I find the whole situations rather strange to watch, from outside the Democratic Party. A pretty good friend of mine, gay and a Democrat, has just recently had himself removed from their mailing list and so forth, after being fobbed off by Party functionaries while trying to complain about the Obama Justice Department’s actions in that case in Orange County, where they filed briefs defending DOMA. He says he won’t give money to the Republicans, but he’s not a Democrat any more either. That doesn’t amount to a full defection, because Nader and his ilk on the left, and Buchanan and his on the right tend to draw off some votes, but never get strong enough to become third parties. It’s a loss for the Dems that doesn’t quite turn into the same gain for the GOP.
The gays are, in this instance, what I call a “captive constituency”. Essentially, they’re not “in play” in terms of national politics. Regardless of what Obama does, he can probably count on a majority of gays voting for him, or at least not voting for the Republicans. Religious conservatives are in the same boat among the rest of the Republican party. Reagan, regardless of what extremists from the left side of the political spectrum say, wasn’t anything like a religious conservative, really, and they weren’t that happy with him. That didn’t mean they’d defect and vote for Carter or Mondale, of course. Bush 43 wasn’t a religious conservative either (shocking to some on the left, I know, but it’s true.) There were even allegations during his presidency that behind closed doors members of his staff made fun of religious conservatives and their goals, while pandering to those same goals in public, in order to garner support and of course money. What are such people going to do, vote for Obama? Some did, of course, but the majority stayed with the party and voted for McCain, even though many were unsure of his positions and the strength of his support for their causes.
Let me make a further prediction, one that will probably be pretty controversial, though I truly think it correct. If the Gay movement ever does get what it wants, vis a vis marriage, service in the military, and so forth, it’ll be from a Republican President. A Democrat will be too eager to protect his right flank to venture out into political no man’s land like that, alienating Hispanics and other interest groups he needs support from. It’s a sort of domestic version of Nixon visiting China, when the Democrats couldn’t.
