Obama's Gay Rights Shuffle

I am definitely disappointed by Obama's gay rights shuffle. But I understand it, and I may not support his decision to backburner issues like DOMA and Don't Ask Don't Tell, I get why he's doing it.

I've been reading Rick Perlstein's book Nixonland and it gives me pause on what could be seen as "overreaching" on this issue. Nixonland opens with the 1964 election of LBJ. At the time, the conventional wisdom was that the Republican party, which had been hijacked by its far-right elements in the Goldwater faction, was dying out - a rump party at best. We'd reached an age of national consensus and the future would be one of progress in Civil Rights, in eliminating poverty and creating, all puns intended, a Great Society.

Sound familiar?

While attitudes have shifted on gay rights, the support that we see in liberal states like Massachusetts is still soft in a lot of other states. I think many of us who don't live in "Real America" forget this. Politics in America is about consensus, building one that can last for generations. The Republicans did this in 1968 by appealing to Lower-Class Whites on cultural issues, saying "It doesn't matter that you are broke, the real problem is that your privileges as a white man are being taken away by minorities, and uppity feminists, and egg-headed liberals, and pointy-headed professors." They forged an unlikely coalition that lasted a generation based on the backlash against LBJ's righteous push to eliminate a legacy of apartheid in America.

Now we're at a crossroads of a new consensus, one that is Center-Left, that may actually give us national health insurance, that may ultimately lead to marriage equality. I believe that Obama sees this as his legacy - creating a new consensus that can carry us to the middle of this century and make a lasting change in our attitudes toward government, markets and people. If he chooses to take things slowly, I believe that his plan is to make sure he forges that coalition first, before he smashes it against a backlash that could easily be marshaled by those on the Right who value power over principle. Do we want to risk 50 years of progressive change for immediate gratification on this - which could easily be rolled back by a new administration run by Gingrich, or Palin, or Jindal, or Huckabee, or Romney?

Or maybe I'm naive. I know I speak from a position of privilege - after all, it's not my civil rights being violated, so it's easy to bandy about these ideas.