Q Toon: At the Independents' Table

Democrats did not even get 24 hours to savor their 51-vote majority in the U.S. Senate before Senator Kyrsten Sinema decided to upstage Rev. Raphael Warnock and announce that she was bolting the party.

She joins Socialist Bernie Sanders (a Democrat in Presidential Politics Only) of Vermont and true Independent Angus King of Maine as the kids at the table in the corner. Both of them came to the Senate without pretending to be Democrats, and their voters elected them with full knowledge of where they stand on the key issues.

Sinema, on the other hand, an erstwhile Green Party activist from Arizona, has been a difficult member of the Democratic caucus, especially in the last two years. She stubbornly defended the chamber's filibuster rules that allow Republicans to block much of President Biden's agenda. Liberal activists have been suspicious that she has allowed herself to become beholden to big-money right-wing donors. 

Given how radically the Republican Party has lurched to the extreme right, I don't expect Sinema to stray far from Democratic Party stands on personal liberties. Fiscal and border issues seem likely to be another story. If the Republican House starts impeaching Biden administration officials willy-nilly, who the hell knows what Sinema would do?

She's up for reelection in 2024, and had been facing a strong challenger in the Democratic primary. By declaring herself an Independent, she sets up a three-way general election; and since Arizona does not have Georgia-style run-offs, even a Requblican who would make Kari Lake look reasonable could take the seat with a measly 34% of the vote.

Hold onto your tater tots.

Q Toon: Cis Transit Gloria

Christine Hallquist won the four-way Democratic primary for governor of Vermont last week, making her the first transgender gubernatorial nominee of a major party. Hallquist, the CEO of Vermont Electric Cooperative, received 48% of the vote; her nearest rival received 22%. She will face incumbent Republican Phil Scott in November.

Discussing the race with a on Tucker Carlson's program on Fox News the next day, gay conservative journalist Chadwick Moore attributed Hallquist’s victory to “transgender privilege.”

[Another panelist on the program, Former Barack Obama campaign official Robin] Biro said that as a transgender woman, Hallquist has received a lot of criticism, to which Carlson responded with the claim that Hallquist is celebrated, which she is, among her supporters. Moore said that due to Hallquist's "transgender privilege," she can get away with more than a cisgender gubernatorial candidate can.
"While the entire country is fixated on the fact that she's transgender, nobody knows anything about her policies," Moore said. "You know that she's for Medicaid for all, she's a climate alarmist, she believes in $15 minimum wage, and that's kind of it."

If Carlson's panel had been comprised of journalists from, oh, I don't know, how about Vermont, perhaps there would have been someone on hand to discuss whether or not citizens of the Green Mountain State went into the voting booth knowing anything about the candidates' positions on issues. We had primary elections here in Wisconsin the same day, and while finding out all the candidates' positions on every issue took some internet sleuthing, there were plenty of ads on TV and Facebook, flyers in the mail, and blankety-blank pre-recorded phone calls to give us a fairly good idea about most of them. And I'm sure it's the same in Vermont.

But since Carlson's guests were all from New York or D.C., it has been left to the former mayor of Houston, Texas to counter Moore's "that's kind of it" assessment.

“Christine was the chief executive of a well-respected energy utility company for more than 12 years and traveled the entire state sharing with voters her progressive vision for Vermont,” said Annise Parker, former mayor of Houston and now President of the LGBTQ Victory Fund. “They claimed Vermont primary voters know nothing beyond her gender identity while in fact the opposite is true – voters chose Christine because of her experience and positions, not because of her gender identity, and it is an insult to Vermont voters to say otherwise.” ...
“For two cisgender white men on Fox News to bemoan ‘transgender privilege’ in a conversation about one of the few openly trans candidates in the entire nation requires extraordinary ignorance, at best,” said Parker. “Vicious attacks on the qualifications and appearance of a gubernatorial candidate solely because she is transgender is intolerable and must be addressed by Fox News leadership.”

Meanwhile, transgender twitterers have been wondering loudly where to go to apply for some of the sort of "transgender privilege"  Moore and Carlson were talking about.

#TransgenderPrivilege is being told "pronouns are too hard" by the same people who think anyone who can't speak English should "get out".

 #transgenderprivilege is speaking up in defense of your right to exist in public, the same as everyone else, only to be told that it's "your pet project" and you really shouldn't discriminate against those who don't want you in public places. 

#TransgenderPrivilege is a Black trans woman celebrating if she makes it past age 35 #BlackTransLivesMatter

 #TransgenderPrivilege is when men look at you and you can't tell if they want to f💣 you, murder you , or both.

Q Toon: WeatherProphecy with Lauryl Sulfate

Rain falls on the just and the unjust, as the Good Book says; but there's always some holy roller assuring us that the rain was intended for the unjust all along. It's just that God has crappy aim.

The crack about Hurricane Harvey pummeling Houston because of its lesbian mayor (who left office last year) came from Ghostface look-alike Ann Coulter, who was, no doubt, merely making a desperate effort to tweet something —anything— more outrageous than Donald Trump does.

But her tweet that former Mayor Annise Parker was a more credible explanation for Hurricane Harvey than climate change provides the launching pad for this week's cartoon.

I woke up the morning after drawing this cartoon to find that nearly every other editorial cartoonist on the AAEC site had drawn cartoons about hurricanes and climate change, but it's important to note that the destruction we've witnessed from Harvey and Irma cannot be blamed on one factor alone.  Nick Anderson penned an excellent long-form cartoon for the Texas Tribune on unfettered development contributing to flooding in and around Houston, and while 600 trillion gallons of water is going to wreak havoc on the best of ecosystems, I highly recommend Anderson's well-researched opus.

Houston isn't the only place where developers regard the wetlands in particular and the environment generally as a nuisance getting in the way of their profits. Here in Wisconsin, the Republican governor and his Republican-run legislature are greasing the skids for the building of a huge Foxxcon plant, legislating that any legal challenges from environmentalists must go straight to the Republican-run State Supreme Court for judgment. Since Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce has successfully packed that court with their paid stooges, the outcome of any environmental lawsuit is a foregone conclusion in favor of whatever degradation Foxxcon might have wrought.

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Incidentally, I have no idea where Hurricane Jose plans to go. I had been checking storm predictions on windy.com daily as Florida braced for Irma's assault, and the precise tracks predicted for the two hurricanes changed from day to day. The site originally had Irma blustering up Florida's east coast and crashing into the U.S. again where Georgia meets South Carolina, but it moved her path westward a little bit each day. As of this morning, windy.com has Jose brushing against North Carolina's outer banks, Cape Cod, and Nova Scotia, but mostly staying out to sea.

I think the good citizens of the landlocked state of Vermont may rest easy. Until the snows fall, anyway.

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Tune in again tomorrow for a bonus cartoon on another topic about which all the other members of the AAEC site have already picked the bones clean.

Q Toon: Log Cabin Fever

At the risk of piling on Mrs. Clinton, here's this week's cartoon:

Last month, The Log Cabin Republicans emerged from their hole in the ground to issue a political ad criticizing Hillary Clinton for being “wrong on gay rights when it mattered.” Their ad shows clips of Hillary Clinton making statements such as "I do not support gay marriage" in 2002 and 2004, followed by one of Bernie Sanders on Rachel Maddow's show last October in which he says, "It's great that people evolve... but it's important for people to stand up when the going is tough."

Now, whatever one thinks about Bernie Sanders' record on LGBT issues, it's hard to imagine that LGBTs who identify as Republican actually want to see the Vermont Socialist elected President of the United States. (The Log Cabin Boys do post a disclaimer at the end of the ad stating that they aren't endorsing either candidate. Whew! I'm glad they've cleared that up.)

Log Cabin president Gregory Angelo told the Washington Blade, "I personally think and Log Cabin Republicans thinks [sic] that voters should be aware of Hillary Clinton’s past, specifically on marriage equality. We felt that urgency to do so now ... because other LGBT organizations have not done due diligence regarding Hillary Clinton’s past, and we felt we were in a unique position to step up in that regard."

A decade ago, you'd have been very hard pressed to find any Democrat at the national level willing to vouch for marriage equality. Civil unions were as far as most of them were willing to venture.

You'd have had a hard time finding any Socialists at the national level pushing for marriage equality, either. Not included in the LCR ad is Sanders, in the same Rachel Maddow interview, defending having told the Rutland Herald in 2006, when asked whether Vermont should legalize same-sex marriage, “not right now.”

Nor do the Log Cabin Boys include anything from this 16-year-old column by the late Peter Freyne about Sanders' reaction after Vermont's Supreme Court ordered the state legislature to do something to afford same-sex couples equal rights with different-sex couples. I'll quote Freyne at length:

Obtaining Congressman Bernie Sanders’ position on the gay marriage issue was like pulling teeth...from a rhinoceros. Last month, shortly after the decision of the Amestoy Court was issued, Mr. Sanders publicly tried walking the tightrope — applauding the court’s decision and the cause of equal rights without supporting civil marriage for same-sex couples.
This week we were no more successful getting a straight answer. All we did get was a carefully crafted non-statement statement via e-mail from Washington D.C. And Bernie’s statement wins him the Vermont congressional delegation’s Wishy-Washy Award hands down.
Once more he “applauds” the court decision but won’t go anywhere near choosing between same-sex “marriage” and domestic partnership. “By all accounts the legislature is approaching this issue in a considered and appropriate manner and I support the current process.”
Supports the current process, does he? What a courageous radical!
That’s as far as Ol’ Bernardo would go. It’s an election year, yet despite the lack of a serious challenger, The Bern’s gut-level paranoia is acting up. He’s afraid to say something that might alienate his conservative, rebel-loving rural following out in the hills. Something that could be interpreted as “Bernie Loves Queers!”

As Freyne noted earlier in the column, however, the two Democrats running for Sanders' seat in Congress that year were both on the record in support of full marriage equality. Sanders easily won reelection in 2000, so I guess Sanders had the better read on those rebel-loving rural Vermonters.

To be perfectly honest, I tend to think the Democrats would be better off not nominating a guy who wasn't even a member of their party a year ago (and the Republicans would be better off not nominating a Donnie-Come-Lately, too, for that matter). But wherever the candidates stood on marriage equality in 1972, or 2000, or 2004, or 2006, I want to support a candidate who'll stand up for LGBT rights "when it matters."

Like when Ruth Bader Ginsburg retires.

Feel the Bern

Presenting the fourth of my caricatures of 2016 presidential candidates: Independent Socialist Democrat Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

People who viewed the first Kennedy-Nixon debate on television came away thinking that the youthful Jack Kennedy won the debate, while those who listened to it on radio thought that pasty, sweaty Richard Nixon won it. Likewise, people who saw this week's Democratic presidential debate on CNN thought that Sanders won the contest, while those who relied on Washington beltway pundits thought the winner was Hillary Clinton.

People who listened on radio thought it was a tie between Lincoln Chafee's father and the guy who shot Jim Webb.

Long Road to Victory, Part II

Part II: The Democrats Evolve

Happy Independence Day! It's Smackback Saturday here at Bergetoons, and we're reviewing the history of the debate over same-sex marriage. (Part I was this past Wednesday.)

Republicans had no problem forcefully proclaiming that they were four-square against marriage equality from the start, but the issue posed more of a dilemma for Democrats. Gays and lesbians had been shoring up their status within the Democratic party for many years by the time the issue came to prominence; but same-sex marriage did not poll well in the 1990's.

Defense/Definition of Marriage Acts (DOMAs) swept into law across the country; many states passed these as amendments to their constitutions in order to prevent the legal challenges that nearly brought marriage equality to Hawai'i. Fearful for their electoral careers, Democrats went along with this antigay tidal wave. As far as Republicans were concerned, it didn't hurt that these ballot measures brought their right-wing Christian soldiers to the polls in droves.

Having used the issue to electoral benefit in 2002, 2004, and off-year elections, Republicans kept pushing a federal constitutional amendment to limit marriages to one man and one woman This from 2002...

And this from 2004...

In an attempt at compromise, some pro-gay Democrats offered lesbians and gays legal arrangements that were sort of like marriage, but not quite. The state of Vermont was first to pass a Civil Union registry, which made its governor, Howard Dean, a darling to some LGBT Democrats.

"Civil Unions" and "Domestic Partnerships" allowed Democrats to offer some support to gay and lesbian couples while still holding out some hope of not being tarred and feathered in the next election as "destroying the Family." As we'll see in another installment of this series, the religious right and their political allies really had no interest in yielding a millimeter.

Lest we forget, during both of his campaigns for president, Barack Obama was reluctant to voice any support for marriage equality, in spite of a sterling record on other LGBT issues (and in spite of having indicated his "unequivocal" support in a candidate questionnaire for a Chicago LGBT newspaper back when he ran for the Illinois State Senate in 1996). I drew this cartoon in 2011, when he visited the Human Rights Campaign to tout his administration's record.

That changed -- but that's a topic for another day.

Q Toon: No, #8

Justices of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals last week continued the legal trend of finding marriage discrimination against same-sex couples unconstitutional.

Maggie Gallagher of NOM, and the others of her ilk, are wont to point out that wherever marriage equality has been put on the ballot, it has been defeated. Wherever it has been judged in the courts, the opposite is true.