Why Is Obama Making Appearances With An Anti-Gay Pastor?

Posted by Matt Stoller at 1:00 PM on October 29, 2007.

This post, written by Matt Stoller, originally appeared on Open Left

In the whole McClurkin fiasco, one interesting note here is that Obama seems to have built the opposite of the Dean coalition. Dean's very first base group was the gay community that funded his initial campaign, and then he moved to the blogs and the wider white progressive space, but he never really picked up traction among African-Americans. Obama's McClurkin incident has coalesced the blogs and the gay community against him, and he's now fighting Clinton for African-Americans. There's an exception of course in that both Dean and Obama were much stronger among men than women, but the gist of the McClurkin story is that Obama has gelled the latent anti-Obama sentiment among progressives into something solid.

I should be clear. The McClurkin situation is not about gay bashing and it never has been about gay bashing. Obama's not a homophobe, he is probably more comfortable around gay people than any Presidential candidate and he has a great record on LGBT rights. It is a significant incident though, because it's about priorities. It's obvious from the campaign's blundering politics that the people Obama listens to for political advice simply don't care about the concerns of progressives. Here's Obama on the gay-baiting McClurkin controversy.

Part of the reason that we have had a faith outreach in our campaigns is precisely because I don't think the LGBT community or the Democratic Party is served by being hermetically sealed from the faith community and not in dialogue with a substantial portion of the electorate, even though we may disagree with them.

So the choice, apparently, is between the LGBT community and the Democratic Party being hermetically sealed from the faith community and inviting gay-bashers to act as surrogates. Ok, fine. At least Obama would take the notion of dialogue seriously, right? Both sides would get their say. And McClurkin is just a singer, not a spokesman.

Mr. McClurkin turned the final half hour of the three-hour concert into a revival meeting about the lightning rod he has become for the Obama campaign.

He approached the subject gingerly at first. Then, just when the concert had seemed to reach its pitch and about to end, Mr. McClurkin returned to it with a full-blown plea: "Don't call me a bigot or anti-gay when I have suffered the same feelings," he cried.

"God delivered me from homosexuality," he added. He then told the audience to believe the Bible over the blogs: "God is the only way." The crowd sang and clapped along in full support....

The article notes that the concert attendees were in strong agreement with McClurkin. Chris thinks this is just a mistake on the Obama campaign, but I find it hard to agree with that analysis. This looks like Obama is giving a wink and a nod to bigots. And that's consistent with campaigns that do not empower progressives at the top level; this concert should have been killed a month ago in meetings of staffers where the progressive got up on the table and screams no. It should have been killed on Monday when that advisor could have talked to Aravosis and asked 'how big a deal is this', and brought that feedback into the campaign. But that advisor doesn't exist, and so the South Carolina consultant who thinks that McLurkin is the route to votes in the state won by default. That may or may not be true about McClurkin's electoral appeal, but no one in the campaign considered how it would knock Obama off message for a week or hurt him with progressive primary voters elsewhere. Obama just didn't empower a person in the campaign at a high level who would understand this.

Obama is just an ambitious politician trying to win a few more votes, and he's certainly gay friendly in his legislative record. But it says something about why a non-movement campaign just cannot beat brand Democrat. It's not about positions and it never has been about positions, it's about constituencies and identity, and prioritizing your values. There are many 'liberals' in Congress who give money to Bush Dog freshmen and pretend their voting record should excuse them for this. That's just not the way this works, and the logical culmination is the McLurkin situation, where a campaign is caught between a rock and a hard place. And it's not an accident, it's a choice. Obama chose to be where he is by his decision to keep the progressive movement at arms length.

I've spoken to a bunch of people around the country who tell me that the air in the Obama world has leaked out in the past month for two specific reasons. Activists and liberals don't think Obama can beat Clinton, but they also no longer see a reason to care. My position has always been that Obama could win if he runs a progressive campaign, but he's just not a progressive. Clinton is brand Democrat who has faced the right-wing smear machine, and she knows just how awful they are. Her strategy will be bad for the general since she is centrist and represents the status quo. In a primary or the general, though, you can't beat something with nothing, and Clinton is at least something.

It's rare that I don't agree with Chris, but I don't think that campaigns are unbeatable by other campaigns in the Presidential election, even at this late date. If Obama had done what Dodd did with the hold most recently it would implicitly create a contrast with Clinton. This contrast wouldn't have to be announced in the New York Times by senior staffers. This contrast wouldn't have drawn quotes from Clinton staffers that they are 'disappointed that Obama is abandoning the politics of hope'. It would be a real contrast. Instead, the contrast is between brand Democrat who is running a smooth and bland campaign as the first female President, and a blundering neophyte who doesn't know where he stands on a concert.

Tagged as: mcclurkin, obama, election08, homophobia, religion

Matt Stoller is a political activist/blogger in DC, and was an editor at MyDD from November 2005 until June 2007. He also consults for the Sunlight Foundation, FreePress.net, and Working Assets as well as proactively networking other progressive bloggers/internet activists and progressive professionals.