Nobody said that winning the Congress with a BlueDog approach would make for an easy honeymoon -- just witness the party's rage over this week's vote (myself included) -- but no-one can challenge that our win in 2006 has begun the change that this nation sorely needed. But as if right on time to scuttle our success, news comes out that Obama has finally begun to talk about firearms and gun control and frankly, the position he is taking will only mean the loss of BlueDog, rural, libertarian leaning, and gun owning Democrats...
More beyond the fold.
So many of us have been waiting for more clarity on many of Obama's positions and one of those has been his position on American gun ownership. This month he is making himself clearly heard:
Obama delivers message tough on guns
Just days prior to announcing his urban agenda aimed at combating urban poverty, Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama entered Vernon Park Church of God on July 15 to a thunderous applause from a supportive crowd with a message challenging the gun lobby, criticizing the Bush administration and issuing a call to action for Black men.
“Our playgrounds have become battlegrounds. Our streets have become cemeteries. Our schools have become places to mourn the ones we’ve lost,” said the Illinois senator. “I’m sick and tired of seeing our young people gunned down.”
Sen. Obama decried the inaction on the part of the Bush administration to ban assault rifles, mentioning that the nearly three dozen children killed in Chicago this year is higher than the number of Illinois servicemen who have died in Iraq.
The clear implication of this statement is that Obama belives that Chicago's violent crimes are to be solved at a national level -- since Chicago & IL already have VERY tough gun control laws that have not stopped their crime problems--, and to be solved by gun control legislation specifically mentioning the 1994 "Assault Weapons Ban" and blaming Bush for that ban's lack of renewal.
This statement is very important for those of us lifetime Democrats who not only are more libertarian leaning (especially after 8 years under the imperial presidency of George Bush), are more rural, and who own firearms or have family/friends who do. This statement is also the Battle Cry that figures on the right have been waiting for from Obama just in case he could actually beat out Hillary.
While we can, and likely will, hammer away over and over again the practicality, morality and effectiveness of gun control legislation in the US over the last 75 years, the real issue I am interested in is the winning of the 2008 elections.
Common political wisdom has been that gun control legislation, and specifically the AWB, was key handing the Congress to the right in 1994. Additionally, it played a strong part in the election and re-election of George Bush. Only recently, as we have run more centrist and rural understanding Democrats were we able to retake Congress and have any chance at countering Bush & Co. in any way.
And we stand at a precipice where we can hand it all right back to them.
Due to her husband's involvement with the passing of the AWB, the gun community will not vote for Hillary, period. Obama is choosing to join her in that loss.
Additionally, those rural people who are not even gun owners hear this kind of rhetoric and think, "City Liberals at it again!". Andy why would they do that? Because this is not a city passing laws about it's own crime issues. This is a national solution to a problem that is not a rural problem. Also, for a group of people who is always talking about commissions to look into solving problems, for a party that wants to use diplomacy and understanding abroad, when it comes to urban youth violence, there is a natural move to pass sweeping gun legislation that effects the entire nation without consult or diplomacy, or frankly understanding of those who will simply leave the party.
And here we stand ready to do it again.
Our loss, their gain.