Tag Archives: obama

New Yorker on Marriage Equality Lawsuit

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The New Yorker has a terrific article by Margaret Talbot on the marriage equality case, Perry v. Schwarzenegger, that began yesterday in San Francisco. It has pretty much everything you need to know about the case from soup to nuts.

I have to admit that while I was very leery of this lawsuit and thought it was a terrible idea, the more I read and think about it the more excited I am. It feels good to be going on the offensive. Ted Olson may be a Dark Lord, but in this case he’s our Dark Lord. By which I mean that he’s a top-notch lawyer, and it’s great that he’s finally using his powers for good. If there’s going to be a marriage equality case before the Supreme Court, we couldn’t have stronger legal representation.

And yes, it’s possible that the case will wind up in the Supreme Court and that we will lose. On our side: Ginsburg, Breyer, hopefully Sotomayor, and hopefully whoever replaces Stevens after he likely retires this summer. On the other side: Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, Alito. In the middle: Anthony Kennedy, who wrote Romer and Lawrence and therefore would seem to be on our side, but you never know, especially since it would be a really big deal for the Court to overturn the laws of 39 states. Some say that if we lose, it will set gay rights back for years. On the other hand, what do we really have to lose? And if not now, when? Roberts, Alito and Thomas are all young, and Scalia could be on the Court for another 10-15 years. The makeup of the Court isn’t going to change in our favor anytime soon.

More importantly, this case is a great teaching moment. From the list of witnesses that Ted Olson and David Boies have put together, it looks like the case will touch on everything from marriage to discrimination to child-rearing to children’s education to so-called “conversion therapy.” Despite the ballot initiatives and the state legislatures that keep going against us, the more we discuss marriage equality, the more the public gets on our side.

On the other hand, if the Supreme Court rules in our favor, it could give fuel to the movement to pass the Federal Marriage Amendment. But you know what? I can’t see 67 U.S. senators voting to enshrine discrimination in the Constitution. And I’m tired of worrying about what our opponents are going to do if we fight for our rights. We’ve been timid for too long. What happens, happens.

Interestingly, there’s another federal marriage equality case going on right now, Gill v. Office of Personnel Management, which seeks not to overturn state laws against marriage equality but rather to overturn part of the Defense of Marriage Act. Gill seeks to force the federal government to recognize same-sex marriages that were validly performed in a state that recognizes them. Normally, if, say, Massachusetts allows a marriage to take place, the federal government doesn’t second-guess Massachusetts and refuse to recognize that marriage. Why should it be any different in the case of same-sex couples? This is what the Gill plaintiffs argue, and in a sense it’s a more palatable case, because it seeks not to overturn state laws but rather to strengthen them. It’s not clear which case will get to the Supreme Court first, Gill or Perry.

In the meantime — still waiting for Obama to stop discharging U.S. soldiers for being gay, and for Congress to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

Damn, I’m tired of waiting.

Leno vs. Conan

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I find this Conan O’Brien vs. NBC thing so riveting, especially now that Conan has released a statement saying he won’t do The Tonight Show if it airs at 12:05. Oh my god! Drama!! What’s gonna happen?

Seriously, I do think it’s riveting. Jeff Zucker has really driven NBC into the ground. When I was a kid, NBC was the network to watch. My parents watched The Today Show with Bryant Gumbel and Jane Pauley every morning while having breakfast or getting ready for work. At night, NBC had all the great sitcoms that kids my age enjoyed: Diff’rent Strokes, The Facts of Life, Silver Spoons, Gimme a Break, even Punky Brewster. On Saturday mornings it had the Smurfs. When I was an adolescent, I would watch Days of our Lives and Santa Barbara. As I got a little older, NBC had Family Ties, and then The Cosby Show, and then Friends and Seinfeld. Even today, it has some great comedies on Thursdays: 30 Rock and The Office. And we watch Brian Williams on NBC Nightly News every night.

I used to feel this weird loyalty to NBC, even though it was just a TV network. I felt like the three networks had personas. Even though I watched some CBS and ABC shows, watching CBS and ABC felt like going over to a friend’s house where everything seemed slightly off. NBC just seemed like the network that had everything I liked.

But Jeff Zucker has ruined NBC: first the horrible but cheap-to-produce reality shows, and then this debacle of Jay Leno at 10 p.m. Moving Leno to 10 p.m. was a risk, and while it’s true that if you don’t take risks, you don’t get anywhere, you also don’t mess with something on TV that works. Zucker messed with something that worked. Jay Leno at 10 p.m. is New Coke.

On the rare occasions when I’ve watched Leno on TV, I’ve found him annoying and boring. But for whatever reason, lots of people like him — as long as he’s on at 11:35 and not at 10. You can make fun of the public for liking him, but really, what’s the point? Many people like things that I don’t, and vice versa.

And I have to admit, I watched Leno’s final Tonight show last May and was entertained. He did a “best of” compilation of those idiots on the street who don’t know the answers to questions, and it was pretty funny.

But these days I’m generally ready to go to sleep by the time I finish watching the first half of The Daily Show. And you know what? Once you get used to watching Jon Stewart every night, it’s really weird to watch the old-fashioned host-striding-out-and-doing-jokes-before-an-audience thing. Even if the host is Conan O’Brien, and even if the jokes are funny.

Oh, and as for David Letterman? He’s not always easy to watch, and I don’t always get or like his humor, but I admire him deeply and I’m in awe of his talents. I guess it has something to do with this terrific profile of him from last September, when he was caught up in his sex scandal. An excerpt:

Craggy, bewildered, irascible Dave, with his gray crew cut, designer suits, and white socks — a nightly mind-blowing image in HDTV — has become a persona, a distinctive agglomeration of character traits, even more than his idol Johnny Carson, much more like Carson’s own idol, Jack Benny. His monologues are indifferent as one-liners and jokes, but the character who delivers them is one memorable American. He can reel off dozens of Obama jokes and McCain jokes and Paris Hilton jokes, but it is when Letterman begins to invert and mutter, when his personal neuroses and raw wounds are inflamed by the assaults of everyday life— and whose aren’t? — that is when he becomes something more than a good comedian and something like the scarred protagonist of his own comic novel — a bewildered, gutty mid-lifer at the crash intersection of American culture.

As for Conan O’Brien — he’ll be okay. He’s rolling in dough no matter what happens. Maybe he’ll go to Fox. Maybe NBC will cave in and put Jay somewhere else (doubtful).

The network has treated him like shit, but that’s showbiz.

Global Competitiveness?

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This op-ed about American decline by the Times’s token conservative, Ross Douthat, bothers me — particularly this part:

[I]nstead of seeking a new post-Reagan consensus, the Obama Democrats are returning to their party’s long-running pursuit of European-style social democracy — by micromanaging industry, pouring money into entitlement and welfare programs, and binding the economy in a web of new taxes and regulations.

These policies may help smooth over the inequalities that have opened in our national life since the 1970s. But they threaten to cost America its position in the world along the way.

Social democracy has its benefits, but global competitiveness isn’t one of them.

Is he seriously arguing that America’s “position in the world,” its “global competitiveness,” is more important than the well-being of our citizens? Pundits are always saying that it’s deathly important that we not let other countries get ahead of us, without explaining why we should care. Is it really so crucial that we be Number One in the world? What’s wrong with just being happy?

Why do these people have to make everything a competition?

I seriously wonder whether I’m missing something, because I just don’t get it.

Health Care

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Health care reform has me dejected, but this bill needs to pass. We can’t “kill the bill.”

I’m annoyed at Obama for not risking political capital to fight for what he believes in. More importantly, I have nothing but contempt for Harry Reid. I blame Reid for this fiasco more than Obama. If not for this ridiculous notion that any bill needs 60 votes to pass the Senate, we would have a much better health care bill today. The idea that Democrats are being allowed to threaten to filibuster their own party’s legislation is absurd. Are you kidding me? The way I see it: you want to filibuster your own party’s legislation? You want to pull that kind of shit? Fine, then you’re getting stripped of all your committee chairmanships and any other special perks you get from being a member of the majority party. I’d rather have 53 Democratic senators led by the ass-kicking Lyndon Johnson than a 60-member majority led by Harry Reid, that milquetoast fuckwad. Any time Reid opens his mouth I want to grab him by the shoulders and shake him awake. He practically whispers in front of the microphone. He barely looks at the camera. He’d lose a fight against a ham sandwich. You could run him over with a tricycle. The guy has less charisma than John Kerry. He has negative charisma.

Fortunately, he’s up for re-election next year and he’ll probably lose. Since it’s unlikely the Democrats will lose their majority next year, we’ll probably have a new Democratic majority leader in the next Congress. But by that point it will be too late to put together a better health care plan.

Which is why, as disappointed I am in the Senate bill as it now stands, I’m more annoyed with people on the left who say we need to “kill the bill.” If we don’t pass a bill now, we won’t have this chance for another 15-20 years. And there are some great things in this bill. For starters, under this bill, 30 million more Americans will have health insurance. Some people on the left are saying that because there’s no public option, it will be a windfall to the insurance companies. Um, no it won’t. In return for being paid premiums, the insurance companies will have to provide health insurance to people. It seems like many lefties aren’t thinking clearly — they’re beholden to the notion that anything corporate is evil, that health insurance companies are the spawn of hell. They’re more interested in punishing insurance companies than in helping millions of Americans get health insurance. They think that if insurance companies benefit, that must mean that everyone else loses. But be real. Just because you hate insurance companies, doesn’t mean they are evil. The world is not in line with your emotional reality. It’s really immature to see the world through the eyes of Michael Moore. I don’t like it when right-wingers see the world as black and white, and I don’t like it when left-wingers do so either.

It’s the Nader voters all over again.

Furthermore, one of the problems with our health insurance system is that lots of healthy people don’t buy insurance, meaning that the risk pool is smaller and somewhat skewed toward the unhealthy. A bigger risk pool is better, because it results in lower premiums for everyone. And the risk pools will increase by 30 million people.

Even if these numbers are off and it’s just 20 million more people with health insurance, that’s still phenomenal, and it’s the greatest progress in health care that we’ve had in more than 40 years.

I also read something that said under the current bill, insurance companies will be able to charge older people three times as much as younger people, and OMG how horrible that would be. Um, as opposed to now, when there is no limit on what they can charge?

So, yes, this bill could have been a lot better, and it’s Obama’s fault as well as Reid’s, as well as the fault of every senator who opposes a public option and a Medicare buy-in. (It’s also the Republicans’ fault, of course, but that goes without saying.)

But there’s lots of great stuff in this bill. It needs to pass. In the early 1970s, the Democrats scrapped a health care deal with Richard Nixon because it wasn’t good enough for them, and what did they get for it? Nothing.

If they don’t pass this bill now, there won’t be another chance for years.

Primal Scream Politics

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“It’s times like these when the difference between political activism and self-expression and primal scream therapy become really apparent. Politics isn’t easy. Political change isn’t easy. It includes tons of reverses and inevitably involves not getting a lot of what you wanted, at least not at first. This doesn’t mean everyone needs to agree on policy or priorities. People don’t agree on things. That’s life. But that’s different from cashing out of the process if you don’t get just what you want.”

— Josh Marshall

I’m really annoyed by people who say Obama is “just like Bush” or isn’t the leftist we elected. That’s an incredibly naive and simplistic view. First of all, Obama never put himself forth as a leftist. But more importantly, being president of the United States is really an impossible job. The public expects you to change the world with a wave of your hand, but the only real power the Constitution gives you is the power of persuasion. You have no concrete way to make Congress pass laws; you can only try and convince them to do it. (This list of presidential paradoxes is worth reading.) Granted, if you are talented enough a populist, you have more leverage, but even so, there’s no guarantee that this will work.

The Constitution discusses the Congress before it discusses the presidency. (Literally, Congress had to come first; the first act after the Constitution was ratified was for Americans to elect a Congress, because Washington couldn’t assume the presidency until after Congress had certified his election.) Not only that, but it divides Congress into two bodies. Not only that, but one of those bodies isn’t even apportioned democratically. So right off the bat, even if everything is working well, our system of government is constitutionally set up to make change difficult. Throw in the spineless Harry Reid, the incorrect notion that the Constitution requires a 60-vote majority to pass legislation, and the cult the Republican party has become, and it’s a miracle that health care legislation has gotten as far as it has.

The problem is that if Obama tries to explain this to the American people, he’ll come off looking weak, because we like our presidents to seem strong. (We invest the presidency with monarchical trappings: the White House, Air Force One, “Hail to the Chief.”)

If only he could argue that terrorists were trying to deny us single-payer health care.

Politics is not primal scream therapy. The last decade would have turned out much differently if a bunch of Florida Naderites had sucked it up and voted for Gore. And don’t even get me started on the teapartiers.

Politics isn’t about magic ponies. Don’t drop out of the process just because you don’t get what you want.

State Dinner

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Tonight the Obamas are holding their first state dinner, for the prime minister of India. Robin Givhan of the Washington Post has a feature article on how to dress (and how not to dress) for a White House state dinner. This is my favorite part:

At a state dinner in 1996, low decolletage wasn’t merely sexy or daring; it was a political trap for a president known to have a roving eye. Clinton was hosting a state dinner for Italian President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro. The voluptuous Italian actress Sophia Loren was a guest and she arrived with her magnificent cleavage framed in an ivory evening gown by Giorgio Armani. As she made her way through the receiving line, media observers paid close attention to Clinton’s gaze, waiting to see whether it would waver — even the slightest — from where it belonged to where it was most emphatically being drawn. Reports indicated that Clinton maintained steely eye contact. But no guest should really put the leader of the free world to such a test of willpower.

A Year Ago

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A year ago last night, we heard people cheering in our neighborhood as Barack Obama was elected president. It was wonderful.

Last night, one year later, we heard people cheering in our neighborhood as the Yankees won the World Series. I couldn’t have cared less.

I mean, I watched the last few minutes of the game on TV so I could see them win. But I really didn’t care. I’m happy for the city, but I’m not a Yankees fan. If I’m a fan of any baseball team at all, it’s the Mets.

Maybe it’s because my family is originally from Queens, like the Mets? Actually, I get it from my brother, who will always look back fondly on the 1986 World Series, when the Mets defeated the Red Sox. The Mets are the underdogs; they’re more interesting to root for, because they’re always losing. The Yankees are rich and can buy their way to victory and don’t need any more fans.

Of course, this also applies to Mike Bloomberg, whom I voted for the other day. But the Yankees are not running for mayor.

Election Night 2009

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This is turning out to be a depressing election night. My home state, New Jersey, has elected a Republican governor for the first time in eight years. (I no longer live there but I do work there.) Maine seems to be rejecting marriage equality. And the Republicans have retaken the governorship of Virginia, another state where I used to live.

Matt and I voted today for NYC mayor. Apparently we were among the pathetically small percentage of New Yorkers who did so. We both supported Bloomberg, but at the last minute Matt decided to vote for Thompson in order to send Bloomberg a message and keep him from getting too cocky about his victory. Bloomberg’s margin of victory is surprisingly thin — apparently lots of other people either did the same thing as Matt or just stayed home because they assumed it would be a blowout.

The only bright spots tonight are that Bill Owens has beat the know-nothing right-winger Doug Hoffman in upstate New York, dealing a blow to Palinism, and that Washington State voters have preserved expansive domestic partnership rights for same-sex couples on par with marriage. These both make me happy.

As for Maine: marriage equality is a generational thing. I’m so sick and tired of seeing gay equality voted down again and again in this country. But younger people support it, and the elderly who oppose it are dying off or heading into nursing homes. The tide is slowly turning in our favor. Our day will come.

And as for New Jersey and Virginia, my consolation is that governors don’t make foreign policy. Christie won’t invade Pennsylvania or something. He hasn’t made clear what he plans to do to fix New Jersey’s economy; Corzine cut government spending and raised taxes. Is Christie planning to do something different? Is there some super-secret non-entitlement spending he plans to cut that Corzine didn’t know about?

Finally, these results are not a reflection on Obama: he still has decent approval ratings in both Virginia and New Jersey. People are pissed off about the economy, but they still support the president. Jon Corzine is an incredibly poor communicator. Virginia, well, Virginia is Virginia.

Sigh. Good night.

Obama and the Gays

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I watched Obama’s speech to the Human Rights Campaign on Saturday night. I was underwhelmed.

Many others have pointed out that it was the same speech Obama could have given as a candidate. As Dan Savage wrote, “Imagine all the wonderful things this guy is going to accomplish if he ever actually gets elected president.” Ooh, Obama mentioned Stonewall in his speech! What is this, 1992? Mentioning Stonewall is like buying a Hallmark card. It means you don’t really give a shit, so you’re going to resort to a cliché. What about Frank Kameny? What about Harry Hay?

Then there was the appalling email that the head of the HRC, Joe Solmonese, sent out a few days ago, apparently saying that we shouldn’t judge Obama’s gay rights record until January 2017. I don’t think he was saying what some critics claim; I think he was merely making the point that by the end of Obama’s administration, we will have seen progress on gay rights, and hey, let’s be optimistic and hope Obama serves two terms instead of one. But that’s not how it came off to some influential people, such as Andrew Sullivan and Dan Savage and John Aravosis, and that’s not surprising given that the HRC has accomplished nothing except raising money and holding fancy dinners. To Sullivan and the others, Solmonese seems to be saying that we should wait until 2017 to see any progress. So we may as well have waited until 2012 to elect a Democrat.

Yes, Solmonese’s email was misinterpreted, but it serves him right. Oooh, hate crimes laws! Yay! As if hate crimes aren’t already prosecuted as crimes.

Meanwhile, my frustration with Obama is growing. I’m guessing that he’s waiting until health care passes before addressing gay rights, and that in early 2010, we’ll see him start to move on DADT. He’s afraid of bringing up any “touchy social issues” until health care’s out of the way, and he’s spooked by what happened to Clinton in 1993. But this is 2009, not 1993. Ending DADT is no longer controversial; nearly 70 percent of the public supports ending it.

To be honest, if the choice were between health care reform and gay rights, I’d choose health care reform, because that affects tens of millions of people and it’s one of the biggest problems our country faces. But who says there has to be a choice? Is gay rights really going to drain political capital from health care? Really? If it can survive fake death panels, it can survive DADT.

Obama, despite what the teapartiers think, is not a radical. He’s cautious about moving too quickly — in this case, perhaps too cautious. And nothing can excuse those awful legal briefs in which the administration defended DOMA. I’d be amazed if Obama actually takes any action against DOMA, especially since he’s on record as not supporting marriage equality. (Never mind that both Bill Clinton, who signed DOMA, and even Bob Barr, the former Republican congressman who wrote DOMA, think it should be repealed.) That said, if Congress passes the Respect for Marriage Act, I don’t doubt Obama would sign it.

Still — once again, we are lured for our votes and our money, but a Democratic president isn’t going to lift a finger to actually do anything to help us. If he doesn’t do anything next year, we’ll know Obama doesn’t give a shit about gay rights.

Obama’s Nobel

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Wingnut reaction when the International Olympic Committee fails to award Chicago the 2016 Olympics:

“Obama fails in his mission to win the support of the world community! Stupid Obama!”

Wingnut reaction when Obama is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize:

“Obama succeeds in his mission to win the support of the world community! Stupid Obama!”

Anyway… it’s too soon for Obama to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. But it’s not Obama’s fault that he won. He wasn’t the one who made the decision. And as much as some people think it would be good for him to turn it down, you don’t turn down the Nobel Peace Prize, because it would look like a snub. What you do is, you accept the award, humbly… and then you forget you ever won it except when you leave American soil.

Time

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I adore history. It’s one of my passions, and I wish I could do something with it as a career.

I think one of the reasons I love history so much is that it makes me feel immortal.

I think about death a lot. I can’t help it. I can never seem to avoid the fact that my life isn’t permanent and that someday I will die. It terrifies and saddens me, and death often feels just around the corner. My life sometimes feels too empty — I don’t allow myself very many luxuries, material or otherwise. But I don’t know which is the cause and which is the effect. Do I worry about my death because I don’t lead a rich enough life, or have I decided that it’s not worth trying to do or gain much in my lifetime because someday I’ll be dead? I probably have a good 50 years ahead of me, but I can’t seem to conceive of that length of time as very long. I feel like the last 10 years have flown by and I worry that the rest of my life will, too.

Yes, I really do think that way. This is what it’s like inside my head sometimes.

But I know that after I’m gone, history will still exist. And by studying history, I’m giving life to those who are long dead. When I study history, I feel like I’m communing with something permanent — unlike me, who will someday disappear. Studying and contemplating history feels almost spiritual to me.

For the last few weeks I’ve been reading Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud, by Peter Watson. It’s an intellectual history of humanity from the advent of bipedalism and stone tools to the dawn of the 20th century. (Watson has another book that covers the intellectual history of the 20th century.)

I’d like to think I’m learning a lot from this book, but I know that most of it is just washing over me, to be forgotten a few pages later. Still, I’m really enjoying it, because I’m getting a big-picture view of the trends of human history.

One of the weirder things I remember learning a long time ago is that we are currently living in a interglacial period in the middle of an ice age. The last 12,000 years have just been part of a warm respite in the middle of a longer ice age. All of recorded human history has occurred during an interglacial period.

It makes me wonder, what kind of age are we living in now? It depends on your altitude. Are we in the age of Obama? Or are we in a longer era of conservatism that began with Ronald Reagan? Pulling back from the ground a bit, are we in an age of democracy that began in the late 18th century, an era that we take for granted but will someday disappear? Or are we an age of individualism, humanism, and exploration that began with the Renaissance and will also disappear? Or maybe we’re in an age of monotheism that began a few thousand years ago?

Several hundred years or several millennia from now, what will people say about our era? Will the early 21st century be distinguishable from the 19th or the 20th or the 22nd or the 23rd? Or will we blend into some several-centuries-long period of time? Will future people even know about us?

Maybe all of human history is just a transitional phase. Maybe we’re just a vehicle for the creation of self-aware robots that will kill us and colonize the universe. Maybe they are the ultimate point of things. Or maybe they’ll use their unimaginably awesome intelligence to create even more amazing robots, and so on, until some super-super-duper species of computer ultimately discovers the purpose of Existence.

It’s common to look at the Earth and realize that we, and the Earth, and our solar system, are insignificant in the universe. But it’s not just a spatial insignificance; we’re temporally insignificant as well. The universe existed long before the Earth was formed and long before the Sun. It will exist even after the Sun goes supernova and swallows the Earth. That moment of supernova is inconceivably far into the future — but the universe will continue even after that.

Time is so… long.

2016 Olympics

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Chicago’s out of contention for the Olympics. It would have been nice to get them, but did we really need to have the Olympics here in the U.S. again? Most recently, we’ve hosted it in 2002, 1996, 1984, and 1980. I was against New York’s 2012 bid, and I live here. Shouldn’t other countries get a chance? I think it’s pure American arrogance to think we deserve it again so soon.

If I were Obama, I wouldn’t have gone to Copenhagen. It’s not like the American people would criticize him for staying in Washington and blame him for losing us the Olympics. How many of us really care that much about having the Olympics here when we have so many problems to deal with right now?

On the other hand, most of those who criticize Obama for going already hate him anyway. Obama spent just a few hours on the ground in Copenhagen. Air Force One is a flying Oval Office. While on board, the president met with Stanley McChrystal, head of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. It’s not like he was partying.

Still, I would have stayed home. He had nothing to gain from going to Copenhagen and plenty to lose.

Judicial Liberalism Not Happening

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If you believe in judicial liberalism — which I sometimes do and, to be honest, sometimes don’t — the current direction of the Court is a little depressing. Tom Goldstein, Supreme Court analyst extraordinaire, points out that the conservatives on the Court are free to move at a measured pace in overturning liberal precedents, at least for a while:

For the moment, there is no reason to rush. Time permits a jurisprudence of not just originalism, or textualism, but actuarialism. The sand running through this hourglass will not expire for eight years.

Later in his term, President Obama will likely replace Justice Stevens with someone else on the left. If he is reelected in 2012, he will replace Justice Ginsburg with someone on the left. Nothing changes.

It isn’t until the election of 2016 at the earliest that there is a real prospect for a significant shift to the left in the Court’s ideology. Actuarially, that election is likely to decide which President appoints the successors to Justices Scalia and Kennedy (both on the right, and both 73 now) and Justice Breyer (on the left, and 70 now). Absent an unfortunate turn of health, between now and the summer of 2017 there is no realistic prospect that the Court will turn back to the left. Over the course of that eight years, it is possible to take enough measured steps to the right to walk a marathon. Again, no need to rush.

Unless something happens to Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, Alito, or Kennedy in the next few years, the Court is on a slow rightward trajectory.

On the issue dearest to my heart — gay rights — it probably doesn’t mean much. Kennedy has been pretty pro-gay (Romer, Lawrence), but I don’t expect the Court to take up same-sex marriage for a while. It didn’t overturn the nation’s sodomy laws until only 13 states were left with such laws; the Court is too cautious to constitutionalize same-sex marriage rights at this point, when only six states allow such marriage.

What else could the Court tackle? Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell will be history in the next few years — I’m pretty sure Obama will get around to it after health care and energy are taken care of. DOMA (full faith and credit clause) is a possibility — which would be a sidelong way to rule on same-sex marriage. But I don’t think the Court will touch that right now. Again, the issue is just too volatile, and the Court generally knows when to stay out of things. (It has learned from abortion; would Roe v. Wade come out the same way today? Who knows; the opinion would at least be less intrusive if it were written today.)

Of course, I could be wrong. Issues have a way of showing up on the Court’s docket unexpectedly, especially since it only takes four Justices to vote to hear a case.

But for now, things seem to be in stasis, at least where gay rights are concerned. As for everything else — drifting right.

Bipartisan

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I’m so tired of all the talk about “bipartisanship.”

“If there is any chance we can do a bipartisan bill, it has to be in the Finance Committee,” Harry Reid said yesterday about health care reform.

Currently the Senate has 59 Democrats, 40 Republicans, and a vacancy in Minnesota.

If the Senate had 51 Democrats and 48 Republicans, and 8 Republicans joined 51 Democrats to pass a bill by a vote of 59-40, everyone would gush about how wonderful it was that a bipartisan bill passed.

But the Senate has 59 Democrats and 40 Republicans. If all Democrats vote for a bill today and all Republicans vote against it, it still passes, 59-40. But in that situation, it’s not “bipartisan.” So it’s a very bad thing.

Why is the same vote acceptable in one context but not in another?

If there were 90 Democrats and 10 Republicans, Harry Reid and others would still be fretting about winning over one or two of those Republicans in the name of “bipartisanship.”

Enough with the fetishizing of bipartisanship. If spineless centrists are going to worry about winning over members of the opposition no matter how small that opposition is, then what is the point of having a 59- or 60-member Democratic Senate caucus instead of a 51-member caucus or 54-member caucus? Yes, it’s nice to be able to break filibusters. But Congress recently decided that health reform could pass by a simple majority vote if necessary. So why are Reid and others being so obsessive about “bipartisanship”?

The Senate is an exclusive club divided into two teams. There’s a Democratic caucus and a Republican caucus, a Democratic leader and a Republican leader. Members of each party have their own retreats. Party controls everything. Most Americans aren’t loyal to one party or another — they vote for whoever seems like the better choice in any given year — but senators are obsessed with party. That’s especially true today, when party loyalty is much stronger than it used to be. Only three Republicans broke ranks to vote for Obama’s stimulus bill — and one of them switched parties soon after.

The bipartisanship fetishists in the Senate and the media are making an important mistake: they’re confusing bipartisanship with consensus.

We emerged from the 2008 elections with a Senate containing 59 — and it really should be 60 — Democrats. The Republican Party currently has a 25 percent approval rating. So the consensus of the American people is that the Republicans suck.

The consensus is that the Democrats should use their 60-member caucus to pass health care reform. Nearly three-quarters of Americans think there should be a public health care plan; this is a consensus. But “Democrats in the Senate have considered nixing the proposal in order to win Republican support for the bill,” according to that link.

Politicians do not have to listen blindly to what majorities want — people can be ill-informed and majorities can be wrong — but if they’re going to buck the public, they should do so for substantive reasons, not because they’re worried about upsetting the guy who jogs next to them in the Senate gym or sits next to them in the Senate dining room.

Bipartisanship is meaningless. It’s as antidemocratic as the Senate itself. In the Senate, every state gets two seats, no matter how big the state’s population; likewise, each of the two major parties apparently gets a voice, even if the American people think one of those parties is intellectually bankrupt.

Exactly how big a majority do we need before we can start using it?

Obama Clinched a Year Ago

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One year ago today, Barack Obama clinched the Democratic nomination for president, ending his epic five-month contest with Hillary Clinton. (That article is dated June 4, but the news happened the previous day.)

How long was that race? Think back to January 3 of this year, before Obama was even inaugurated. That was five months ago. That’s the same length of time that elapsed between last year’s Iowa caucuses and the final two primaries in South Dakota and Montana.

Who knew that today, Hillary Clinton would be President Obama’s secretary of state?

NJ Governor’s Race

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My home state, New Jersey, where I grew up and where I work (even though I no longer live there), has a governor’s race in the fall. The incumbent Democrat, Jon Corzine, has a 40 percent approval rating right now and is in danger of losing to Republican Christopher Christie, formerly the U.S. attorney for New Jersey, assuming Christie wins the Republican nomination against arch-conservative Steve Lonegan next week.

New Jersey’s quadrennial governor’s race comes in the year after the presidential election, and in every election for the past 20 years, the party that wins the governor’s race has been the party that lost the previous year’s presidential race.

1988: George H.W. Bush (R)
1989: Jim Florio (D)

1992, 1996: Bill Clinton (D)
1993, 1997: Christie Whitman (R)

2000: George W. Bush (R)
2001: Jim McGreevey (D)

2004: George W. Bush (R)
2005: Jon Corzine (D)

2008: Barack Obama (D)
2009: ???

Granted, this doesn’t totally hold up, because in 2000 and 2004, New Jersey actually voted for Gore and Kerry, even though the country went the other way. But it’s still weird.

Sotomayor

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This is a busy day for legal topics I’m interested in: the U.S. Supreme Court and gay rights law. Within the course of several hours we had the Sotomayor nomination and the California Supreme Court’s decision on Prop 8.

First, Sotomayor. She seems like a decent enough pick for the Court, but beyond her life story and the Jeff Rosen hack job on her, I don’t know much about her. I was hoping for a fierce liberal advocate to counter Scalia — I would have loved to see Obama pick Pam Karlan. Will Sotomayor be that fierce liberal advocate? Maybe, maybe not; I don’t know. You can read summaries of her past appellate rulings here. At any rate, it’s sure to be an interesting confirmation process.

As for the Prop 8 decision: no real surprise. The court upheld Prop 8 but kept the existing same-sex marriages intact. This is an incredibly long opinion — the main opinion alone is 135 pages — and I haven’t had a chance to read much of it. But the decision is ridiculous for the simple reason that it allows a majority of a population to strip a minority of equal protection of the laws. As the sole dissenting justice wrote today:

The equal protection clause is… by its nature, inherently countermajoritarian. As a logical matter, it cannot depend on the will of the majority for its enforcement, for it is the will of the majority against which the equal protection clause is designed to protect.

This case is really about whether a particular method to change the California Constitution is itself a violation the California Constitution. I’ve skimmed the decision and it seems to spend a lot of ink on the difference between a constitutional “revision” (which requires the legislature’s imprimatur) and a constitutional “amendment” (which does not), but it doesn’t really matter, because whatever you call it, changing a constitution is supposed to be difficult. As I wrote last year, it should take more than a simple majority to change a constitution. The whole point of a constitution is to have a restraint on day-to-day political passions. A constitution is supposed to be higher than ordinary law and therefore harder to amend. If it’s no different to pass a constitutional amendment than to enact a popular initiative, then you have mob rule. If not for decisions by the United States Supreme Court that found race and sex discrimination to be violations of the U.S. Constitution — which outranks the California Constitution — then it would be possible for the general population of California to enshrine constitutional discrimination against blacks and women today. The process for amending the California Constitution is nonsensical.

Our founders didn’t believe in direct democracy; they believed in representative government. They believed in the wisdom of having a particular group of people, chosen by the populace, to legislate and act in their best interests. They believed that this political class had “virtue,” an amorphous concept that I don’t think really exists, but put virtue aside and the point remains that legislators are usually smarter and more thoughtful than the populace at large. (There are exceptions, of course, such as Michelle Bachman.) The stupidly simple California amendment process flies in the face of the constitutional and political theories in which our founders believed.

Nevertheless, although this decision is a big disappointment for supporters of gay rights, I find myself not too concerned in the long run. Constitutional jujitsu is possible here: since it’s so easy to amend the state constitution, all you need is a simple majority to overturn Prop 8. The vote in November was close, 52% to 48%. Attitudes continue to change, and at some point — hopefully soon — a majority of Californians will support same-sex marriage rights, and Prop 8 will lie in the dustbin of history.

A Gay Justice

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There are two lesbians on various people’s shortlists for Justice Souter’s replacement on the Supreme Court: Kathleen Sullivan and Pam Karlan, both professors at Stanford Law School. (Karlan was a professor at UVa Law when I went there, but I wasn’t in any of her classes.)

I don’t think it’s going to happen — this isn’t a “West Wing” episode — and Karlan doesn’t seem to think she’ll get the nod, or else she would have been less vocal about the vacancy. But some people think Karlan would be a brilliant justice.