The lines often drawn on issues concerning gay rights is that all churches are against those rights. Indeed, you can regularly see posters here making such claims.

This is a simplistic statement that does not represent the reality. The real debate on the religious level is not between believers and non-believers. The debate is between those Christians who accept homosexuality and respect separation and church and state, and those churches that are theocratic. The later are the churches, which believe that they can legislate behavior based on belief. The later are anti-progressive.

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I am not sure if anyone has mentioned this, but the NAACP, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and other organizations (Asian, Mexican and several others) petitioned the California Supreme Court today to overturn Prop 8.

Here's the link:

http://equaljusticesociety.org/prop8/

I rag on Armstrong a lot as biased, but actually today he put up a good diary about what Obama needs to do going forward.

In it, Armstrong cites Lakeoff who talks about what are at base character issues. Let me start this by saying you can't win on the issues without winning the battle over negatively defining your opponent's character.

This quote here sums it up:

"Voters are smarter. Since they don't know what the situation will be in a couple of years, it is rational to ask if a candidate shares your values, if he's saying what he believes, if he connects with you, if you trust him, and if you identify with him. That is a rational thing to do. Not just a matter of personality."

Negative branding is distasteful, but a part of political life that's necessary for voter decision making. You must explain to voters not only what is right about you, but wrong about your opponent.

Until recently, the GOP has excelled at negative branding by turning an opponent's strength into his weakness. For Kerry, the war vet, it was to question his war record.

In 2008, we find McCain adopting much of the Rovian strategy, but mixing and matching this strategy with a bit of identity politics ju-jitsu. This diary isn't, however, about Palin, but about McCain, and how we can create the Democrats own version of Rovian approach that I refer to as the pivot.

This is a quick breakdown for the Chicken Little amongst us to understand the state of the race compared to prior elections. This is based on the conservative pollster- Real Clear Politics.

The negative represents a deficit compared to the candidate's opponent, and plus indicates lead. Caveat- the numbers for Gore and Kerry were at the end of their campaigns, and the numbers for Obama are where he stands now.

Curiously, after I brought up the subject of race, and asked the question only to be told about Jerome's cred with race, I think I that I may have been banned last night when I put up the satire site as an update satirizing Jerome's response? I am not sure, since there was no warning, so I am back to ask- was I? If so, I would like to know.

I never called Armstrong racist, and even now, will not. But,  I do question the tactics and its impact of changing the race dialogue in America. This dialogue is as predictable as the Sister Soulja moment from 1992. This is what the national dialogue on race is reduced to.

Others later in the thread, after  we got beyond the "it should be obvious" actually bothered to produce explainations about their views. That was the point of the diary. To have a real rather than political dialogue. This is what I think too many are guilty of- having only a dialogue for political advantage.