On Pressure And The Obama Administration

It's faint praise to say that the Obama Justice Department surpassed expectations by not comparing same-sex marriage to pedophilia and incest anymore, but that's basically what John Aravosis is offering with respect to the Administration's latest brief on DOMA. As Aravosis says, in the end, they're still defending discrimination, but they are doing it with a recognition that the President does not support the law and wants it repealed. There's a fair question over whether the DoJ could just not defend the law, but it would conjure up the Bush era, when they simply ignored whatever laws they felt like ignoring.

With respect to the merits, this Administration does not support DOMA as a matter of policy, believes that it is discriminatory, and supports its repeal. Consistent with the rule of law, however, the Department of Justice has long followed the practice of defending federal statutes as long as reasonable arguments can be made in support of their constitutionality, even if the Department disagrees with a particular statute as a policy matter, as it does here.

The larger point here is one about pressure. The Obama DoJ made a huge mistake with their initial, hostile brief on DOMA, and it enraged the LGBT community, who promptly reacted in very strong terms. Since then Obama has been trying at various points to make things better, going further and further each time. At Netroots Nation, Valerie Jarrett said the President is committed to repealing DADT and DOMA, without any weasel words. The Administration made a bad decision, got a huge amount of pushback, and responded in favorable ways. That doesn't mean gay rights advocates will end their pressure, nor should they until the actual repeals are signed and gay rights are advanced. It means that they've learned how pressure works with this Administration. We could all learn from that.

Valerie Jarrett @NetrootsNation

Baratunde Thurston starts off with "Wikipedia describes your office as..." This is an online media conference, isn't it?

Jarrett is trying to describe what she does, and frankly I still don't much understand it. Sounds sort of like she's a gatekeeper at the White House.

...So, Jarrett says that the reason Obama ran for President is that he wanted to move away from the nasty tone in Washington. And here we are, with a nastier tone than ever. You really cannot just tsk-tsk and demand other people to "be nice." She is correct that there have been literally thousands of health care town hall meetings where civil discussion has taken place, but the media is more interested in the yelling and screaming. But surely they should have known that in the White House beforehand. They waged a campaign with the same media focusing on the same ticky-tack bullshit. The media have not been a legitimate arbiter of political debate in as long as anyone can remember. Expecting civility and some Republic of Solon where the merit of ideas rules is simply nonsensical.

My attention is waning with this interview, because it's pretty fluffy. The only thing close to breaking news is the line she just said, "The President wants the public option," but that's not necessarily a blanket statement and a dodge from the question about whether he would veto a bill without it (which he clearly will not).

...On the question about repealing DADT and DOMA, Jarrett commits to repeal (we've heard weasel words like "change" in the past), but she says that the DoJ was in an untenable position of having to defend DOMA, when that's not true and certainly does not justify the hostile brief put out there.

This is getting a bit more heated, as Baratunde challenges the President on civil liberties issues. Jarrett has the kind of robotic responses to all of this, the "we have to balance defending our country and keeping people safe" responses, the "we're only six months in" stuff. This could have been printed out as a script weeks ago.