If worst-kept secrets were ever actually kept, we wouldn’t know already that U.S. Rep Alan Grayson, D-SAYS ANYTHING HE WANTS, would announce today that he is joining the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate in order to replace everybody’s favorite hairline, Sen. Marco Rubio. (There is a very long announcement video on his Facebook page). The crisis — sheer panic, we says — within the Democratic party is that he’s running against yawning moderate from Jupiter (more stupider?) U.S. Rep Patrick Murphy. Website Politico.com is positively chomping at the bit on this one, predicting that it will cause the new Great Schism between progressive and moderate Democrats. Both former President Bill Clinton and former astronaut (OK, current U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson) have already fallen in line behind Murphy, so the concerns aren’t necessarily unfounded. However, who doesn’t love a good primary? Also, Murphy is a former Republican, so this could get interesting.
In our last issue, on that tiny subject of marriage equality winning nationwide passage, we spoke with Grayson about his feelings toward the LGBT community, which are already well-known, given that he typically waxes historical about the systemic genius and subsequent abuse of gay British code-breaker Alan Turing, who basically saved the world and then was mutilated by the government. Grayson is on the right side of history, obviously. As are, he says, most people.
“Let me try to put it in an interesting perspective,” he says. “We have two ways to make progress. One way is to try to prevail upon people in the judiciary, or the judges, to benefit upon what was once referred to in a Supreme Court decision as a ‘discrete, insular minority.’ That’s the term that was used.” The other, he says, is through the democratic process.
“What’s interesting is that both of those are happening right now,” he says. “Much more important than what five people think is what 330 million people think, and that argument is in the process of being won.”
And given Grayson’s money-bomb political populism, that process may just bend in his favor.
