The Pundits Speak: Keith Olbermann and other traditional journalists on gay issues

AE: What was different in 2004?
Chris Matthews: Ohio was a key state for both sides last time and the marriage vote was obviously important. We heard stories about Karl Rove and John King and the black ministers in Cuyahoga County urging the black church people to vote against them, to vote on the issue, to vote on the anti side. But that was a state where it was a key state – Ohio. It was the key state. I think most people would say that California is probably going to be a blue state this time and therefore that isn’t where it would be effective as an issue, a leverage issue.

Chris Matthews

John King: We know that in some states Republicans used marriage initiatives to motivate and to try to drive up turn out.

Keith Olbermann: Working against the people with these opinions are some simple realities that prove true time and time again, whether we’re talking about orientation, color, height, anything. The statistics show it very clearly. If you know somebody personally who fits into whatever group you’re talking about, your acceptance of the group goes from, you know, a likelihood of two out of ten to a likelihood of nine out of ten. It’s as simple as that. They’re fighting against that tide. Every day some straight guy meets a gay guy and understands – what is it that everyone else has been talking about? This is no more important than what color shirt he wears. You go back and look at 1936, a country in chaos, the Socialists ran Norman Thomas for president. The guy got 900,000 votes in a time of crises when everybody voted. He only got 900,000 votes. Everything in his platform is now not only law, but considered sort of conservative stuff: welfare, abortion reform, unions, the 8-hour day as law. All these things are now standard stuff. Time works against nonsense.

Will John McCain play the gay card? (Editor’s note: on July 3^rd, John McCain replaced his campaign manager with Steve Schmidt, a protégée of Karl Rove’s. In the last week, McCain has embarked on a series of campaign tactics that many observers have deemed “the low road,” though not necessarily involving gay-baiting. These interviews were all conducted before these events.)
Joe Scarborough: You know they may, but I think the world has changed an awful lot in the past four years. I’m not saying that the type of initiatives that have passed in Missouri wouldn’t work in 2008, wouldn’t pass in 2008, but I just don’t think it’s going to drive people to the polls. I just don’t think there is the fear that there was in 2000 and 2004 that gay couples would somehow subvert America and the American family. It is a different time. And also you’ve got two candidates who are different. I mean, John McCain may move around on the issue a bit, but it’s very clear his election in the primary was not fueled by social conservatives. In fact, he won in spite of social conservatives being against him.

John King: You do not hear people inside McCain’s inner circle [talking about gay issues driving up turnout] like you did in the Bush inner circle. Not that there aren’t some conservative groups or Republican groups out in different parts of the country who don’t think that. So whether those two connect as allies or whether that’s a sort of an accidental alliance, I think it’s a question we don’t know the answer to yet. [But] in McCain land, they don’t talk about that. He has both a different outward communication style on those issues than Bush had. McCain wants a different tone or whether it’s a political calculation because they look at state like Pennsylvania and to do better. To win Pennsylvania they not only have to get the votes Bush got, but they have to do better in the suburbs. And my term, not their term, but gay bashing or an offensive push off tone to a campaign will not help you among suburban voters, more educated voters. [But] you know better than I late in campaigns sometimes this is used as just a powerful, divisive, emotional wedge. So there’s a burden on the Democratic side as well as to how they address this. It is one of the subsets of the great question we have not yet answered in that both McCain and Obama have promised a different campaign. After polarizing years of Clinton, polarizing years of Bush, polarizing campaigns, they have promised a grown up conversation. Are we going to get that grown up conversation? I don’t know. But we [in the media] should start doing our homework now so that we’re not surprised when they do pop up at the end. That’s a mistake our business has made before and I’m sure it’s in the process of making again.

Keith Olbermann: I saw a guy on a show the other night. It was one of the guys who wrote the Contract with America. He’s an economist. And he believes that even if Obama is elected, and he thinks Obama’s political ideas, economic ideas are basically disasters waiting to happen. He said, “All right, four years of that, or eight years of that – we can undo that. The other stuff is much more important. That’s about the future of the country.” The sense I’m getting from a lot of quarters among the Republicans is well, we can do all this stuff now and we’ll just make our people’s opinion of us worse. This isn’t going to happen for us this time. We have spent all of the capitol that the party has. We’ve damaged the brand. Let’s not go nuclear on this because we will just provide material to reelect a Democratic president, Senate and House in 2012. And if they’re thinking in those terms, there is at least the possibility maybe a third, maybe a quarter that these sort of kitchen sink strategies on these issues will not happen because it will only come back to hurt them in severe fashion.

AE: What do you personally think about gay issues?
Chris Matthews: I sort of look at these things myself. I used to think it was better to do these things by statute, but I’m beginning to think it’s better to do it constitutionally if it’s appropriate, because then people don’t feel, if they’re conservatives on the issue, they don’t feel that they have to sign on, if you will. They don’t have to celebrate. They don’t have to – they don’t even have to salute or recognize. They say, “Oh, the courts find it to be a right. It’s a right.” I guess that’s my other way of thinking, which is that it’s better to have a vote on civil rights like they did in ’64 – signed, sealed, delivered, reviewed by the courts and never talked about again. But unfortunately maybe some of these issues are not disposable. They don’t go away. I think abortion is not going to go away. I think that issue we are going to be arguing about. Gay rights generally have been progressing. I was at a human rights convention in Philly a couple years ago speaking and Barney [Frank] said, “Have faith. Things are changing.”