So Now We Know

Sorry, Dora.  Maybe if you were a lesbian...

So we had two cloture votes in the Senate today.

Several GOP members crossed the aisle to vote for cloture on DADT repeal and lo and behold, our military has become FAAAAAAbulous.

But when it came time to vote for cloture on the DREAM act, not enough GOP members voted for cloture for it to pass.

Now we know.  The GOP hates brown people more than Teh Ghey.

Several Democrats also failed to vote for cloture and as per usual, Markos is spouting off about refusing to help Jon Tester get re-elected, how he's ashamed for supporting him in 2006, and - the piece de stupidite - he hopes he loses in 2012.  Because, as we all know, a Democrat who doesn't vote the way Markos wants to all of the time is worse than a Republican who won't vote the way Markos wants to at any time.

Liberte!  Egalite!  Purite!

(psst, Markos... I know Hispanic issues are really important to you.  But it's not about you.)

Anyway, back to the repeal of DADT and the failure to repeal DREAM, while I think that there may have been some strategic voting going on among the Tester-Hagan group of Dems - it wasn't going to pass regardless of their votes - the fact remains that a majority of Democrats voted for cloture and a majority of Republicans didn't.

So, the GOP has once again decided that sticking to their aging, white, tea party fringe is more important than doing ANYTHING to reach out to the largest growing ethnic group in the country.  Nelson and Pryor voting against cloture doesn't surprise me, because they really are barely Democrats at this point.  I guess Pryor got his instructions from the Perdue family back in Arkansas that they don't want any fast track to citizenship for these husky hued illegals who pluck all those fucking chickens.  But it would have been nice to have cleaner "optics" on this.  If it had only been Nelson and Pryor, you could say, "Yeah, but those guys are assholes."  And everyone would nod and shrug and say, "Ya gotta point there."  Tester and Hagan muddy the optics a little.

And the optics should be this: George Bush doesn't care about black people.  The GOP doesn't like Hispanics.  Harry Fucking Reid even understands that Hispanics are the key to any electoral coalition in the 21st century.  And Harry is not anyone's idea of a genius.  Karl Rove understood this, too, and tried to get Bush behind the comprehensive, sane immigration reform that most Americans - including many Hispanics - want.  Reform that helps close the border, but also provides some way to legitimize the millions of Hispanics who come to this country to do work that we won't do.

The GOP can only squeeze so many elections out of the Red Chili Menace before the tide of demographics swamp them.

Interestingly, they seem to have given up at least a little of the gay-bashing that was the singular focus of right wing bigotry for the last 15 years.  (Well, that and Muslims.)  DADT repeal is pretty starkly drawn along generational lines.  The younger you are, the more likely you are to support equal rights of any kind for LGBT Americans.  I don't think Olympia Snowe got any younger recently, unless the rumors of her bathing in the blood of baby harp seals in a pentagram shaped hot tub are true.  So what gives?

I think some credit needs to go to four distinct players in this.

First, Obama put the pressure on Congress to do the right thing by repealing rather than relying on a stop-loss order.  And the haste to get the tax cut deal finished help get this passed.  By forcing the tax cut issue through, he freed up enough time to get DADT repealed.

Second, yeah, Joe Lieberman.  I still despise the guy for the blatant lies he told to get re-elected in 2006, not to mention the mendacity he showed prior to that or the fecklessness he showed throughout the past four years.  But he deserves a great deal of credit for this.  When I am going door to door for Chris Murphy trying to unseat Holy Joe, I will concede that on one issue, Lieberman finally came around.

Third, the military brass finally conceded that very few of the troops give a damn, and frankly, for some reason, most of the Arabic translators are gay and they're kind of important.  They ultimately let the facts talk, not their own pre-judgments.

Finally, all the activists who worked tirelessly to get this repealed.  Look, this is about bigotry.  It's about believing that one set of people are less worthy of the same treatment as other people.

Eighteen years ago, this issue nearly sank the Clinton Administration before it had pulled away from the dock. Today, John Ensign voted to repeal DADT.  John.  Ensign.

By the time my kids get old enough to marry, I imagine the majority of Americans will live in states where same sex couples can get married.

That's a stunning change.

So, a good day.  It could have been better.  The DREAM Act should have been a no brainer.  But we need to relish the victories we have.

If the Senate ratifies the START treaty before heading home, maybe even Kos will acknowledge that Obama made a silk purse from a duck's ear.

Sorry, that was really lame.