Dividing Democrats

I wrote about attempting to divide the Republican party a couple days ago. But the sad truth is that the Democrats have always been easier to divide*. And it makes me worried. Gay marriage should be a winning issue for the left, its an inevitability unless some radical shift in social directions occurs. But so far no one seems to have the balls to pick up this issue and hit it out of the park. No one except SF mayor Gavin Newsom, who I have a new found respect for.

Now I haven't been in SF for a couple seasons now, so I'm not 100% on top of the politics. But I highly suspect that Newsom's stance is at least as much driven by politics as it is by any real conviction. Newsom is left of most of the country politically, but in SF he was the conservative candidate for mayor, and he almost lost to an opponent on his left. There's a bit of Nixon in China in this story, but there's also a bit of Newsom moving to the left in order to sure up his political support.

This is exactly why I'm giving my 100% support to the Democrats this year. The task at hand is to shift the center ground to the left. The social conservatives need to be stripped out of their position of leverage inside the Republican party. once that occurs the stage is set for pushing more progressive/radical agendas in forth coming elections.

And with the proposed Hate Amendment, the right wing has given us the perfect tool to split their party. But someone needs to step up and use it. And the risk right now is that the Democrats might actually use it on themselves. Not pretty.

*note: I should add I don't agree with Kos' characterization of Kerry's support of Massachusetts amendment. I don't agree with Kerry's stance, but his anti-marriage but only with strong civil unions support position is a reasonable enough compromise. And like it or not, democratic politics is all about reaching these sorts of compromises. In fact in some ways that's the tragic flaw of democracy, often all of no one gets exactly what they want...