How Policy Nihilists in the Senate Doomed LGBT Immigrants

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/how-policy-nihilists-senate-doomed-lgbt-immigrants

***SNIP

One Democrat after another caved, entirely because they knew that if they supported LGBT rights, pathological deal-destroyer Lindsey Graham would destroy the deal. (He basically promised as much.) This is the micro form of the problem Democrats have been having since Obama took office: They want their legislation to pass, because they support the goals of their legislation. Republicans are indifferent, usually, to the goals of legislation and more concerned with how supporting or opposing bills makes them appear.

Democrats want immigration reform to pass because they want immigrants to have a chance to become citizens. Senate Republicans want to be seen as in favor of reform but they also wouldn’t mind (and in many cases would prefer) being seen as having been forced to regretfully withdraw their support from the reform proposal, because Democrats “overreached.”

So yesterday was a game where Republicans try to see how bad they can get away with making the bill, in order to try to get Democrats to jump ship, while Democrats tried to see how bad they had to allow the bill to be in order to retain Republican support. It’s healthcare all over again! In that fight, Republicans knew they had a strategic advantage, because Democrats desperately wanted to extend healthcare coverage to all Americans, and Republicans did not give a shit about that goal. So Republicans (and Lieberman) could just screw with the bill as much as they wanted and then not support it at all, confident that Democrats were too attached to the broader goal to give up on the bill just because there was no public option or Medicare buy-in.

[Bluenorthwest]

1. Senators who cower before Graham are basically accomplices to him, not different, the same.

I've heard much about pragmatism from the Obama centrists. An aspect of pragmatism is that action is the only evidence of unseen motives. So when a person says 'I wanted what you wanted, but I had to do the opposite because of yadda and yadda and Senator Graham' as a pragmatist, their reasons are unknowable, unseen and thus potentially nonexistent or falsely presented. All I know as a pragmatist is that you voted exactly like a person who opposed me fully. I do not care to hear the narrative you have worked up to 'explain' why you 'could not' do what your wanted, that shite is unseen and unknowable and very likely it is just bullshit
So. Vote against equality, you have voted against equality. That's all there is to it. The excuses made for doing the wrong thing are for you, as the person without scruples, without courage, the rationales are not accepted outside your fantasy life. Other people know the truth about the 'moderate centrists' who vote like Republicans: they adore the politics that allows them to act like the conservative ahole they are while pretending it is all the fault of Graham, who is their partner, whose actions are identical to their own actions, twins style. They are the ultimate exploiters of others in politics, they exploit to the left when they whine for support claiming to want what we want, then they exploit the right by saying that their own desired actions were really forced upon them by 'the other Party'. So they say 'we want what you want, thanks for the money but we have to do what the other Party wants, so our actions will be indistinguishable from the other Party's actions, except for the part where we blame them for what we have done'.
This is why those who play that 'centrist' ploy are not well liked by others. They see others as chits and as fodder, our rights are without value, their own promises hollow, they will cheat a socialist and a radical Republican in the same move, all the while feigning innocence and even a lack of ability to function as people of free will..'we can't' they like to say 'they won't let us, we have to betray you but blame them'.
I'm never voting for any centrist, religious person, or for anyone who so much as hints that homophobia is a Sacrament to him as Obama did. Fuck them for the hypocritical liars and ineffective self serving legislators that they are.

[MNBrewer]

3. This is exactly why I have always despised "pragmatists"

They do what's easy, or what's always been done, in order to avoid doing the hard work of making the power structure better suit and better serve the needs of those who can, using objective reality, show what is required.

The INSULTING statement that "half a loaf is better than none" is an example of the ethical poverty of the pragmatists. Well, it's not better if the half loaf goes to one group and another group gets no loaf at all.

An HONEST statement would be "I'm ok with US citizens in international same-sex relationships getting nothing out of "comprehensive" immigration reform, in order for this other group of NON-citizens to get what it wants."

[William769]

2. No comment.