December 23, 2008

Okay, can everybody just shut the fuck up about Rick Warren?

The fact that the anti-gay, anti-choice, pro-Proposition 8 pastor is speaking at Obama’s inauguration is not a sign that Obama is willing to throw the gay community to the lions. It is not a flip-flop. It is not a promise broken before Obama even takes office.

It is further evidence that our president-elect is a brilliant tactician.

Take a look at Obama’s policy proposals. While he’s fairly centrist on foreign policy, on domestic and economic issues he is almost brazenly liberal.

Obama is a progressive in moderate’s clothing.

He has learned–or he knows by instinct–the apparently unbeatable tactic of the Usurper-in-Chief: say you’re doing something your opponents find palatable, and then ignore them and do whatever you want to do.

Is there anything–anything at all–that Obama could do between now and his inauguration that would both make the Christian right happier and be more meaningless in practical terms? Because if there is I can’t think of it.

Of course I could be wrong, and we could all be headed for the boxcars. But Obama’s record is too consistently liberal and his political machinations too sophisticated for me to believe that.

I think we’re headed for a very, very good eight years.