As some of you have been reading my posts over the last few months know, I’ve been pretty harsh with some of the decisions and strategy of the President, particularly on the issues of health care reform and LGBT rights.  It hasn’t just been the president that I’ve been critical of, it’s also been the Democratic Party in general.  

I had a brief, but very interesting conversation with someone tonight about how the White House has taken on some of these issues.  This guy is a smart guy, works at Harvard, and is politically astute.  He suggested that things would turn out fine, that the politics of the moment meant that a very strategic president needed to reach these goals differently and with patience.  

Pretty standard argument.  These are hard things to do, the right will eat him up, one step at a time.  Not an argument that I am prone to buy into anymore.  But one thing he said did really strike me.

It’s no secret that the LGBT movement and its fight for rights does not do as well politically among people of color as it should be doing.  Though I don’t buy into the Prop 8 myth that blacks caused us to lose, I do believe that we have not built the bridges that we need to build.  So his point was basically this:

How does it look when white gay leaders and activists are among the most vocal critics of the first African-American president in US history? 

Doesn’t it feed into an already difficult relationship?  And does it mean that we can not criticize Mr. Obama?  

I think it would be very difficult for anyone to deny that many of the right-wing attacks against the president and his place of birth and socialism and all the rest, does not have, in some form, a racist tone.  There is a strong cord of racism in this country and in particular going back to the Palin rallies, racist attacks against President Obama.

So, I want to be more aware of how I frame my critique of the White House.  I don’t want to ignore what I think are problems.  But let me be more clear about what I think the genesis of many of those strategy errors are.  The Democrats, including the White House, are allowing the right wing to frame every debate.  

Our policy prescriptions are good ones, but we start out by being defensive about how the Republican Party will attack them.  We don’t fight for our own beliefs.  We have bought into the notion that progressive ideas are radical ideas.  Where in reality, they are popular and workable ideas.  

So, where my focus will be is in trying to get the Democrats to fight from a position of strength, to be willing to lose with your best ideas, and not water everything down out of fear of what a minority, regional party may say.

The truth is, they are willing to say anything.  We should be willing to say the truth and fight for our own ideals.