Tulsi Gabbard—remember her? The anti-gay Democrat-who-wasn’t-a-Democrat who ran for President in 2020? She was the candidate, says BuzzFeed News, “whose total flameout in the 2020 presidential primary led her to look for any shreds of political relevance she could find in [the] right-wing culture wars.” Well, she tweeted yesterday that she’s quitting the Democratic Party—which actually came as a surprise to no one, since she’s been active for years on all the right wing news outlets.
Her series of tweets, in which she explained her decision, is too long to reproduce here, although you can see the whole thing through the link above. But here are Gabbard’s main points:
The Democratic Party “is now under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness, who divide us by racializing every issue & stoke anti-white racism [and] actively work to undermine our God-given freedoms…”.
They “demonize the police & protect criminals at the expense of law-abiding Americans…”.
Some of these charges might have been made by me: She’s correct when she points out the anti-police, pro-criminal philosophy of the extreme woke branch of the Democratic Party. She’s also right when she says that this same extreme wing “racializes every issue.” I’ve complained mightily about the same things and so have my colleagues at the Coalition for a Better Oakland.
Still, for all that, I remain a Democrat, and I want to explain why, because I think this issue is the most important one facing our country today.
But first, I want to address the question of the non-partisanship of the Coalition. We call ourselves “non-partisan” and that is true, insofar as we impose no test of party affiliation on our members. I don’t know what party anyone votes for, besides myself, and I don’t care. However, that doesn’t mean I myself have no party affiliation—and to the extent I feel free to express my thoughts and feelings on this blog, that’s exactly what I’m doing today.
I called this issue of party affiliation “the most important one facing our country today” because the Democratic Party is the sole challenge to a Republican Party that has been completely transformed into a religiously authoritarian, rightwing theocracy following the insane rule of their fuehrer, Trump. You know and I know that if these people are given complete control of the USA, they will proceed along the path of tyranny. First to go will be womens’ rights (they’ve already started), not just abortion but contraception: see Griswold v. Connecticut to understand where Christian Nationalists want America to go. Next to go will be LGBTQ rights; Clarence Thomas already announced that he’s basically ready to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges.
And after that? Check out your Old Testaments and see all the offenses for which the death penalty was applied. If you don’t believe that an Attorney General/Ayatollah Franklin Graham would reinstitute sharia law on us, you’re not living in reality.
The Democratic Party is not a one-size-fits-all. The Party is split between progressives and moderates. Gabbard lies when she says the entire party is “under the complete control” etc. The top echelon of the party remains in the moderate center: President Biden, President Obama, most of the Senate, most Governors. I maintain that we can rescue the Democratic Party from its own extremists and yank it back to the middle, but only if we remain Democrats. The alternative to the Democratic Party—Trump and his Republicans—is just too awful to contemplate.
Yet that is the vision Tulsi Gabbard has embraced, and it’s why I can’t go along with her, despite the fact that I agree with her on a few issues. I suspect that, in making these statements, I might piss off a few Coalition members who consider themselves Republicans, or at least conservative and Christian. That’s okay. The Coalition for a Better Oakland is a Big Tent under which people of different viewpoints can work together knowing that we agree on a strong police department and on getting rid of these awful encampments. Call it strange bedfellows: Conservatives and progressives uniting temporarily on these twin issues. We’ll live to quarrel another day. For now, I’ll simply leave you with this message: A vote for a Republican—any Republican anywhere in America—is a vote for Donald Trump and the evil he represents.
Thank you.
P.S. SAVE THE DATE! We’re gathering in San Antonio Park on Saturday, Oct. 22, at noon. A fun and instructional event is promised! Please be there. Details to follow.
Steve Heimoff