How to fix the "left" when we don't even understand the problem?

I've had a lot of conversations lately with a lot of friends about how to "fix" the left. The interesting thing is that depending on who you talk to, the "broken" part of the puzzle is either the Democratic party, the gay rights movement, the enviros, the women's groups, the gun control crowd, the civil rights movement at large, or poverty-fighting groups, to name a few. Which has led me to believe, and worry, that the problem is much bigger than one particular gay group, or the gay movement, or any one movement. The problem is liberalism more generally.

Having said that, I'm still trying to figure out what the problem is. I know the symptoms:

1. No clear message.
2. An inability or unwillingness to play hardball.
3. Once they fail, blame the failure on being too liberal and too tough.

Any "solution" has got to encompass more than just focusing on one part of the problem.

Now to the specifics of the recent news surrounding the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the largest gay rights lobby in the US. As you may have read on this blog, the NYT wrote a scathing piece yesterday about how HRC had, in the wake of the recent disastrous election results, supposedly decided to moderate its goals and scale-back its efforts over the coming year(s). If true, the article made many think that HRC had given up and decided - like a few Democratic leaders - to become "Republicans."

Now, I have no idea if the article was correct. I've dealt with enough media to know that they do get the story wrong from time to time. And HRC quickly issued a response to the article, saying the reporter got it wrong, that they aren't retrenching, etc. Both the article and the response are printed on this blog. I suspect that the truth lies somewhere between the NYT article and HRC's response.

HRC has never been known for its edginess. It's an inside-the-beltway organization that focuses on passing national legislation (or blocking hateful national legislation). Per se, one could argue, they need to play nice in order to play with the big boys here in town, and to play with both sides, Dem and Repub. Having said that, a friend I trust told me, in response to that theory, that it was bs. Look at the Jewish groups and the NRA and the religious right, he said. Do you think they play nice in order to get respect from Dems and Repubs? No. They kick you in the balls when you get out of line, and you don't make that mistake twice. So there is a good argument for even groups like HRC to consider adopting a gutsier, rather than a tamer, approach.

But we all make a big mistake by only focusing on HRC.

As I said in my intro to this entry, we have a problem across the entire gay movement and across all liberalism. Very few of "the groups" are doing what they should. Did the enviros talk about "arsenic in the drinking water" this election cycle? No. Did the anti-gun folks take full advantage of the assault weapons ban expiration? No. And the women's groups - they just had a march of 1m people in DC. Did they impact the election at all? I'm not so sure they did.

An in specific, just for a moment, let's talk about the other gay groups. They issued a letter to Congress yesterday declaring that, unlike HRC, they weren't backing down in the face of defeat. Well bully for them. But where the hell were they over the past year? The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, the gay group that organized the HRC-bashing letter, boldly "declared war" on George Bush a year ago in response to his support for the constitutional amendment. Great. But where exactly was NGLTF's war? They were no more on the radar screen than HRC this past year. They talked tough, but who was playing hardball with the GOP on marriage? A bunch of individuals and groups in the states, many on them working for free - NOT the million-dollar national groups who were supposedly the key players working on the issue. Yes, they were all WORKING on the issue, but effectively and boldly and wisely and strategically? Hardly.

As for the other groups that signed NGLTF's letter, many of them have just as much to answer for - where were their big successes this past year? How often did we see their names in the paper taking on some bad guy in a bold effective way? What gutsy smart thing did they do over the past 12 months to make a difference on our issues? I just want to know where they earned the right to criticize HRC when most of us have been wondering where the hell the rest of THEM have been as well.

My point is that, in my view, that letter to Congress was more about being gratuitous and self-serving than it was about helping the movement. It was about taking a jab at HRC for jab's sake and about stealing HRC's territory. Criticism is necessary as we have some big problems. And HRC deserves criticism along with the rest. But let's not forget that the other groups, gay and otherwise, have just as much explaining to do as HRC, and we shouldn't lose sight of that by solely focusing on HRC or solely focusing on how "the gays" supposedly lost the election. And rather than point fingers, I'd like to hear what all of these groups have to say for themselves. Because the last year really sucked, and a lot of us aren't very impressed with any of them.