A couple of days ago I wrote that gays won’t let their friends vote McCain and with less than four weeks before election day that message has taken on an increased urgency. This post the second is a series that I am writing urging LGBT people to talk to our family, friends and co-workers about why a vote for John McCain is a vote for discrimination against LGBT Americans.
John McCain and Sarah Palin have unleash a wave of negative attacks in speeches and ads against Barack Obama and our fight to change our country for the better. They have, as a New York Times editorial stated, moved “into the dark territory of race-baiting and xenophobia.”
What makes you think that if elected they will not turn that same mean-spiritedness and willingness to engage in divisive politics against us?
It looks like McCain and Palin are willing to do anything to win- including inciting fear, anger, and violence in their supporters.
As the McCain campaign has stepped up the negative attacks and smears, the audiences at their rallies are getting more and more outlandish. Shouts of “traitor” and even “kill him“- in reference to Obama- are popping up all over the news. I wonder where these supporters are getting this kind of anger from.
Perhaps it is from the McCain Campaign’s continued efforts to link Obama to Ayers? Maybe Palin saying Obama “pals around with terrorists”? Could it be every spokesperson from their campaign- and their negative ads- calling Obama “risky”?
Just as friends don’t let friends drive drunk, we should declare right here, right now that as LGBT people we won’t let our friends vote McCain. At least not without a fight.
I understand that voting is a personal thing, but it is critical that we let our friends, family and co-workers know how much a McCain/Palin administration would hurt us and our families.
Its lines like this that make me more than a little gay for Markos Moulitsas, founder of Daily Kos:
Many people will warn against “getting complacent”. I like to approach this potential problem differently — we have a chance to rip out the GOP’s jugular. We can throw them an anvil. We can kick them while they’re down. No matter the metaphor, the underlying meaning remains — we can destroy the Republicans. Now’s not the time to slack, it’s the time to pick things up. We’ve got them in a near rout. Let’s destroy them.
In his post Markos is warning people to expect a scorched Earth wave of negative attacks from the McCain campaign against Obama because of Obama’s rising poll numbers with less than 30 days left in the campaign. In the attacks we can expect McCain to question Obama’s patriotism, religious faith, and experience. You can also expect to see the return of Rev. Wright, madrasahs, Bill Ayers and anything else McCain can think to pull out of his magic hat of political distraction to keep from talking about the issues that matter to voters. Nearly 100% of McCain’s ad spending is devoted to attacking Obama.
What you want see from the McCain campaign is something like this:
I get that negative attacks are a part of the political game and that they can be quite effective. But McCain’s campaign strategy of “attack, attack, attack” is much like the GOP chant “drill, baby, drill.” It is a whole lot of smoke and mirrors that doesn’t address the issues at hand and fails to deliver the change that we need now.
It seems there is a new threat to our country- an insidious danger that is seeping into our homes and everyday lives that must be stopped at any cost. That threat is intellectualism.
We have heard the some of the buzzwords of this political season- Folksy, Joe Six-pack, Elitist, and Arugula Eating. It seems the new “culture war” or wedge issue is intelligence. The Vice-Presidential debate only solidified the lines in this war. On one side, you had Palin- full of “folksy charm” and “you betcha” language. Then you had Biden, who had a command of the issues, but was called “boring” and (gasp!) “professorial” by the pundits.
Is this the point we have come to in our country? Do we really think that having knowledge about an issue is a liability? Have we learned nothing from the past eight years about voting for the person you “want to have a beer with”? Is being smart or intellectually curious a bad thing?
It seems the war is on and the Republicans have launched another surge strategy.
She’s a spunky one that Sarah Palin. Unfortunately, not only is she out of touch with the issues facing most Americans, she is also out of the loop in decisions made by the McCain campaign.
Check out this clip from Fox News in which Palin shares her “yes we can” reaction to reading about the decision by McCain to pull out of Michigan.
On a side note, notice that the reporter mistakenly labels Palin as the Democratic VP candidate. As if.
We know that Sarah Palin can see Russia from her house, but what does she think of LGBT people? The Human Rights Campaign wondered the same thing and its Senior Media Center Manager, Michael Cole to Alaska to investigate.
It’s 2008, ‘some of my best friends are gay’ doesn’t work anymore. Sorry, we’ve already had one ‘compassionate conservative’ in the White House for eight years, we aren’t interested in another.
Right on Joe!
As you can see in this video produced by HRC, McCain has opposed every piece of pro-LGBT legislation that has come his way. He even supports the anti-gay state constitutional amendments pending in Arizona, California and Florida.
