Tag Archives: obama

Quick Thoughts on CA Decision

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Some quick thoughts on the wonderful California decision (still reading it):

It took me forever to find the actual decision of the court. I had to skim through the first seven pages before I found something resembling a ruling. Then on the next page it said something about not needing to deal with the word “marriage” and I thought maybe it was more like the New Jersey decision, pro-rights but not mandating the word. Thoroughly confused and figuring I wasn’t going to find anything definitive in the next few pages, I tried to find the end of the opinion but couldn’t (the end is in the middle, as the main opinion is followed by some concurrences/dissents). Finally found the end and realized the good news.

In six months, Californians will likely be voting on a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. Some people expect a backlash against the court’s decision. Some people, those who are anti-gay or who are against marriage equality for gay couples, will feel angered and energized by the decision and be even more eager to turn out to vote in favor of the amendment. Also, the vote will be happening in the context of the Obama-McCain race on the same day’s ballot; if McCain runs strong in California, this could help get out the Republican vote.

But I think this decision helps those of us on the side of equality more than those on the other side. Over the next six months, gay couples will be marrying in California. And Californians will see that gay couples have gotten legally married and the world hasn’t fallen apart. Just as important, there are many people who might oppose same-sex marriages in theory but who are good at heart, who have empathy for their fellow human beings, and who are not going to want to take marriage away from couples who have already been legally married under the imprimatur of the California constitution. They’re not going to want to tell the children of those couples, sorry, your parents are no longer married. This is different from the legally dicey San Francisco marriages four years ago; this is really and truly legal.

This is really and truly wonderful.

The Right to Campaign

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This Times editorial says something silly that I’ve also seen elsewhere.

There is a lot of talk that Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is now fated to lose the Democratic nomination and should pull out of the race. We believe it is her right to stay in the fight and challenge Senator Barack Obama as long as she has the desire and the means to do so. That is the essence of the democratic process.

Will people stop using this straw man? Has anyone ever said she has no right to continue campaigning? No.

I have the right to wear a clown suit to work every day. But if someone says “You shouldn’t wear a clown suit to work every day,” and I respond by saying, “But I have the right to do it,” that doesn’t really address the point. “I can if I want to” is rarely a useful answer to anything. It’s what a five year old says.

The question isn’t whether Clinton has the right to continue campaigning. Of course she does. The question is whether it serves any purpose. Me, I don’t care if she continues campaigning or not, as long as she stops bringing the likely nominee down with her. Also, superdelegates are allowed to change their minds as many times as they want until the convention at the end of August, and since neither candidate will reach a majority without superdelegates and Obama could still somehow collapse over the next three and a half months, she’s there as a backup.

But she’d be there as a backup anyway. Maybe the best thing for her to do is not end her campaign, but “suspend” it, right after the Montana and South Dakota primaries on June 3. At that point, there won’t be anyone left but superdelegates to convince, and while it’s unlikely a publicly-declared superdelegate will have a change of heart, she can still be there as a backup in case Obama falls apart.

Side note: how weird is it that Puerto Rico has more delegates than Montana and South Dakota combined, and more delegates than Kentucky alone, but Puerto Ricans don’t get to vote for president?

Winning a State

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From the Times:

Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the speaker of the House, was among those on Wednesday giving Mrs. Clinton room to make her own calculations about the race, saying “a win is a win,” in reference to the Indiana results.

This is something that has annoyed me throughout this nomination process. A win isn’t a win. There’s no such thing as “winning a state” in the Democratic nomination process, or rather, there’s no real importance to winning a state, since states aren’t winner-take-all. These primary nights are not about winning a state; they’re about adding proportional chunks of delegates to running totals. But to the news media, that’s not quite as exciting.

News anchors were up past midnight waiting to see whether Obama or Clinton had won Indiana, when it really only meant the difference of one or two delegates out of 2,000. The media is used to covering winner-take-all presidential elections, and they’re wedded to the concept of “calling a state” for one candidate or another. Determining a “winner” creates news. But it’s inaccurate to say that “winning a state” matters in anything but a symbolic sense.