What Does Eric Cantor's Defeat Mean For Us?

Over the past few days, a lot of bandwidth and newspaper column spaces has been devoted to post-mortems and analyses of Eric Cantor's defeat in the Virginia Republican primary.


It's the first time in the history of this country a reigning House Majority Leader lost a primary.  That in itself is sending shockwaves through the political world.  But it's also interesting for all sorts of other reasons, some of which directly affect the lives of LGBT people, and trans people in particular.


You see, Cantor was beaten by a hard-line "Tea Party" Republican named David Brat. (You've got to love it!)  Brat and his ilk believe that Cantor was "too soft" on issues like immigration, abortion, gun control and gay marriage--all of which the Tea Partiers vehemently oppose, on principle.


Brat's campaign has mirrored and echoed others all over the country:  The Tea Party folks raise doubts about the commitment of some establishment Republican to their causes and run him (almost all of them are male) out of office, or keep him from getting elected in the first place, as happened with Presidential candidate Mitt Romney in 2012. 


In their quest for ideological purity, Tea Party types are moving further and further to the fringe and appealing to smaller and smaller segments of the electorate.  Will they decide that Chris Christie, if he decides to run for President, isn't "conservative" enough?  What about John Kasich, Scott Walker or Jeb Bush?  Even though I have little in common, at least in my political beliefs, with them, I would hardly consider them extremists, at least by the standards of the current Republican Party?


In their effort to forge a Stepford party, they are, ironically, making it more likely that Hillary Clinton--whom nearly all of them loathe--will become President in 2016.  Heck, they could make it possible for Elizabeth Warren, whom they dislike nearly as much, to move into the White House. 


As commentators like Paul Krugman have pointed out, more and more Americans are in favor of--or, at least, not opposed to--gun control, legal access to safe abortions, immigration reform and--the bête noire of the Tea Party--same-sex marriage.  And the latter has been upheld by conservative Republican Federal judges in places like Utah!


So why does the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party become more vehement in their opposition to those changes?  I'll give you a one-word answer:  Hate.  Yes, I said it.  They hate LGBT people.  (At least most of them don't try to hide it with "Love the sinner, hate the sin" nonsense.)  They hate Hispanics, the racial/ethnic group with the most people who would benefit from immigration reform.  They hate the poor, they hate women, they hate children and anyone who happens to be on the wrong side of a firearm. 


That said, I was never any fan of Romney, Cantor, Christie, Bush or the other mainstream Republicans I mentioned.  They represent mainly corporate and other big-money interests.  (In all fairness, so do most Democrats, at least to some degree.)  But they have supported--or, at least didn't make much of a show of opposing--immigration reform and the other changes I've mentioned. (Romney voiced opposition to them, but the Tea Party, rightly, wasn't convinced.)  Of course, they supported those things for entirely different reasons from the right ones: For example, to them immigration reform means more cheap labor.  But at least they weren't appealing to the basest instincts of their constituents--which is how people like Professor Brat win primaries. 


What does that mean for us?  Well, the further to the fringe Tea Party candidates move, the more persistent and just plain vicious their attacks on us will become.  Although I believe we will ultimately win, we have to be ready for them. 

Diana Discovers The Real Tea Party Agenda

The other day, McDonald's took applications for 50,000 positions they plan to fill.  

Some are saying that's a sign the economy is "turning a corner."  Perhaps it is if you're a McDonald's executive, or perhaps the owner of one of its franchises.  However, I don't think that the people who waited all night outside those restaurants to fill out an application would tell you that things are getting better.  Granted, some of them are young people who've never had a job before. But there are many others who had jobs that paid well, or were even professionals of one sort or another.  Now they're lining up for jobs that pay minimum wage, or not much more.

I guess the economy is turning a corner.  Here in New York, turning a corner can bring you into an entirely different neighborhood--and world.  And it isn't always for the better.  

So what are we entering?  I am not an economist, historian, futurologist, sociologist or any of the people who get paid to comment on this sort of thing.  But I don't think it's an economy that's going to benefit very many people.

We've heard it all:  First the manufacturing jobs went overseas.  Then customer service went to call centers in India.  Now we're seeing lawyers', engineers' and other professionals'--not to mention clerks'--work sent to countries with low wages.  Those last jobs were thought to be the ones that would never be "outsourced."  

So are there any "safe" jobs or professions?  Some have mentioned health care and law enforcement.  The former (even the so-called private facilities) are largely paid for through public funds, i.e., taxes.  And law enforcement is almost entirely financed that way.  We're seeing the consequences of that now:  The other day, Paterson, NJ laid off one-fourth of its police force.  

I think that what we're seeing is the real Republican/Right/Tea Party agenda.  If people are willing to do anything to get on the lowest rung of the employment ladder, those who are hiring can demand just about anything from them.  So the would-be employers are creating a buyer's market for labor.  And guess who the buyers are?

There is, however, a far more insidious manifestation of the Tea Party agenda. In fact, it's been all but unnoticed.  But it goes hand-in-hand with reducing large parts of the workforce to wage slavery.

On her blog, Diana described an example of what is happening.  In Michigan, the Governor essentially gave himself the power to throw out locally-elected officials and appoint his own people.  Those appointees, in turn, can toss out other officials and, in essence, run their localities by edict. 

This scenario has already played out in one city.  It just happens that city is the poorest and blackest (Yes, even more so than Detroit!) in the state.  I'm talking about Benton Harbor, which has been the subject of a number of articles and a book ("The Other Side of The River" by Alex Kotlowitz) in which the city is depicted as a poster child for post-industrial decay.  

If that could happen there, it's not hard to imagine, for instance, Chris Christie doing something similar with Camden or even Trenton, the state capital.  Newark wouldn't be out of the question, either.  

That is a corporate fascist's dream:  Large portions of the population without money and without a vote, or any other form of recourse.  (Think of what they're really trying to accomplish by de-funding Planned Parenthood.  It's not, as they say, about "reducing government." )

Some days it's just unbearable to be teaching college students who still believe that their degrees are going to get them wonderful, high-paying jobs.  I just hope that I'm helping them to open their eyes and that it leads them to vision rather than disillusionment.  Otherwise, what is the point of their time in school?

Breaking Them

Today I saw a bumper sticker that said, "I love my country, not my government."

When I've traveled overseas, people have told me they liked me and thought Americans were good people, but they didn't like what our government and military were doing.

Making a distinction between the people and whoever governs them is very important.  It helped me to make sense of something I noticed in the wake of what's happening in Wisconsin.

The striking public-sector employees are getting scorn from some quarters.  They're blamed for "breaking" the budgets of their states and for all sorts of woes that betide the states.  

I'll concede that there are public-sector employees who are slackers or are simply unqualified for their jobs.  Are you going to tell me you won't find such employees in other places?  

But those employees are, I believe, unfairly blamed for things that the union bosses have done, such as feathering their nests at the public's expense and of creating cushy jobs as favors to someone or another in the heirarchy.

I also think that's the reason why Tea Baggers see nothing wrong with demanding that public employees give up their bargaining rights, as the governor of Wisconsin wants them to do.  Meantime, the TBs squawk over a small tax increase for billionaires.  

More (!) About the Elections

Much ink has been spilt (and much digital space taken up) talking about the Republican "takeover" or the Tea Party "coup."  The so-called GOP indeed took, by a fairly wide margin, control of the House of Representative. Their candidates also were elected to governorships and other relatively high offices.


Now, I am with the Tea Party in its desire to limit government.  However, supporting them on that basis is a bit like supporting Pat Buchanan because he opposed the invasion of Iraq and opposes other imperialist interventions.   They are right on those issues, but if you go much further with them, you find yourself in a thicket of bigotry.


I'd like to believe that there are other people who feel the same way.  Or, at least, those who oppose what the TP purport to represent, and what the GOP has become, have become more assertive.  Either or both of those possibilities were on display in the results of some local elections which resulted in, among other things, the election of an openly transgendered judge in the San Francisco Bay Area.


Now, of course, most people would say, "Well, that's San Francisco."  Indeed it is.  But, at one time, lots of people thought that gays lived only in San Fran, the Village and a couple of other places.  Now characters on prime-time TV are gay.


Still, Victoria Kowlakowski's victory should no more be seen as a sign that we have "arrived" than Obama's election was a sign that racial equality had been achieved.


At least Kowlakowski seems well-qualified for the position.  That in itself would make her election a positive step, I hope.

Election Day

Well, the election results are coming in.  None of them are surprising.  While people are unhappy with what's going on in this country and who's running it, they didn't vote for some of the scarier candidates.  Yes, they voted for some of the so-called Tea Party candidates, but not as many of them won--and those that won didn't have as large margins--as some of the experts predicted.


Although I have my doubts about whether equality can be achieved through legislation, and about just how friendly some of the so-called LGBT-friendly candidates actually are, I'm glad that at least one homophobe didn't win.  I'm taking about Carl Palladino, who ran for governor against Andrew Cuomo.  While I'm never thrilled about the prospect of a dynasty, Cuomo actually does seem to be the better alternative.  


As the saying goes, time will tell.

The Elections: I Have No Expectations

Tomorrow's Election Day.


It seems that actual and would-be voters can be more or less divided into the following categories:

• the ones who aren't happy with the way things are but don't blame the incumbents
• the ones who aren't happy with the way things are and blame certain incumbents, e.g., Obama
• the ones who aren't happy with the way things are and blame the incumbents
• the ones who aren't happy, period.

Now, I can't blame anyone for not being happy about the state of the economy and international relations.  I feel the same way.  I also can't blame anyone who isn't happy with whoever's in power.  That's how I've felt almost continuously since I knew who was in power, or knew what it meant to be in power.

But, I'm also not disappointed.  How could I be, when I had such low expectations.  That's not hard to do when the Presidents under whose rule you lived during your adult life are Carter, Reagan, Bush pere, Clinton, Bush fil and Obama--and the other two Presidents of whom you have any clear memory are Nixon and Ford.  

Clinton was probably the last President--or elected official of any sort--for whom I had any real hope.  Of course, almost anybody looked good after Reagan and Bush I.  But at the time, it seemed that this country just might have a chance at a less invasive and interventionist foreign policy.  And civil liberties might just become part of the public discourse once again, I thought.  Then again, in those days I was still confusing civil rights with civil liberties.  In my own defense, I'll say that most people still confuse the two.

Some people say that Clinton wasn't as effective a President as he might've been because Republicans took over Congress midway through his first term.  If being effective means passing one's own agenda, I think the mid-term election was only so much of an excuse for Clinton's record.  Then again, I'm not sure that anyone knows what Clinton's agenda actually was.  After all, he did support "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and the so-called Defense of Marriage Act before the Republican takeover.

But apres lui, la deluge.  After him, we got Bush the Younger.  If you're reading this, you know how that went.  

The only candidates for whom I had any flicker of enthusiasm in the 2008 election were Hillary, Obama and--as much of a contradiction as this may seem--Ron Paul.  Of them, the latter was the only one who seemed to understand that we were headed for economic trouble that couldn't be headed off or ameliorated by government policy.  And, while he wasn't the most LGBT-friendly candidate, at least he opposed marriage--for everyone.  At least, he didn't think that marriage should be defined by the government.  What that would amount to, in practice, is that every couple, straight or gay, could have a civil union.  And those who wanted their unions sanctioned by whatever God they believed in could find a clergyperson and institution who would wed them.  Finally, he has always endorsed a "humble" foreign policy in which the US wouldn't have military bases all over the globe.

Some of his supporters could be pretty scary, though.

Once he was no longer on the ballot, there were nothing but establishment candidates left.  Hillary is very smart, but I still felt she cared more about her own personal ambitions than about the causes she  claimed to espouse.  And, while I ultimately voted for Obama, the change that I really expected was that he would be in the White House and Bush The Second wouldn't be.

Nearly two years into his administration, about all we ever knew about him was that he was, or was supposed,   to represent "change."  And change he has:  namely, his positions on gay marriage as well as other issues.

The thing is, I don't know what any non-incumbent candidate can offer besides the fact that they're not the incumbents.  Yet that will get more than a few of the so-called "Tea Party" candidates elected to Congress and to a few governorships.  While I'm glad that Carl Palladino has about the same chance of winning as a mango tree has of surviving a Buffalo winter, I have no enthusiasm for Cuomo, much less the minor candidates.