Fragile Coalitions: Lessons from ENDA and McClurkin, part I

(Time we all started talking about this — in our quest for unity. promoted at 10:00 AM EST – promoted by Nightprowlkitty)

The last month has not been a good one for the loose confederacy of interests usually filed under progressive causes.  First, LGBT activists nearly devoured themselves over the proposed changes to the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), in a struggle that challenged the commitment of ostensibly queer activists to the T part of the acronym and eventually resulted in public resignations from the nation’s most powerful LGBT lobby.  Second, the Obama campaign’s ill-advised decision to launch a gospel tour with publicly outspoken anti-gay singers led to a series of campaign flubs, bitter exchanges, and an epic flameout on Daily Kos that really has to be read to be believed. 

Though I don’t doubt the general commitment of everyone involved to the same umbrella set of goals, the fissures and lack of well-articulated overlap between interest groups has the potential – especially when lacking a strong central figure to act as leader – to turn nasty.  That’s exactly what happened this past month, and I want to perform a brief autopsy to show where things went wrong, and whether it’s possible to avoid these kinds of explosions in the future.  Spoiler alert: I really don’t think so.

For at least as long as I’ve been following politics, the Republican party has proven much more adept at maintaining the myth of a united front, regardless of how incompatible those interests actually are.  Only in the recent campaign have the fault lines become a major topic of coverage: while it’s certainly nothing new, the incompatibility of libertarian-leaning conservatives and the religious right is finally the centerpiece of debate over the future of the party.

Meanwhile, interest groups on the other side of the aisle are giving case study after case study on how not to build strong, healthy coalitions – although I’d argue that the friction is inevitable, no matter how well-managed.  Let’s start with the ENDA debacle:

For over thirty years, legislators on the left have tried to add sexual orientation to the list of qualities protected by national non-discrimination acts (ENDA itself dates from 1994).  With the growing support for gays and lesbians in politics, the Democratic majority in Congress found themselves in a position to pass this bill for the first time – provided protections for gender identification were dropped.  Rep. Barney Frank, who has been one of the most tireless proponents of ENDA, argued that the best strategy for gaining ground was incremental in nature – refusing to pass protections for gays and lesbians until Congress could be expected to support the transgender community was a deeply flawed strategy:

Enacting legislation to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation and getting a year or two’s experience with it, will be very helpful in our ultimately adding to it protection for people who are transgender. That is, if you always insist on doing all the difficult things in one bite, you will probably never be successful. Dismantling the opposition piecemeal has always worked better.

This didn’t go over well.  Almost immediately Frank came under fire from most LGBT organizations, who found this kind of compromise intolerable.  His fellow legislator Tammy Baldwin broke with him to introduce her own amendment to the legislation, re-including gender protections once the bill had gotten out of committee.  Meanwhile, the nation’s most powerful queer lobby, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), kept quiet – neither supporting nor rejecting the proposed exclusions to ENDA.

These tensions among political organizations found a more verbal – and more bitter – expression on the blogs, as they usually do.  Most infamously, Aravosis at Americablog published a partial denouncement of transgender activists, arguing that they had insinuated themselves into gay rights organizations without doing enough political groundwork to make the same demands.  Aravosis was brutally flamed, not the least because his history of the transgender movement was, to put it bluntly, wrong.  (A brief overview of the actual history here, if you’re interested.)

But there’s a much more difficult issue here that’s far more important than whether bloggers are doing their research: when coalitions are faced with an opportunity to support part, but not all, of their members, the results are going to be nasty – especially in the absence of strong leadership.  Gay activists argued that passing a partial ENDA would mean immediate workplace security for thousands (millions?) of gay Americans who live in constant fear of being fired for arbitrary reasons: and they are right.  Trans activists argued that passing a partial ENDA would effectively ruin any chance of gender protections being passed in their lifetime: and they’re right, too. 

Quo vadis?

This it the nature of coalition politics: a constant negotiation between the needs of the whole and the needs of the constituent parts.  Get them moving in the same direction, and you’ll have a powerful political force.  Get them moving in opposite directions, and you’d better be wearing a flame-retardant jacket. 

Personally, I consider the ENDA debate a no-brainer: Frank and Aravosis were wrong, and Baldwin and the trans-inclusive proponents were right.  Elsewhere I argued this:

At what point will the federal government ever be willing to take on, as an independent bill, protections for a small minority of a small minority?  And why should trans activists trust that gay activists – once they’ve achieved their own goals – will come back to fight for other people when they no longer have anything at stake?  I don’t think that’s as much a cynical fear as a realistic one.

Loose coalitions have no chance unless they work together, and the nasty fallout from ENDA has left the transgender community – and their supporters – hesitant to support mainstream LGBT organizations like HRC.  If the coalition cannot be counted on to support all its members, there’s nothing to hold it together: if Frank were to ask for transgender support on a gay cause, he’d be laughed off the stage.  Was it worth it?

True, Frank lent his support the Baldwin amendment and HRC later released a lukewarm press release ‘supporting’ inclusiveness – but both urged support of whatever version of ENDA made it to the floor.  Fortunately for Frank and HRC, the transgender community is small enough that they don’t have to worry about losing elections because of it.  This is the ugly side of coalitions: the smaller the group, the more ‘expendable’ they become. 

This story has two punchlines: first, no version of ENDA has a chance of surviving a presidential veto.  This was an interest group self-disembowelment that never had to happen.  Second, the public blowout was largely limited to political figures, bloggers, and organizations: the actual community doesn’t seem so divided:

Early last week, Jerry Nadler, a West Side Democrat, told Gay City News that he would vote no if the final bill on the floor did not include trans protections.

“I have never seen such unanimity in the LGBT community,” he said. “They want an inclusive bill.”

That’s purely anecdotal, but take it as you will.

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That’s enough for one post.  I’ll be doing another on the ugly racial/sexual politics that played out during the Obama/McClurkin debacle, but it’s much more pessimistic than this one.  Ultimately I don’t have a “point” or any suggestions for how to avoid these issues in the future, except to note that the nature of self-interest makes it very difficult otherwise.  It’s not easy to ask people to give up their chance for legal protections until others have the same chance, and without a strong ethos of communal effort we can expect our fragile coalitions to crumble again and again.  That’s one area I agree with Aravosis: the problem is that we haven’t had these conversations, and we desperately need to. 

But politics without coalitions is impossible, as the Republican presidential candidates are finding out.  While each frontrunner tries to reach out to groups normally not aligned with him, the fundamental incompatibility of different corners of the Tent is promising a candidate who pleases no one. 

I’ll have more to say in the second half of this post.  In the meantime, some questions for you all:

• What interest groups and/or ideological groups do you think pose the greatest challenge to unified party fronts?  Are some more polarizing than others?
• When the opportunity arises to meet the demands of part of a coalition group, is it better to fight for who you can or to maintain group solidarity (basically, do you agree with Frank’s argument for incremental change, or with his opponents)?
• While each coalition can flame out in its own spectacular way, are there overall strategies for getting non-aligned groups to work together?

I’d be interested in hearing what you think.

(cross-posted at Swords Crossed.)