“I double dare you Bill to say one more thing about me!”
Is the Clinton camp getting nervous? Are they getting scared of that skinny kid with the big ears and funny sounding name? Sure looks like it, especially when the biggest, and baddest, dog in your pound goes out and in a back-handed way implies Barack Obama lacks the experience to be Commander-in-Chief.
On “Political Capital with Al Hunt,” a Bloomberg television gabfest, William Jefferson Clinton was going down memory lane and said in 1988, when he thought about running for the best house in the country, he and Obama were close in terms of experience. Clinton did not run that year and do you want to know why?
“I really didn’t think I knew enough, and had served enough and done enough to run,” the former president said.
Here is why Bill Clinton is the Yoda of politics. If pressed he can say he was only talking about himself but he knows his words carry weight among Democrats and the “Experience Question” is Obama’s weakest link.
Obama’s experience is fair game (heck even he admits that) but it’s instructive that even Bill is putting it out there. Maybe he saw the crowd in Washington Square Park on Thursday?
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Our movement will never speak with one voice although we should unite in single issue campaigns like an inclusive ENDA whenever we can. We’re millions strong but just as divided as the society we sprang from; class, color, nationality, age, language, immigrant or not, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual, left, right - all we have in common is that we’re all under the thumb of homobashers and kept in a second class status.
Our internal wrangling will reflect the deepening crisis of American political life which is catching fire because of the war, misogyny, a tumbling standard of living, homobigotry, union busting, the super exploitation of immigrant workers, racism and a crumbling infrastructure etc. We’ll all have a chance to learn and choose sides.
The lines are being drawn and people are choosing sides at an unprecedented rate. On one side are old school right wingers like Democratic and Republican advocates, the conservative and wealthy owners of many GLBT local papers and groups like the HRC.
On the other is an emerging left wing of stubborn combative activists. As the membership of thousands of new GLSEN/GSA high school groups and college equality groups enters the movement they’ll bring a transfusion of energy and a definite swing to the left.
The differences between the two boils down to the treacherous rightwing view that we should patiently wheel and deal about this or that cosmetic reform and make what ever sacrifices we’re told to. Opposed to it is the leftwing perspective that embraces the certainty that not only can’t the system be reformed but that it’s in the process of fracturing to the point that it’ll demolish itself and have to be rebuilt.
Both our internal struggle and the larger national struggles will play out over the next several years. We’ll all have a chance to learn and choose sides.
Bill Perdue, RainbowRED Organization
donal1944@msn.com