Good Luck With That


At what has been described as an LGBT DNC fundraiser (transcript from Pam's House Blend), on Wednesday night President Obama listed his accomplishments, inspired with rhetoric, and added

And with your help, if you keep up the fight, and if you will devote your time and your energies to this campaign one more time, I promise you we will write another chapter in that story. And we are going to leave a new generation with a brighter future and a more hopeful future. And I'll be standing there, right there with you.



If you will devote your time and your energies to this campaign one more time, I promise you we will write another chapter in that story. Perhaps the LGBT community ought to get that in writing. It sounds a little like another promise, this one made by Senator Obama during his presidential campaign (video, below):

If American workers are being denied their right to organize when I'm in the White House, I will put on a comfortable pair of shoes and I will walk on that picket line with you as president of the United States.

With the attack on workers' rights in full bloom in Wisconsin, Democratic legislators slipping out of state to avoid enabling Governor Walker and his GOP allies to crush organized labor, and unions organizing numerous rallies, President Obama at first remained silent. Eventually, he noted "seems like more of an assault upon unions and added "everybody's gotta make adjustments," but didn't get anywhere near the picket line- there or anywhere else Repub governors are trying to demolish the rights of public sector workers and the middle class.

At the time, Michael Monk, blogging on Firedoglake, commented

Well, will we see it? Or will it end up like the closing of Guantanamo Bay, a public option, or restoring constitutional checks and balances? He has given credence lately to false framing from the right with his freezing of pay of government workers, extension of the Bush tax cuts, a “deficit commission,” more budget cutting, and lip service to looking into deregulation when deregulation led us to financial collapse. Will he find those shoes?

No, he didn't find those shoes. And Obama's audience should consider carefully his exact words: if you will devote your time and your energies to this campaign one more time, I promise you we will write another chapter in that story. The President didn't say that he would help or "write another chapter." He said if they would devote time and energy, he would promise them. Sure, he'll promise them. He just won't deliver. (It depends on what the meaning of "is" is- or in this case, "I promise you.")

But maybe a second-term President Obama "will write another chapter in that story," inasmuch as same-sex marriage gradually has become far more popular with the public and by then Obama may have sufficiently "evolved" to support the LGBT cause. Perhaps a large influx of campaign cash from the gay community will have the salutary impact upon President Obama as did the generous funding of his campaign by Wall Street in 2008.

But anything short of huge campaign checks (and maybe even then, given there will be no third campaign) won't get it done. Neither work on behalf of the campaign nor fervent public support will engender from the Administration support for its cause the LGBT community yearns for. Just ask John Edwards.