Patience became the 2009 mantra of the gay rights movement, which generally supports Democrats. Many activists believe that in his heart Obama supports their flagship issues: the ability to serve openly in the armed forces, to be protected from employment in the workplace, and the right to marry (even though he’s on record as favoring civil unions over marriage). But they’ve received almost nothing for their troubles. What the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered community has learned this year is that the president is ultimately a pragmatist. Although his very presence in the White House is the stuff of culture wars, Obama himself is reluctant to wade into one. Moreover, if socially divisive policies have the potential to compromise his legislative agenda, Obama has proven that he simply won’t pursue them. Expect this tension to become more acute as the 2010 elections loom-and for gay rights to be shunted aside again. The last thing this pragmatist president will do is hand election-year ammunition to an already energized conservative base that’s venomously opposed to gay marriage.

No action on DADT. No action on DOMA. No action on ENDA. No action on immigration equality for separated families. No action on adoption rights.

Further discouraging an already skeptical and disaffected component within the demoralized Democratic base seems like a wonderful strategy for handing control of Congress to the GOP/BlueDog coalition.

Adam Bink points to two reasons why Newsweek’s logic is faulty:

(a) Obama’s approval rating among Republicans in general has averaged between 10% and 20% over the last several months, and even hit single digits. So I have no doubt it’s even worse among the conservative base, teabaggers, etc.
[snip]
Moving on progressive issues, aka keeping your promises, will always piss off conservatives, and that is part of the ballgame. Inaction on progressive issues isn’t going to suddenly make conservatives happier. And if you’re worried about making them mad, LGBT issues are no worse than any of his other major initiatives, like health care.

(b) If Newsweek is thinking about about energized voters, did they happen to notice an already energized LGBT movement that is pissed as hell at inaction and repeated slights by this Administration? As Mike Lux pointed out, 1994 was lost in major part because the base stays home. If Obama and Democrats in Congress really want to know what, to quote George W. Bush, a “thumpin’” feels like, they should take no action on LGBT issues and watch scores of LGBT people stay home.

Rahm Emanuel and Barack Obama draw the wrong lessons about where progressives LBGTs will go in 2010. It’s not that we’ll vote for the talibangelical GOP. After all, we’re not total idiots. We know those people would just as soon Ugandize our asses as look at us.

The danger is that we will stay at home. And we’ll stay at home not just on Election Day, but on every phone-banking, neighborhood-walking, vote-by-mailing, voter-IDing, precinct-organizing, campaign-blogging day before that. That’s a lot of wo/manpower to run a mid-term campaign without.

Moreover: We are the opinion leaders in our small communities. We are the folks our less engaged friends look to for guidance. Most people don’t pay attention to politics like we do, and they expect us to tell them what’s important and what matters. If our reaction when asked about electing Democrats again in 2010 is ‘meh’ will that motivate the less-engaged among them to vote? Expect a lot of “wait, you said you weren’t excited about that?” when we try to drag them out to the polls on Election Day 2010.

What will we say to them, “Oh, but the Democrats have promised us they’ll move on our issues now!” They’ll laugh at us.

And they’ll be right. Elections have consequences, we’re always told. If Election Day 2008 doesn’t have more positive consequences for LGBT Americans by Election Day 2010, you can expect more passivity from us, Mr President. You will have earned it. See, elections do have consequences.

They don’t have to.

Yeah, I know, conservatives aren’t techno-savvy, they’re too hierarchical, etc, etc.  But here’s the thing: If there were boatloads of campaign cash out there for progressive candidates, if our party leadership were relentlessly progressive and kept the caucus together on key votes, if there were a vast echo chamber of left-wing talk radio and think tanks and newsmedia promoting all the issues and stories we care about… I wouldn’t be here right now.  I wouldn’t need to be.

We netroots have to be active, and generous, and loud, because we’re all we’ve got.

Lord & Lady Douchebag, Political Appointees
Department of Veterans’ Affairs

Disgusting:

In San Francisco federal court Monday, attorneys for veterans’ rights groups accused the VA of nothing less than a cover-up – deliberately concealing the real risk of suicide among veterans.

"The system is in crisis and unfortunately the VA is in denial," said Veterans Rights Attorney Gordon Erspamer.

The charges were backed by internal e-mails written by Dr. Ira Katz, the VA’s head of Mental Health.

In the past, Katz has repeatedly insisted while the risk of suicide among veterans is serious, it’s not outside the norm.

"There is no epidemic in suicide in VA," Katz told Keteyian in November.

And now comes the lying ass part:

But in this e-mail to his top media advisor, written two months ago, Katz appears to be saying something very different, stating: "Our suicide prevention coordinators are identifying about 1,000 suicide attempts per month among veterans we see in our metical facilities."

Katz’s e-mail was written shortly after the VA provided CBS News data showing there were only 790 attempted suicides in all 2007 – a fraction of Katz’s estimate.

"This 12,000 attempted suicides per year shows clearly, without a doubt, that there is an epidemic of suicide among veterans," said Paul Sullivan of Veterans for Common Sense.

And it appears that Katz went out of his way to conceal these numbers.

Why is it that Douchebags ALWAYS have media advisers?

And has Bush given them a tax-write off on "Douchbag Related Expenses"?

1,000 suicide attempts a month amongst vets?!!! How much reporting will this get? I suppose one-hundredth of the time "Did Obama flip Clinton off?" received.

God forbid George Stephanapolis ask John McCain about it?

"Does Dr. Katz love America as much as you Senator?"

The full-out lying and criminality of this Administration knows no bounds. Good thing McCain supports this non-stop, Bush Administration Snuff Film, whole-heartedly.

What steps have you taken to Make Them Pay Attention? The twenty-eight percenters, the media bloviators, and the folks who represent us in Washington — how do we reach them? How do we move the body politic?  Are there novel ways to reach people — things we can do every day or any day?

Now that the President admits authorizing torture — in addition to his admitted felonies about eavesdropping on Americans and his warmongering regardless of the opinion of the vast majority of Americans — how do we change the narrative this summer? How do we make Bush relevant again? 

Scarlet P, The Freeway Blogger, has his own extraordinary method — one he wishes you’d make ordinary in your own community. He reaches hundreds of thousands of people (maybe a million!) every time he freeway-blogs. He shows you how here. Even better, Scarlet P will join us tonight in the comments to talk about freeway-blogging — or turnpike- or interstate- or parkway- blogging for you East Coasters. It can be done.

Sometimes it takes more words to make the point, and one needs to write a swell resignation letter, as John Brady Kiessling did in 2003 when he left the State Department as this evil war was getting underway:

We are straining beyond its limits an international system we built with such toil and treasure, a web of laws, treaties, organizations, and shared values that sets limits on our foes far more effectively than it ever constrained America’s ability to defend its interests.

I am resigning because I have tried and failed to reconcile my conscience with my ability to represent the current U.S. Administration. I have confidence that our democratic process is ultimately self-correcting, and hope that in a small way I can contribute from outside to shaping policies that better serve the security and prosperity of the American people and the world we share.

Those of us who aren’t in a position from which we can so eloquently resign must make do with smaller measures, but these can be effective nonetheless.

On visits back east to see my mom, I have spent a couple of worthwhile afternoons at suburban DeeCee malls. As I stroll through bookstores, I turn all the wingnut welfare tomes face-in. It’s not got the adrenaline rush of freeway blogging, but arranging a bookstore’s shelves so no O’Reilly or Coulter or Goldberg peeks out can be a fun way to spend an afternoon. It changes the world of reading for the next browsers, and I’ve noticed that my rearranged bookscape can last for several days. Other guerrillas, outraged by the display space given to liars, haters, and idiot philosopers, make direct and frequent protests to store managers: Why are you prominently displaying this trash?

My next small project (I start this week) is business cards with "Impeach Bush & Cheney Now! Call 202-225-4965" (I’m sure by now you recognize the Speaker’s office number.) I’ll put these on windshields and on community bulletin boards; just a fifty-dollar investment for a thousand cards. If only ten percent of those who get a card make a call, I will have generated one hundred more calls to Nancy Pelosi’s office. Leave some at the community area of the public library, with the pilates and tax prep flyers, and put one in every eatery’s fishbowl promising a free lunch if your card is drawn. Leave one on the folding table at the launderette, and a couple on the deposit-writing tables at the credit union.  Slip a few between CDs at the record store, or between boxes of pasta at the supermarket.  Ask your favorite vendors at the farmers’ market if you can put a few on the corner of their tables.  Word gets around, and people start to talk.  Split the cost among five friends; each of you can quickly distribute 200 cards.

Soon you’ll have a mini-movement in your community — "have you seen these?" people will ask one another.  "Yes, I have — and I called!"  

Engage more of our own folks in the dialogue — if the major papers and cable gasbags won’t talk about what our leaders have done to our country, then we must do it ourselves.

Many fraternal and membership organizations in San Francisco have made their own statement on The War Regime, as has our Board of Supervisors. Have you asked your lodge or homeowners’ association to take a stand?  What about your condo board?  Alexis de Tocqueville wrote that our uniquely American quality is our tendency to band together, to organize ourselves for the betterment of our communities.  Has your local elected body made its views known, as Brattleboro did?  George W Bush hasn’t set foot in Vermont or San Francisco during his awful reign, probably for very good reason.

Let’s knit together a patchwork of shun that reaches from coast to coast!

Shall we organize a black-armband day on the tragic fifth anniversary of Mission Accomplished? It’s May First — coming up fast.

We are the change we’re waiting for.  Have you a plan?

{YouTube courtesy of Aboriginal Media}

If we elect a Democratic President this fall, then three years from now progressive Democrats will need to make a decision about a primary challenge for that President if certain metrics are not met.  I call this Accountability TwentyTwelve: regardless of how charmed you may be now with one or the other of our current candidates, and no matter how hard we all work to elect a Democrat to the White House this November, at what point do progressives realize we’ve been conned?

What are the unmet expectations you won’t forgive?  What are the unrealized hopes and dreams you’re unwilling to forget?  What meager accomplishments are you willing to let our President run on in 2012, unchallenged within our party for re-election?

What will get you to seek out someone to consider a challenge to the incumbent of our own party?  What conditions must pertain in order for you to believe that the new President, in whom we invested so much energy, has failed us?

Here’s my list.  Join me in the comments with yours.

1.  If US troops are still dying in the Middle East.  This is absolute.  If the new President hasn’t ended the occupation of Iraq, then I will support an intraparty challenger.

2.  If the current health care mess still prevails.  We need something better — in place and well underway.  It also needs to have a clear path to universal single-payer health care, or I will find someone to challenge the incumbent.

3.   If the Unitary Executive still exists.  I expect the next Democratic President to immediately restore the rule of law throughout the Executive Branch.  I also expect clear actions that show respect for checks and balances.  Absent a return to tripartite government, I will back a challenger.

4.  If our current energy and environmental situation is unchanged.  This is a rather sweeping requirement, as it should be.  I expect the posture of our Federal government to morph into something quite yet unseen, with huge tax incentives for green investment, the removal of tax breaks for carbon companies, and a Manhattan Project for energy independence. I want us to respect Mother Gaia in all we do.  If the current President hasn’t gotten any of that off the ground, I will support another’s candidacy in our party’s presidential primary. 

5. If Bush Era lawbreakers, philosophers, and profiteers roam free.  Yup, I want some amazing televised show trials of attorneys who politicized the justice department,  authorized torture, and invented the Fourth Branch.  I want the corporate executives who provided dirty food and water to our troops, built Iraqi jails that leaked human waste, and repainted Baghdad airport trucks and resold them to our country prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned.  I want those who twisted intelligence and manipulated our media exposed and impeached.  I want this question to ring loud throughout the land: "Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Federalist Society?"  Without these cathartic events, any attempt at a "bygones" Presidency will draw a challenger, and I will support that challenger.

6.  If the War on Terror is still being waged.  I want Osama bin Laden captured and put on trial for his crimes, but I also want Gitmo closed.  Let’s use the principles handed to us by our Founders to renew Americans’ belief in our constitutional compact.   Indict, try, convict, imprison.  If America is still living our false BushCo paradigm of fear, I will see the next President on the campaign trail.

7.  If the Federal Government still protects corporations from citizens, instead of the other way round.  I want a Labor Department that helps working people, not capital.  I want a State Department that conducts diplomacy, not gives orders.  I want an FDA that protects consumers of food and drugs, not their producers.  I want an Agriculture Department that promotes and supports sustainable farming, not corporate greed.  In short, I want a government of, for, and by the people.  Anything less than measurable progress is unacceptable, and will find me actively recruiting a challenger. 

8. If campaigns for federal office are still privately funded.  I expect the next President to propose and enact an exclusive system of full public financing for election to all federal offices.  Compromises in this arena will make me look elsewhere within our party for a presidential candidate in 2012.

9.  If FDR’s words have not been returned to a rightful place in our national discourse.  Sure, it will be great to hear the new President orate on issues new to our world since the New Deal.  But I also expect our next President to engage fully in the Class War that’s been waged on the non-upper classes since the end of the 1970s.  And if the new President is not comfortable quoting FDR’s 1936 Madison Square Garden speech, then I will find a candidate in my party who is. 

We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace — business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, war profiteering.

They had begun to consider the Government of the United States a mere appendage to their own affairs.  We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.

Never before in all our history have these factors been so united against one candidate as they stand today.  They are unanimous in their hate for me — and I welcome their hatred.

(Seventy-two years.  Holds up pretty well, don’t you think?)

What’s on your list?  What must our next President accomplish in the first three years in order for you to sign on to the Committee To Re-Elect?  I’ve got more ideas, and I’ll happily share them in comments, but these are my Big Nine for TwentyTwelve. 

What about yours?

PS — Comments about the current primary are out of place in this thread.  Yeah, I know it’s late nite, but let’s have some non-pie, non-poo fun. Cast our minds forward and measure the next Presidency for its first Accountability Moment.  There will be plenty of time for primary talk elsewhere. 

Mark Pera’s incumbent Bush Dog opponent, Dan Lipinksi, is horrible on immigration issues (and on a host of other progressive issues, like choice and the corporatist agenda), but the local grassroots pro-migrants’ rights coalition for Pera is huge, working in tandem with progressive national bloggers, through vehicles like the Blue Majority and Blue America. Blue America worked with some of the same grassroots coalitions in Chicago on immigration back when Rahm Emanuel made his horrible comments to candidates to throw immigrants under the bus.

This is vitally important as a model for the future, because building progressive power means building coalitions, locally and nationally, across demographic groups, among natural allies, toward a just and secure future for all Americans. Those of you frustrated with the national establishment of the Democratic Party can take heart, the more we all come together this way to unite with strength. No matter what happens with Pera’s uphill insurgent bid to replace an incumbent in a primary, this is important, long term infrastructure development.

As Howie Klein points out in a far more detailed piece:

There has never before been this type of alliance between the progressive community, the national netroots community, and the immigrant’s rights movement to punish an anti-immigrant incumbent Congressman. Lipinski is faced with a vigorous and well financed primary. The immigrant’s rights movement has organized candidate forums; educational mailings that informed the immigrant electorate of the incumbent’s anti-immigrant record; local and national fundraising; a staffed field operation with Mexican and Muslim voter i.d. and GOTV efforts; and targeted partisan mail that held the incumbent accountable for his anti-immigrant record.

You can donate to Mark Pera’s campaign here, but with the primary just days away, he really needs you to click here to volunteer to help him win on February 5, if you can get to Chicago.

Do it for Rahm (hi, Rahm)!

UPDATE: I see Mike Lux is on this too. 

"He should have bought those radios."

"The blood of these firefighters is on his hands."

"That’s the difference between real leadership and phony leadership."

You can run, Rudi, but you can’t hide.

{h/t dependablerenegade.com, dear WaterTiger}

They want to be able to keep the actual Democrats like Feingold outnumbered and shackled. They want to pass their GOP buddies’ Debt Peonage Bill (aka “Bankruptcy Reform”) and to put Peru under the NAFTA shadow without any fuss from us. Hell, why should they care about us? They can get more money from their corporate buddies than they do from little old us.

Which is exactly why we shouldn’t go away.

Oh, I’m not talking about just shutting up and being submissive ATMs for them. Or just giving up on politics altogether. Oh, no.

Here’s what I’m talking about:

We’ll “go away” from the DCCC and the DSCC, as they don’t need our money anyway, not with their corporate sugar daddies. Instead, we’ll back individual candidates, as well as outfits like DFA and BlueAmerica and Howard Dean’s DNC.

Why the DNC? Because it, you will note, lags in fundraising behind the D-Trip and DSCC. The corporate donors aren’t as fond of it as they are of the DCCC and DSCC, as they know that among other things, a fifty-state strategy ultimately means less reliance on corporate cash; Corporate America prefers the Democrats’ central and state orgs to be weak and unable to keep individual candidates from being co-opted and corrupted. (Dean’s longtime association with clean-elections groups like Public Campaign only makes them more skittish about backing him and the DNC.)

And for those who want to strike at the roots of the problem — namely, the intertwining of the Republicans with the US media (accelerated by the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987) and the way Big Business uses their money as a blanket to smother our voices — there is a bit of hope, and some options for action:

– MSNBC has, after axing Donohue (who was their biggest ratings draw) and suffering a series of right-wing ratings disasters before lucking into a ratings bonanza with Keith Olbermann, finally has realized that actually obeying market demand will make them more money than will non-stop wingnut-welfare promotion of right-wing blowhards who get beat by local public-access programming: They’re giving Rosie O’Donnell a show.

– CNN and FOX and the rest will ignore it, and the print media will shove this deep inside page B83 next to the want ads, but that doesn’t mean it’s not big news: Brent Wilkes is going down. Wilkes, remember, is one of the key players in the huge GOP corruption machine run by such luminaries as Jack Abramoff, Tom “K Street Project” DeLay and Grover “Drown ‘Em in the Bathtub” Norquist; the lurid Duke Cunningham hookers-and-bribes scandal is the very tip of this sleaze iceberg. The rule of law still exists, and is fighting back now that the Republicans have lost ground in the last year.

– Go check out the fine folks at Public Campaign. I think you’ll like what they’ve already done, and what they plan on doing.

– If you live in a state where elections are happening today, go see who’s on the ballot and then vote for the progressive choices. Yeah, they may be just city councilmembers now, but they can go on to become state and national leaders — and you can determine right now who goes on to the next level. [UPDATE:  Can you tell when I started working on this draft?  As everyone knows, the elections were yesterday, and we did pretty well.]

Now get out there and piss off some corporatists!

Did you realize, this week, that nothing’s getting fixed soon? Did you realize, this week, that things are seriously awry in The Village? Did you realize, this week, that allies inside the Beltway — those we had counted on in our fight to reclaim the levers of government — might not be such great allies after all?

I did.

This week, I re-learned the meaning of The Long Haul. This week, I learned that changes we want to implement won’t occur with just one more spasm of BlueAmerica success accompanied by the election of a Democratic President in 2008. We are not building a movement to succeed in fourteen short months in removing all the vestiges of authoritarianism and fascism from our shores. Not when students and preachers are marching, this week, in Louisiana, to free a young man from a justice system that’s simply racist and wrong.

We are building a movement that will need to last generations. We must build our movement strong and hardy, to pass down to Americans just born and not-even-born. We must broaden our movement, to ensure we have alliances across generations, across race, across workplaces, across gender and faith.

Why? Why won’t our progressive movement succeed immediately? Why must we create and nurture a people-powered movement that is national in scope and rich in hue? Why must children today be engaged and taught that our country belongs to the people, and the people always have a voice in how our country acts? Why can’t we just put all our effort into the 2008 election and hope for the best?

For one reason, because these United States Senators (who voted for all of us to sit down and shut up!) will be in office until at least January 2013 — when our next President is inaugurated for a second term or our next President’s successor is inaugurated:

Democrats
Cardin, Benjamin L. (D-MD)
Carper, Thomas R. (D-DE)
Casey, Robert P., Jr. (D-PA)
Conrad, Kent (D-ND)
Feinstein, Dianne (D-CA)
Klobuchar, Amy (D-MN)
Kohl, Herb (D-WI)
McCaskill, Claire (D-MO)
Nelson, Bill (D-FL)
Nelson, E. Benjamin (D-NE)
Tester, Jon (D-MT)
Webb, Jim (D-VA)

Republicans
Barrasso, John (R-WY)
Corker, Bob (R-TN)
Ensign, John (R-NV)
Hatch, Orrin G. (R-UT)
Hutchison, Kay Bailey (R-TX)
Kyl, Jon (R-AZ)
Lott, Trent (R-MS)
Lugar, Richard G. (R-IN)
Snowe, Olympia J. (R-ME)

Independents
Lieberman, Joseph I. (ID-CT)

Not Voting:
Cantwell, Maria (D-WA)

Every single one of these United States Senators was just elected in November 2006. Each one of them voted for us to sit down and shut up. Do you think their views will be radically changed by the election of more BlueAmericans to the House of Representatives in 2008, or by the election of a Democratic President? I don’t. I think we learned their true colors, especially with regard to the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech: sit down and shut up. So, in five years, in November 2012, we will have an opportunity to rid ourselves of the last of the sit-down-and-shut-up caucus in the United States Senate.

Or — they will have had five long years to redeem themselves in our eyes.

Will that signal complete victory for our movement? Will that mean we have succeeded? Is that when The Long Haul ends victoriously? Or will that simply mean we can then Stand Up and Shout? I believe The Long Haul actually begins when we have a national legislature unafraid to stand up for free speech, unafraid to stand up for habeas corpus, unafraid to stand up for troop respite, unafraid to challenge the unitary executive, unafraid to stop election-stealing, unafraid to say that spying in America, on Americans, is wrong and must stop, unafraid to challenge the racism of our justice system. Only when the Senate is purged of the sit-down-and-shut-up caucus can The Long Haul begin. As long as there are Senators who voted for American citizens to sit down and shut up serving in the United States Senate, our work cannot truly begin.

Because the work of The Long Haul is all about Standing Up and Shouting Aloud: this is the People-Powered Movement, and we’re here to take back our country. So, teach your children well. Educate a niece or nephew. Be sure a Scout troop gets the correct civics lesson for its merit badges. Become a Big Brother or a Big Sister — and help your protege understand what makes our country work: People Power.

We’re in it for The Long Haul. And The Long Haul hasn’t even really started yet — these are just our First Throes.

Bring it on!

As Booman said, “If there is a case that can be made for a big tent within the Democratic Party that includes some very conservative members, there is no case for members that lie to us about how they will vote and then contemptuously call us naïve.”

Jerry McNerney is a big netroots hero, and that’s why his recent comments — which seemed to further a distorted Republican narrative that somehow this wasn’t the bloodiest summer ever in Iraq, and that if only the Democrats would stop being so partisan and reach across the aisle, all the problems of the war could be solved — was so disappointing. The people who supported him on Blue America did so largely because of his strong anti-war stance. We invited local blogger and McNerney constituent Babaloo, who worked tirelessly to help get him elected, to blog about it here and here.

We were under a lot of pressure to take McNerney off the Blue America page, but we wanted to give him the opportunity to come on the site and speak to our community about his comments. It is to his credit that he is willing to do so. It’s not only a brave move for him, it’s a really important moment for Blue America as we seek to maintain the relationship with candidates and keep the lines of communication open after the election is over. I hope you’ll join us today for a special edition of Blue America with Congressman Jerry McNerney at 6pm PT/9pm ET here on Firedoglake.