There is a Message to this Madness

OK, so we have some anonymous adviser to Barack Obama saying that people who want more substantive action on LGBT rights are a pajama clad left wing fringe:

For a sign of how seriously the White House does or doesn't take this opposition, one adviser told me those bloggers need to take off the pajamas, get dressed, and realize that governing a closely divided country is complicated and difficult.

There are a lot of people out there who are claiming that this is not official White House policy, and it's an anonymous source, and maybe John Harwood is flat out lying.

It's clear from the discussions that Harwood is a turd: The idea that moving in a direction that a majority of the country supports is dangerous, and that Obama has to fear Letterman, Leno, and O'Brien is ludicrous. (see video)

That being said, he did not just make this up from thin air while on the air. Harwood is standing by his statement, but does now offer that perhaps it was more about the people who want us out of Afghanistan.

Barack Obama and his people have done a very good job at keeping some groups on the reservation, to the degree that Andrew Sullivan describes the Human Rights Campaign as having "Battered Wife Syndrome", and Glenn Greenwald correctly describes the administrations dealings with liberal organizations, particularly in the case or Rahm Emanuel, as being liberal veal pen.

So, the question here is what is going on, and I think that Steve M at No More Mister Nice Blog nails it: this is a deliberate attempt to send out contradictory messages:

The deliberate muddying of the message was the message.

That's what's going on now. Obama reached out to the gay community -- and yet he wants to be seen as not being tight with gays or the angrier lefties. So a friendly journalist leaked this remark -- this deniable remark -- which has since been, um, denied. And now the message is muddied. The mixed signals are meant, I think, to confuse supporters of gay rights and wavering but potentially Democratic-voting non-liberal voters (including non-white social conservatives) in, oh, say, New Jersey and Virginia.

What is going on here is that Obama's staff is populated by old Clintonistas, and if there was a defining characteristic of the Clinton Administration, it can be summed up in three words, Sister Souljah Moment.

You see Republicans prove how macho they are they attack their opponents, but Democrats, particularly those who came to politics under Bill Clinton, prove how macho they are by attacking their allies. They make a fetish of it.

There are people in the Obama White House who are terrified at what might happen if people started to think that the administration supported civil rights, because that would likely mean that they would lose the white male vote in the south....Never mind, already lost...Lose the white evangelical vote....Never mind, the Republicans have that one locked down...Lose the white evangelical vote....Never mind, the Republicans have that one locked down...Lose the foaming at the mouth bigot vote....Never mind, the Republicans have that one locked down...Lose the voters who want to criminalize abortion....Never mind, the Republicans have that one locked down...

Gee, I'm beginning to sense a pattern, and I think that it means that there some really stupid folks playing politics in Obama's white house.