Agreed, But... (4.00 / 3)

Sometimes, a rose is just a rose, and a mistake is just a mistake.

It also shows that a campaign is just a campaign, and not the Second Coming.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

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by: Paul Rosenberg @ Sat Oct 27, 2007 at 20:38:31 PM UTC

You are a brave one! (4.00 / 1)

But your point is well taken. Having made the initial 'mistake' Obama's organization compounds it with a second.

I definitely do not think he's ready to be President. If he cannot run a campaign, and this is not his campaign's first egregarious screwup, how can I trust him to pick a good cabinet and run the executive effectively?

Of course he could always get his pal Joey the Liarman to help out.........

I suppose.

Peace, Health and Prosperity for Everyone.

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by: ACitizen @ Sat Oct 27, 2007 at 21:41:49 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

On Purpose. (0.00 / 0)

As a gay man, I believe that Obama knew exactly what he was doing with McClurkin.  He was attempting to use gays as a wedge issue with which to appeal to African-American homophobes in SC. 

After all, the tactic worked well-enough for Bush in 2004.

Further, I am surprised that this is being met with such nonchalance by the Democratic party.

What if Obama was campaigning on his environmental policy and he included a speaker who held the position that global warming could be fixed through prayer?

What if Obama was campaigning on healthcare policy and he included a speaker who held the position that illness could be ended through prayer?

Would the Democrats be this apathetic? 

Finally if Obama really believed in his big tent, he should include David Duke on his tour. 

Let's see how THAT plays in South Carolina!

Audacity, my ass!

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by: JoeCHI @ Sat Oct 27, 2007 at 21:10:12 PM UTC

Jeepers! (0.00 / 0)

I'm glad you posted this comment.  The next time someone accuses me of being anti-Obama just cuz I don't drink the kool-aid, I'll have to point them to this!

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

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by: Paul Rosenberg @ Sun Oct 28, 2007 at 00:12:35 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Your examples are disingenuous (4.00 / 1)

What if Obama was campaigning on his environmental policy and he included a speaker who held the position that global warming could be fixed through prayer?

This is kind of an odd attempt at an analogy.  McClurkin was, if it was after all a vetting error, not exactly chosen for his position on homosexuality --- nor was he going to give a position on policy.  The man was going to sing for a gospel concert.

Constantly repeating the David Duke analogy isn't very helpful either.  Should all public endorsements be repudiated from people of faith who happen to believe that you should "love the sinner and hate the sin"?  Regardless, the analogy is phoney.  No one is inciting violence or claiming inferiority.  I'm not going to defend McClurkin, but if he was willing to compromise his own views to support an obviously pro-gay candidate like Obama, that's his problem not ours.

One Million Strong --- Join up!

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by: psericks @ Sun Oct 28, 2007 at 00:37:30 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

It does say something IF the decision to hire a white pastor was not really a mistake. (4.00 / 1)

Fast-forward to the middle of this controversy.  Obama has a tour announced with a bunch of gospel singers, at least one of whom is virulently anti-gay, and the target of which is a large voting constituency in South Carolina.  If Obama chooses a solution that pisses off these gospel singers, they could actually screw him over.  They have leverage over him; if he drops McClurkin, they could quit en masse which would be VERY embarrassing.  If he puts a significant black pro-gay figure on the stage with these gospel singers, and gives that directly opposing message equal status with theirs, they could also object and quit en masse.  I have to imagine that some of these people would have refused to share a stage with Keith Boykin or some of the other leaders of the black gay community.  And if they threaten to quit and Obama goes ahead and schedules him anyway, then he's seen as having chosen sides (against the constituency he wanted to court, by the way) which is exactly what he doesn't want right now.

On the other hand, schedule a white gay leader and these black anti-gay leaders are a lot less likely to object.  Because a white gay leader on stage helps to confirm one of their key arguments in this running struggle, which is that gayness is a cultural contamination from whiteness, and isn't a legitimate part of the black community.  Having a white guy lecture a black audience on how they must tolerate gays plays perfectly into the hands of the original constituency, the black anti-gay crowd.  It's the one gesture that Obama could make to get the HRC off his back, that would also not piss off his original touring partners and the constituency they represent.  The white guy happened precisely because having a white guy reconfirms the gay=white narrative, and therefore is acceptable to these black anti-gay leaders.  It wasn't a clumsy mistake, it was a deliberate strategy to thread this needle and avoid a livid HRC on the left and a livid South Carolina constituency on the right.

Only problem is, he threaded this needle by deliberately furthering a truly awful, false, and destructive argument, namely the gay=white argument.  He chose a white guy because it would set up that argument and therefore would not anger, and in fact would kindof help, the black anti-gay crowd.  And to deliberately further a really evil argument like that is, well, let's just say it does actually show something about the character of the campaign, rather than just that it is composed of humans and is capable of making mistakes.

Now, in all seriousness I want to say that I don't actually know that the white preacher decision was done on purpose as I've alleged here.  I wrote it this way mostly because I'm in a hurry and didn't want to have to write in the conditional the whole way though the post. But, I do think it's an obvious logical possibility that this was not a mistake but was rather a well-crafted strategy.  And I think it's worth looking into. 

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by: texas dem @ Sat Oct 27, 2007 at 21:28:24 PM UTC

My sense (0.00 / 0)

...is that the Obama campaign reached out to Rev. Andy Sidden, because Obama had prior ties to him ---- Sidden is a member of Obama's denomination, The United Church of Christ --- a denomination that, remember performs gay marriages.

One Million Strong --- Join up!

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by: psericks @ Sun Oct 28, 2007 at 00:43:35 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

What it says to me... (4.00 / 3)

...is that the campaign was trying to brush us (queerfolk) off and didn't even take the time to do it right.

I probably have better things to do with my time than this.

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by: julie @ Sat Oct 27, 2007 at 22:51:48 PM UTC

I Don't Quite Get Why (0.00 / 0)

I do think that there is a general "we know better than you" attitude that pervades the Obama-sphere.  But unlike, say, the war on terra, where there's a powerful bipartisan insider establishment to be kissed up to, I just don't see the reason for him to alienate folks in the base.  And thus, while I understand folks feeling like you do, I just don't see why it would be so.

Can you give me a plausible reason?

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

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by: Paul Rosenberg @ Sun Oct 28, 2007 at 00:17:32 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

You're not pervaded with it? (0.00 / 0)

One Million Strong --- Join up!

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by: psericks @ Sun Oct 28, 2007 at 00:44:56 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Sorry, but I've heard this charge before (4.00 / 1)

and it kind of irritates me.

I tend to think that if you make the plunge and support a candidate, it's probably because you think they're right, leaving trying to convince other people a natural byproduct, no?

Are Clinton supporters in the blogosphere any less adamant?  Edwards supporters any less quick to start a fight?

I tend to like bloggers that are forthright and genuine about their opinions.

One Million Strong --- Join up!

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by: psericks @ Sun Oct 28, 2007 at 01:01:39 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Conviction =/= Arrogance (0.00 / 0)

The fact that you miss the distinction is rather telling, IMHO.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

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by: Paul Rosenberg @ Sun Oct 28, 2007 at 01:46:42 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Humble? (0.00 / 0)

Humble? You wouldn't know humble if it bit you on the ass.  But it'll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls, old man, 'cause your style of politics is about to get the old heave-ho, and thank God for that.  It has been a bitter and abysmal failure from Vietnam on forward.

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by: DD2 @ Sun Oct 28, 2007 at 01:57:06 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Pot. Kettle. Black. Dude. (0.00 / 0)

Pot. Kettle. Black.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

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by: Paul Rosenberg @ Sun Oct 28, 2007 at 04:43:31 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

That was basically my point (0.00 / 0)

I think people are too quick to toss the accusation of arrogance around when dealing people who are just genuinely interested in and invested in a candidate. 

(I deserved the snappy response though, my comment was kind of out of line, sorry about that.)

One Million Strong --- Join up!

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by: psericks @ Sun Oct 28, 2007 at 02:21:06 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

My Point Is That You Have To Offer Evidence (4.00 / 1)

I certainly agree that when people care enough about a candidate to volunteer for a campaign, they tend to show a high degree of commitment and investment.  But there's a difference between that and a willful blindness towards mistakes and shortcomings.  I think that this example is clearly indicative of an arrogance on the part of Obama's campaign, and you can't simply say that all campaigns are like that.  You have to offer some evidence.

Now, I know that all campaigns tend to exhibit this to a certain extent (that's why we need evidence, to suss out what's really going on).  There are volunteers--and often, more importantly, staffers, who cannot admit to any faults.

But a good candidate will deflate such hero worship, and examining specific examples helps distinguish ingrained arrogance--which can be deadly in a President--from the more incidental kind that comes from hero worship.  I saw this quite close up with the 1988 Jackson campaign, and it was one of the most positive aspects of the campaign.  Jackson certainly had/has a big ego.  You can't run for President without one.  But he also has the capacity--nurtured by his genuine Christianity--to see himself as a flawed human being, as needful of foregiveness as any other human being.  And when the chips were down, that was his greatest strength, because his message was, at bottom, that we all need such foregiveness.

When he lead people--especially young people, in saying, "I am somebody," he was not preaching that they were perfect, but that they were worthy of their own self-respect, and that that was a foundation for becoming someone better than they already were.  He was not sugarcoating things for them.  He was not pretending that they had no work to do on themselves.  And he had the moral authority to say this, precisely because he was willing to say it about himself as well.

Now, I'm not saying that Obama doesn't have this awareness as well.  But I am saying that he doesn't communicate it very effectively through his campaign.  Indeed, almost the only Obama supporter I've gotten that sense from is Jenifer Fernandez Ancona.  And that's a real problem that I don't see with the Edwards campaign, for example--not that it doesn't have its own problems.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

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by: Paul Rosenberg @ Sun Oct 28, 2007 at 04:40:30 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Obama's effort to reach evangelicals (4.00 / 1)

I have to disagree with this:

Claiming after the fact that this means the Obama campaign is some great big tent where people of all stripes come together and forge new alliances ignores that this only became an issue because of a mistake. The Obama campaign might indeed be such a big tent, but the Obama campaign did not intentionally invite McClurkin to sing in order to have a coalition building conversation between the GLBT community and more stridently homophobic members the African-American clergy.

I think you might be missing the point of the Think on These Things' post. 

No, the campaign was clearly not inviting McClurkin to have a conversation about homophobia, but it's obvious that the gospel tour was part of Obama's aggressive effort as a presidential candidate (Saddleback Church being the primary example) to reach out to the evangelical community --- of which dialogue about contraception, AIDS, and homophobia has been a prominent part.

And Obama's theme of trying to set aside wedge social issues to lure evangelicals to participate in campaigns on the issues that we can all agree on (like Warren on AIDS) is vintage-Obama circa the 2004 DNC speech.

One Million Strong --- Join up!

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by: psericks @ Sun Oct 28, 2007 at 00:56:09 AM UTC

Agreed (4.00 / 2)

And this unrealistic behavior is precisely why I neither trust Obama as a candidate nor consider him qualified to be President. Sometimes you can't square the circle. Dude keeps trying, unsuccessfully, having taken a false lesson from his personal history.

Can it happen here?

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by: janinsanfran @ Sun Oct 28, 2007 at 04:31:56 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Maybe the mistake is calling it a mistake (4.00 / 4)

Poster Dee over at MyDD had something very good to say on the issue:

If this is truly about confronting those who assault liberal ideals and values, when are we going to see protests outside of local, state and national campaigns that solicit the support of Catholic clergy?  Certainly, being against the reproductive rights of women is as much a liberal sin as being against homosexuality?

And let's not stop there.  Let's retroactively condemn the organizers of Coretta Scott King's funeral as well the prominent attendees, including Bill and Hillary Clinton, who either didn't properly vet the church host, Bishop Eddie Long, or didn't care that he lead an anti-gay march of thousands in Atlanta, GA in 2004.  Julian Bond, one of Coretta Scott King's closest friends, former Mayor of Atlanta and US Ambassador and current Chairman of the NAACP, protested and did not attend the services for that very reason, but it didn't move any of the Democrats who attended and could have certainly used their influence to change the venue.  Instead, we saw Hillary Clinton give a kiss and Bill Clinton give a bear hug to their old friend, Bishop Long.  What about condemning the laundry list of Georgia Democrats and national Democrats who have shared the stage with Bishop Long and solicited his help SINCE then?  BTW, he has a weekly Sunday broadcast on TV ONE (the only Black owned cable network), owned and operated by Cathy Hughes, a Clinton supporter and fundraiser.  Side note: Cathy Hughes has been an outspoken critic of Senator Obama since he helped defeat MD Republican and former LT Gov. Michael Steele in the 2006 mid-term elections whom she endorsed.

If this is truly about keeping the Democratic Party free from homophobics, then let's keep it going!  In fact, let's target the Congressional Black Caucus, particularly those in southern districts because they all have benefitted from a connection to or relationship with Black clergy who share the view that homosexuality is sin of choice.  And if you like, we can make this a Jewish issue as well because none of them have had a problem with sharing the stage with Louis Farrakhan as recently as this summer.

The idea that this is some huge vetting mistake which speaks volumes about his ability as President is absurd.  In your quote of the Advocate interview, you of course leave out the second paragraph of Obama's answer:

(Obama): Having said that, we viewed this simply as an opportunity to have a gospel concert as part of our overall outreach, and since he was singing at a concert along with a number of other artists, as opposed to being a spokesperson for us, probably it didn't undergo the same kind of vet that someone who was serving as a surrogate for me might have.

And that's really the point of this non-issue.  McClurkin is there as a Gospel singer, not an anti-Gay advocate, nor a stand-in for Obama.  I understand the ones who are criticizing him the most are not doing it out of anything more than seizing on a Gotcha moment to try to diminish Obama's campaign out of unthinking partisan politics.  But the Gay community should not let itself get caught up in that wordplay which seeks to diminish undoubtedly the best candidate as an advocate for their issue and their civil rights.  As Obama quite rightly says later on in the Advocate interview you quote from:

...Part of the reason that we have had a faith outreach in our campaigns is precisely because I don't think the LGBT community or the Democratic Party is served by being hermetically sealed from the faith community and not in dialogue with a substantial portion of the electorate, even though we may disagree with them.

Part of what I have done in my campaign and in my career is be willing to go to churches and talk to ministers and tell them exactly what I think. And go straight at some of these issues of homophobia that exist in the church in a way that no other candidate has done. I believe that's important. We can try to pretend these issues don't exist and then be surprised when a gay marriage amendment pops up and is surprisingly successful in a state. I think the better strategy is to take it head on and we've got to show up. These people of faith may be operating in part out of unfamiliarity, or they may be insular in terms of how they're viewing LGBT issues, they may not understand how what they say may be hurtful, and the only way for us to be able to communicate that is to show up.

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by: DD2 @ Sun Oct 28, 2007 at 00:57:42 AM UTC

Obama = "undoubtedly the best" advocate for gays? (0.00 / 0)

"But the Gay community should not let itself get caught up in that wordplay which seeks to diminish undoubtedly the best candidate as an advocate for their issue and their civil rights."

How is Obama "undoubtedly" the best candidate for those who support gay rights? He, like Hillary and Edwards, opposes gay marriage. What gay issues is he any better on?

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by: Jason C. @ Sun Oct 28, 2007 at 06:23:11 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

He's been out front of Hillary on DOMA (4.00 / 1)

I also think his willingness to visit churches and raise issues like contraception and homophobia, at Saddleback for example, is a great sign of leadership.

One Million Strong --- Join up!

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by: psericks @ Sun Oct 28, 2007 at 12:10:08 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

A rose may be a desert rose, too... (0.00 / 0)

"I don't think that this mean's Obama is any less dedicated to reaching out to any of these groups, and I certainly don't think it means Obama's campaign is bridging any major divides within the progressive ecosystem."
Well, ok, but that's not the point. The campaign made a mistake, ok. That's the fault of the staffers. And then, when faced swith the feedback that made this a very important topic, the campaign made another mistake. hmm. Only the staffer's fault? come on, who's in charge here? Don't you think that Obama was personally involved when the campaign sought a way out? If he was, he personally made a grave error of judgment, and this certainly is a major point of concern when a guy wants to become president. If he wasn't involved, what kind of leadership is that? This certainly is a major point of concern when a guy wants to become president, too.

One way or the other, this mistake makes the rose look bad, leading people to ask if it's really the real thing. Because, when a rose is only a desert rose, under pressure it will turn into an unimpressive pile of sand.
:-/

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by: Gray @ Sun Oct 28, 2007 at 02:07:25 AM UTC

YES (4.00 / 1)

Another shameless plagiarism of the popular series "simple answers to simple questions".
Hat tip to Atrios.
:D

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by: Gray @ Sun Oct 28, 2007 at 02:11:48 AM UTC

The positive aspect of seeing mistakes (0.00 / 0)

It shows that Obama can stay true to his principles even under media pressure.

Which is important because thats essential to winning elections in my opinion. 

Watching how someone responds to mistakes is important.

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by: Astera @ Sun Oct 28, 2007 at 17:50:22 PM UTC

Re: The positive aspect of seeing mistakes (0.00 / 0)

"Watching how someone responds to mistakes is important."
Indeed. And Obama fumbled. Now, where's that positive aspect???
:-/

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by: Gray @ Mon Oct 29, 2007 at 13:04:46 PM UTC

[ Parent ]