Just Fighting the Fight Is A Win

This is why you should ignore anyone who wants to abandon a political fight because "the votes aren't there." Of course the votes aren't there if you're not fighting. Fighting and losing and coming back to fight again is how you get votes.

Digby, on the president's call for gun control measures that can't get through Congress:

I assume this will be met with much eye-rolling on the part of those who believe that this is a big waste of time and that the presidency's power is limited to its majority in the congress. But there is a method to the madness, even if it ends up not being enacted. The fight itself changes the way the party sees certain issues and moves the debate over the long term.

This is a new form of triangulation and one we haven't seen in a very long time: he's using his popularity to triangulate against the center and the right instead of the left and the right. (Of course, when it comes to the country, the left is the center on this issue.) And this is a strategy a lot of us had hoped he would use:

Obama’s liberal allies have often counseled a more confrontational approach, urging him to force up-or-down votes to emphasize the contrast with Republicans and marshal public opinion on his behalf.

“Who is this bland, timid guy who doesn’t seem to stand for anything in particular?” New York Times columnist Paul Krugman asked in mid-2011 after a particularly fruitless encounter with Obama in the Oval Office.

But times and minds have changed. Obama aides credit his introduction of a going-nowhere-fast jobs bill in 2011 to clarifying the president’s agenda and creating a concrete proposal to unite Democrats. More important, Obama’s big 2012 win has convinced him, once and for all, that persuading and compromising with GOP leaders is pointless. The only way to force their hand is through public opinion — and his approval rating stands in the mid-50s following the fiscal cliff deal.

If he regarded Capitol Hill as the main arena in 2009, he sees it as a sideshow to the larger arena of public opinion in 2013.

This should be interesting.

It's highly likely that he will suffer a legislative defeat on gun control. As sick as it is, even a school full of dead children is probably not enough to shake loose the gun lobby just yet. But it's well worth while for the president to take this stance and give Democrats permission to put this issue back on the agenda.

I've been writing about this idea of "losing well" and "winning by losing" for a long time. It's a valuable tool for making progress and it's been too long since the Democrats even tried to use it. The Republicans have been doing it for years and it's served them very well. It would be nice if the Obama Administration finally understood that sometimes it's not about winning the fight, it's about waging it. Legacies are not made by legislation alone.

Eight years ago Kentuckians voted 2-1 to ban gay marriage by constitutional amendment.  Gays will never ave civil rights in Kentucky, right? Every gay person in the state should just pack up and head for San Francisco, right? Wrong. They stayed and fought, one vote at a time. 

First Louisville, Lexington and Covington passed fairness ordinances banning discrimination against gays. But those are the biggest cities; fairness will never fly in the counties, right? Doubters, meet Vicco. And Berea.

Fight, even if you're completely alone. How will anyone know it's important unless someone is out there fighting for it?