Reply #35: If we've learned anything in the last few years, [View All]

it's that securing a permanent majority is a pipe dream. Demographics are always changing, and the trends all favor Democrats, but there's still a lot of poison in the pipes.

In situations like this, I always remember Al Gore. When he became a Senator from Tennessee, his constituency was stoutly anti-choice. His first votes on choice reflected his TN constituency, i.e. he voted anti-choice. But he went to work on those voters, and made his arguments, and started making pro-choice votes. The TN voters didn't repudiate him for it, because he convinced enough of them that he was right.

He cast bad choice votes at first, but moved enough of his voters to his side that he could vote pro-choice without getting crushed. It took time, and amounted to a small swing overall, but it worked.

My point: Warren isn't the issue for me. The very idea that such a man is going to be up there disgusts me, but then again, so do the beliefs of the millions who think as Warren does. Involving Warren in this small way is, to me, like Gore's early anti-choice votes. Warren being there includes those fucked up Christians in the whole, and including them lets us move them away from their craziness.

Ignoring them won't make them go away. Making them think twice about voting GOP, however, might do just that.

Plus, there are a lot of them out there, and quite a few voted for Obama, so throwing them a bone like this isn't wildly out of step with Obama's outreach/post-partisan ways.

It sucks, it sucks really badly, but those people are out there and need to be dealt with. Keep friends close and enemies closer, says the Godfather.