hand by encouraging people to boycott the DNC (or who worked to boycott the DNC because they didn’t believe Howard Dean was with us) totally mean well. I absolutely get that. I just don’t see it as a way to move the country forward, either on our primary issue or on the other issues most of us care about.
People on this list have asked how one can reconcile simultaneous protest (as in joining the SLDN picket of the June dinner) and support (as in chipping into that dinner to help fund Organizing for America and the critical voter file function the DNC serves and its opposition research and the rest). Easy! We SHOULD be respectfully pushing and signing petitions and marching and lobbying and all that. But in my view, we should also be doing everything we can to strengthen the President’s hand. And to elect Democrats, who are overwhelmingly better on our issues – even when they are not great – then their Republicans opponents would have been.
I think WE make a mistake if we let something like the Maine emails enrage us or demoralize us or take our eyes off the ball.
Sorry for such a long email, and thanks for all the amazing support many of you HAVE given the President and the DNC.
I’m really sad about Maine. The dinner left me so optimistic – I didn’t expect to lose this one.
Andy >>
