BARNEY FRANK IS SOMEONE I AGREED WITH on many of the most important issues of the day and I also, generally agreed with him on the strategy of doing what was possible, making progress when that was possible without getting too far out ahead of where the majority of voters seemed to be. "Seemed" does a lot of work in that formulation because I know I'm not that good at knowing what is really possible on many issues and, I dare say, as good as he was Barney Frank wasn't infallible in discerning that, either. Despite my regret at the successful use of marriage equality for Lesbians and Gay men in 2004 by Repubilcan-fascists to thwart Democrats taking the House until 2006 and possibly toppling the criminal regime of Bush II, I was rather stunned at how fast that issue moved forward despite everything. I still think we'd be far, far ahead if Democrats had won the elections that year, we wouldn't have the fascist Supreme Court who are always willing to send us back to what should now be called John (as in "Roberts") Crow, the state nationalizing Womens' bodies, turning a Republican-fascist criminal, insurrectionist and fascist into an immune monarch and the rest of it. If marriage equality had waited two years and it had not led to the fascists winning that election, all of those groups, including LGBTQ+ People would be far better off.
Frank was a capitalist, he made some statements in favor of inequality as a force that fuels economics, which I absolutely reject. I am a radical egalitarian and a democrat and a Christian socialist, though I don't think the word is useful for similar reasons laid out in my morning post. I had some serious disagreements with him over economic and financial policy. Though many of the things he promoted and pushed and got adopted into law made things far more equal, far more democratic and were in line with many of the goals of Christian socialism.
He'd recently relocated to Maine, living about ten miles from me. I don't know how closely he followed Maine politics but his endorsement of Janet Mills strikes me as a mistake, though we will see in November. I think the failure of her campaign, which was hardly a campaign, may well have made things a lot easier for Susan Collins. I had occasion to look at the past races with a number of far better politicians, such as Tom Allen, Chellie Pingree and Joe Brennan lost to her. I will repeat, I've never seen anyone who has excited voters in Maine like Graham Platner has. I think that he is an economic populist with a strong sense of egalitarian fairness has done what conventional politics isn't going to do. Barney Frank, whatever else he was, was a master of conventional politics.
He was also very funny, very fast and witty and, not infrequently, wise. A collection of his witticisms, even those whose context put a time limit on the appreciation for them, would be worth assembling. You'd have to know a lot of the history of the 1990s and the attempts of Republicans during the Gingrich era to bring down Bill Clinton to get many of the zingers he got off during the interminable hearings. The exchange when he tied some scumbags that Clinton's administration were stupid enough to keep on when they could have fired them when they came to office, as, in fact, every Republican administration did, was epic. Him finally asking the would be "good Republican" Jim Leach of Iowa, "What's a nice guy like you doing in a party like this," still makes me smile.
I suspect that one thing he found out was that there is a heaven and, I'd guess, to his surprise he was let in. I liked him very much. I already missed him in so many of the hearings that have happened in the past 14 years. My condolenses to his husband and his sister the estimable Ann Lewis.
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