Winter of Malcontents
A to-do list for the Left
•Get used to the fact that the great majority of Americans loathe the idea of gay marriage — and probably individual gays as well. Christopher Bowman, a San Francisco Log Cabin delegate to the Republican National Convention, predicted in August that Bush’s anti–gay marriage stand would cost the president 4 million votes of angry gay Republicans, their friends and relatives. But it wasn’t necessarily 4 million evangelicals who made up the difference for Bush — just 4 million people who hate gays. (This is why the Democratic Party was so afraid to embrace black civil rights after WWII — it would’ve cost them the Deep South.) Start thinking about how much it would bother you if the Democrats come out against gay marriage in 2008. Maybe it’s not your party after all, and maybe gays will be better off fighting for their rights in the streets the way blacks and suffragettes did before them.
•Recognize that this was the most important election of our generation and we lost it. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, or that these bad times will pass, the pendulum will eventually swing the other way, etc. Because the pinball machine is rigged to stay this way for a long while now, and in the meantime it’s going to get a lot hotter and dirtier down here on Planet Earth. Ever wonder what would have happened if Herbert Hoover had been re-elected? Or how you would have behaved during the McCarthy era or the reign of Jim Crow? You’ve now got four years to find out.
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