For the second straight year, I declined to attend the Netroots Nation conference. I’ve always enjoyed the conferences, but I don’t belong there anymore, and this is why. Let me start with the DREAM Act. If immigration reform supporters are mobilizing against the president, they need to have their heads examined. Here’s a reminder:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid reintroduced the DREAM Act in the Senate on Wednesday, less than 24 hours after President Obama called on Congress to take steps forward on a comprehensive immigration reform bill that would put the nation’s 11 million undocumented immigrants on a pathway toward citizenship…
…In the last few years though, even the DREAM Act has proven impossible to get past the Senate. Last year, Reid tried to bring it to the floor twice: the first time, pre-midterm election 2010, its fate perished with a defense authorization bill; and the second, during the lame-duck period, it fell five votes short of passing a needed filibuster-proof hurdle. The final Senate vote, 55-41, closely reflected the country’s attitude toward the legislation at the time, as captured in a Gallup poll, which found 54 percent of American citizens wanted the DREAM Act, while 42 percent did not.
The Democrat-controlled House did pass the bill last December, by a slim margin.
While Reid did not get his full caucus of 59 Democrats to support the DREAM Act last year, most Republicans who have supported the measure in years past — such as Sens. John Cornyn of Texas, Jon Kyl of Arizona, John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina — also withheld their votes, objecting that an independent piece of amnesty-granting legislation shouldn’t be allowed to move without some sort of counterbalance to increase immigration enforcement, which was the original concept behind the more comprehensive approaches to immigration changes.
The president is not a magician. Working against his reelection is not going to help pass the DREAM Act or any other piece of positive immigration legislation.
Moving on to gay rights, I am certainly sympathetic to the plight of Lt. Dan Choi and I don’t begrudge him his anger. But John Aravosis has been acting like he’s been betrayed since before the president took his oath of office. The president kept his promise to repeal the DADT policy, and it was anything but easy. Aravosis says that all he wants is what the president promised, but the president never said that he approves of gay marriage. Nonetheless, he has instructed the Department of Justice to no longer defend the Defense of Marriage Act in court, he’s signed a Hate Crimes bill, and he’s expanded benefits for same-sex couples who work in the Foreign Service and executive branch. What does he get in return?
“I would probably vote for the president in the end, but I’d also do everything that I can to shame him,” said Aravosis, who writes about gay rights issues. “But I don’t think they realize how damaging that is.”
Although Obama signed a repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell in December, the panelists decried his failure to take a hard stance for gay marriage.
“We always say we simply expected what he promised,” Aravosis said “The White House would rather not engage at all — at least with the big stuff. We were told he’d be a fierce advocate, and he’s been not fierce at all and not much of an advocate.”
I’m sorry, John, but your own words condemn you. You can shame him, criticize him, lobby him, cajole him, and maybe he will change his mind about gay marriage. I hope he does. But he did the one thing that he actually has the power to do; he told the DOJ to stop defending the DOMA in court.
And then there is Jane Hamsher, who has made it her career to harass the president. The less said about her the better.
There’s a line between principled advocacy for the issues you care about and being a careerist champion of the disgruntled.
Upton Sinclair used to say, “”It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” That’s what happened to a big part of the blogosphere.
