Gays and lesbians turned out for Hillary Clinton last night. She packed Hiro, a bar on 16th St. and 9th Ave., cramming 1,000 people (at $100 a ticket) into a space that formerly looked large. She was a total rock star.
I’m hoping to post some video later Friday morning. But what I was struck by was how completely warm, engaging and relaxed she was. She seemed like she was having fun.
She won us over by talking about how, after she and Bill named their daughter Chelsea Clinton, friends started asking them why she was named after two neighborhoods in New York. Rumor was that Chelsea was backstage - the crowd of 20-somethings (and a few 70-somethings) were buzzing about whether she’d shake a few hands and show herself, but alas.
But Hillary was most impressive in the way she used her time to talk specifics. She quickly ran down what she was actually going to do to improve the economy and American life, including letting everyone choose if they want to be on Congress’s health plan, supporting green jobs that may grow the economy while helping the environment, and forgiving student loans for people who graduate into jobs in the public sector.
One guy shouted out: “It takes a Clinton to fix a Bush economy!” She repeated it and laughed, and the crowd roared. Later, the crowd listened intensely as she spoke about caring for the soldiers who return from duty in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
Afterwards, people pressed forward to touch her hand, her sleeve, to have her sign posters or pictures or copies of her autobiography.
The news of the evening - the NYT is endorsing Hillary! Can’t wait to see that in the morning paper.
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LGBT people support Hillary for a whole range of reasons, and I can't pretend to represent of them. I can discuss a few.
We support Hillary because she was the person in Congress who formulated the strategy for defeating Bush's Federal Marriage Amendment. (http://youtube.com/watch?v=bSPxGmePSiA).
We support Hillary because she led the fight to make sure that the Republican controlled Senate did not take AIDS funding away from those states hardest hit by the epidemic. (http://clinton.senate.gov/news/statements/details.cfm?id=264208&&Senator).
We support Hillary because she has worked to decrease the rate of suicide among gay teenagers. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jp_mn1_z9UY). We oppose Obama because he has taken endorsements from pastors who run ex-gay ministries, which no doubt increase rates of gay suicide and promote attitudes that make violence against gay people acceptable. (http://www.queerty.com/bushs-anti-gay-spiritual-adviser-endorses-obama-20080121/ and http://www.queerty.com/bushs-anti-gay-spiritual-adviser-endorses-obama-20080121/).
We support Hillary because we know she never stops fighting to expand healthcare coverage and we because we can't tolerate Obama's plan to leave 15 million uninsured.
We support Hillary because she has the most expansive view of benefits and entitlements, believing each person should be able to share his or her benefits with one other person with whom he or she has a committed relationship, regardless of whether it is a parent, a sibling, a friend, or a spouse.
We support Hillary because we are not single issue voters. We support her because we believe that she has the best grasp of foreign, domestic, and economic policy. We believe she is best suited to reduce global tensions while protecting America from outside threats. We believe she has the best plans for stimulating the economy, creating jobs, reducing the cost of education for all, and forand reducing our dependence on foreign oil. We believe she has the best experience to effectively navigate Washington to implement the programs and policies she has proposed. Experience does matter. She has it. Obama doesn't.
Right now we need a president, not a sloganeer. So in short, we support Hillary Clinton because we believe she is best candidate for the job.
So for the record, I am a strong Hillary Clinton supporter.
He says it's time to move forward, but the problem is that the bigots in the Democratic Party have moved forward with an anti GLBT agenda and at our expense. Although they’ve controlled Congress for two years they refuse to repeal DADT or the Clinton's DOMA, the gutted and then dropped ENDA, and they dropped the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes bill, in each cases to prevent them becoming issues in the 2008 election.
The way for us to move forward is to move away from the Democrats and the Republicans. The both support the colonialist oil piracy in Iraq, union busting and laws that enrich the bloated rich but cut into our standard of living and have put the US into an economic nosedive.
Mark Talley stuck out on this one.