|
||||
|
||||
|
Saturday, May 17, 2008
|
||||
|
|||||||||
|
|
|||||
|
|||||
Change |
|
 |
|
| Change | |
|
by Jennifer Vanasco -
SGN Contributing Writer
Right now, you know a lot more than I do. It's one of the strange things about being a weekly columnist: I write a few days before you read. Which means that if major news breaks early in the week - like, I don't know, 24 states holding primary elections - then the column can't cover it. So, Reader, I envy you. I envy you because you know what I need to wait 48 hours to learn. You already know if Clinton swept the states, or if Obama did, or if they are still fighting neck and neck. You know if McCain is the Republican nominee, or if Romney is still in it, or if the evangelical charmer Huckabee has made a miraculous comeback. I'm still in the dark. But there is one thing I do know, from where I am right now. And I don't need a crystal ball to know it, because it's clear. Change isn't coming in November. Change is happening now. Obama's campaign message has been change, and for a little while it was also the message of Clinton and Edwards. It turns out that this election season, the message is enough. Change, the campaigns said. And change happened. Whether the nominee is Clinton or Obama makes very little difference in the policy sense. They are orthodox liberals and agree on most things. Mainly, they have different styles, and so the public is choosing (or has chosen) whether they want a visionary or an executive. In fact, Obama and Clinton may have very well already brought about the revolution they were hoping would happen once they took the White House. Because the country is becoming Bluer. The Republicans just look mean when they talk about building a wall to keep immigrants out. And their feeble defense of the president's policy in Iraq looks ridiculous. So the country is turning to Democrats in record numbers. In state after state, independents are joining registered Democrats (where they can) to vote on the blue ticket. The candidacies of Obama and Clinton (and of Edwards) created an enormous amount of excitement around the country. I think that's partly because the Democrats were showing the face of America - a black man, a white woman, a Latino man (Richards), plus a sprinkling of white candidates. Diversity is what America looks like, and voters know it. It galvanized them. In turn, Democrats have started controlling the American conversation on policy and politics. In the past few weeks, every time I rode the subway or walked along the street, I would hear small groups of people talking about issues raised in the campaign - always framed in a Democratic way. People are talking about universal health care seriously. They're talking about poverty seriously. Ordinary people on their way to work or pick up the kids from school are discussing national service credits for college students, different ways of withdrawing from Iraq, various strategies of energy independence, competing blueprints to ameliorate poverty. They're talking like Democrats. And this, I think, is good for Gays and Lesbians - even if it's not our issues they are discussing. It is social conservatives who are most invested in keeping our full rights from Gays and Lesbians. They don't want us in the military, they don't want us in marriages, they don't want us to adopt children or raise children or have anything to do with children. They don't care if we get fired from our jobs for being Gay, or get beaten up in the streets. It is social conservatives, too, who have been trying to use our issues - primarily Gay marriage - to mobilize a campaign of hate against us. But when Democrats take control of the conversation (as they have been doing, as they have done), then straight Americans - even conservative straight Americans - will be able to look at us, not through the far Right's glasses of hate and fear, but the Left's kindly spectacles of acceptance. This is true no matter who the Democratic nominee is. The national conversation has shifted to the left. And it's not even November. Just by running, Clinton, Obama and Edwards have changed the American conversation, because they got Americans of all ages and genders and races and sexual orientations excited about the possibilities of politics. So I don't know who the nominee is. But I don't need to. Because change isn't coming. Change is here. Jennifer Vanasco is an award-winning, syndicated columnist. E-mail her at jennifer.vanasco@gmail.com. She blogs daily at the Gay political site VisibleVote08.com. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 post your own information onthe Seattle Gay Blog |
 |
copyright Seattle Gay News - DigitalTeamWorks 2007