POLITICS
AS
THERAPY.
That’s
how
Rich
Tafel,
the
former
head
of
Log
Cabin
Republicans,
incisively
described
the
focus
of
many
left-liberal
political
activists
and
organizations
that
presume
to
speak
for
gay
men
and
women
(or
lesbians,
gays,
bisexuals
and
transgendered
persons,
in
their
politically
correct
mouthful).
The
latest
self-inflicted
wound
suffered
by
these
practitioners
of
identity
politics
involves
a
faculty
senate-style
controversy
around
a
decision
made
by
Democratic
National
Committee
Chair
Howard
Dean.
("Faculty
senate
politics,"
as
in
the
decibel
level
of
debate
being
so
high,
because
the
stakes
are
so
low.)
Dean
has
apparently
dissed
some
members
of
our
gay
faculty
senate
with
his
reorganization
of
the
DNC’s
political
outreach
operation,
to
focus
less
on
identity
groups
and
more
on
actual
individual
voters
and
state
political
party
organizations.
I
KNOW
A
little
about
such
efforts,
because
I
was
press
secretary
at
the
DNC
in
the
mid-1980s
when
we
did
something
similar.
Without
going
into
the
minutia,
here’s
what
happened
20
years
ago.
Then-Chair
Paul
Kirk
re-tooled
the
committee’s
political
operation
following
a
disastrous
presidential
loss
in
1984,
when
Republicans
successfully
caricatured
Democrats
as
a
whole
less
than
the
sum
of
our
parts.
Kirk
decided
to
"de-institutionalize"
(trust
me,
you
don’t
want
to
be
bored
by
the
details)
the
black,
Hispanic,
Asian-Pacific,
feminist,
gay
and
several
other
identity
group
caucuses
that
had
been
formed
inside
the
roughly
450-member
national
committee.
He
took
away
some
trivial
perks
they
were
receiving
at
the
twice-yearly
committee
meetings,
to
send
a
symbolic
message.
While
respecting
the
contributions
of
its
organized
interests,
he
decided
the
institutional
party
would
re-focus
its
political
efforts
to
re-connect
with
the
broad
center
of
the
electorate.
The
moderate
middle
in
American
politics,
he
contended,
was
coming
to
the
conclusion
that
Democrats
were
more
interested
in
a
short
list
of
favored
tribes
than
the
broad
mass
of
individual
voters
who
traditionally
had
been
attracted
to
the
party
around
an
array
of
economic
and
foreign
policy
concerns,
as
well
as
civil
rights,
that
encompassed
all
Americans,
white
and
black,
gay
and
straight,
male
and
female.
THOSE
IN
THE
party
enthralled
with
identity
politics
reacted
with
the
vengeance
of
aggrieved
faculty
senators,
and
chose
to
see
an
intelligent
broad-based
outreach
as
an
insult
to
the
party’s
Washington-based
minority
advocates.
Political
parties
need
to
stand
for
big,
important
principles.
They
also
need
to
win
elections,
by
addressing
voters
about
concerns
that
unite
us,
rather
than
those
that
split
us
apart,
specific
to
our
narrower,
though
certainly
legitimate,
tribal
identities.
With
a
foolish
focus
on
internal
party
affairs,
left-libs
in
LGBT
(gag
me
with
a
verbal
spoon)
politics
seem
to
prize
feeling
good
about
how
many
staff
members
they
get
at
the
DNC
more
than
winning
elections
that
decide
who
gets
to
name
Supreme
Court
justices
and
wage
disastrous
elective
wars.
I
suggest
they
get
out
of
politics,
and
find
a
therapist.
