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- Last year, Ross Douthat was quoted as saying that while he opposed gay marriage, he couldn't come up with an intellectually honest argument why. It was a telling admission that prejudice motivates opposition to gay marriage, one which the judge's decision in the Prop. 8 case yesterday acknowledged. The reaction from the right wing has been predictably mindless, with claims ranging from the charge that our "fundamental institutions" are being "remade" to "same-sex marriage is a government takeover of an institution the government did not make" to pretending that the ruling somehow violates the U.S. Constitution.
- The idea that the president is more "confrontational" with progressives than conservatives doesn't stand up under scrutiny, and I agree that liberal activists need to learn how to move past disappointment with the administration if they ever want to see their preferred policies enacted. While it feels undignified to accept the lesser of two evils, as it were, we should remind ourselves what the alternative to Democratic governance is.
- Christopher Beam on the wave of anti-incumbency sweeping the nation: "So far this year, 282 federal-level incumbents have been up for re-election. Of those, only six have lost their seats -- four in the House and two in the Senate. (Aside from Bennett, Kilpatrick, and Specter, there's Rep. Alan Mollohan, D-W.Va.; Rep. Parker Griffith, R-Ala.; and Rep. Bob Inglis, R-S.C.) That's 2 percent of all incumbents. If you count only the 119 incumbents who have faced primary challengers, the proportion who were defeated goes up to 5 percent."
- Remainders: It's important to remember that passing health-care reform was about more than controlling costs; I don't know if he'll "save" the Democrats, but selectively deploying Bill Clinton as a campaign surrogate makes a lot of sense; what legislators believe in their hearts is irrelevant to how they actually behave; I'm unclear on whether Republicans still consider their passage of the 14th Amendment to be an accomplishment; and it's stunning that someone who has written about American politics as long as David Broder doesn't understand American politics.
--Mori Dinauer
