Happy Friday from Jay Vanasco and John Polly, your “Gay Agenda” vlog hosts. We hopped on camera yesterday to issue an imporant message to Senator Clinton. Stop. It’s time. Even die-hard Hill-o-phile Jay has come to a decison: It’s time to bow out. Watch and discuss, please.

And while you’re watching you can hear us riff on the McGreevey divorce (which today seems to have settled?), the Michigan domestic-partnership benefits train wreck, and the happy forthcoming wedding plans of supergay Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson. He’s been getting death threats, but he’s undaunted. Jay’s got some good insight on the esteemed pastor because she just interviewed him. Nice!

It gets us both thinking about our own marriage possibilities. Hmmmmm… See it all below.

The Great White Hope emerges…

Hillary Clinton is now the Bernie Epton of the 2008 presidential campaign.

In 1983, when Harold Washington stunned Chicago by defeating Jane Byrne (then mayor of Chicago) and Richard M. Daley (now mayor) to win the Democratic mayoral primary, all eyes turned to Bernard Epton, a political non-entity whom the Republicans put up to run against the Democratic nominee. For decades, the Democratic primary was tantamount to the mayoral election, but when an African American won the nomination, the wildly irrational fears of whites fixed on Bernie Epton as The Great White Hope who would save them from the black peril.

In 2008, it is difficult to imagine the hysteria that gripped Chicago back in 1983, but there were many white Chicagoans who talked openly about moving out of the city if Washington were elected. Epton, running with the slogan ”Before it’s too late,” came within 3.3% of defeating the Democratic nominee. But in the end, the support of Latinos and white ‘Lakefront Liberals’ as well as a united African American community elected Harold Washington the first African American of the great city of Chicago. And despite the ‘Council Wars’ between the black mayor and the white-dominated City Council, whites did not move out of Chicago and the city was able to absorb the lessons of the hysteria that had gripped the city in 1983.

In an interview with USA Today on Wednesday, Hilary Clinton cited an Associated Press story that “found how Senator Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.”

Is Hillary trying to suggest that people of color are not ‘hard-working’? Or that ‘white Americans’ who support Obama are indolent elitists? Certainly, there will be many African Americans, Latinos, and other people of color who will have to wonder whether the junior senator form New York is trying to play to stereotypes and prejudices — still held by many ‘white Americans’ — that they are lazy.

“I can’t believe Sen. Clinton would say anything that dumb,” Rep. Charles Rangel (D-Manhattan) told The New York Daily News. The criticism from Rangel is significant, because it was Rangel — a dominant figure in Harlem politics — who first encouraged Hillary to run for the senate seat in New York being vacated by the retiring Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

“So why would these Democrats refuse to vote for a nominee running on Democratic principles against a self-described conservative Republican?,” asks Eugene Robinson. “The answer, which Clinton implies but doesn’t quite come out and say, is that Obama is black — and that white people who are not wealthy are irredeemably racist,” writes the African American columnist in his column in today’s Washington Post. “The other notion — that Clinton could position herself as some kind of Great White Hope and still expect African American voters to give her their enthusiastic support in the fall — is just nuts.”

Hillary’s racially coded speech was so obviously egregious that even the New York Times to her to task. “…Mrs. Clinton will be making a terrible mistake — for herself, her party and for the nation — if she continues to press her candidacy through negative campaigning with disturbing racial undertones,” the Times editorial board declared.

“Yes, there is a pattern — a familiar and unpleasant one,” the New York Times editorial board continued. “It is up to Mrs. Clinton to change it if she hopes to have any shot at winning the nomination or preserving her integrity and her influence if she loses.” And this from the paper that had endorsed Hillary in the run-up to the New York primary in February.

In the New York Times obituary of Bernie Epton, an Illinois Republican colleague was quoted as denying that Epton was a racist and saying that ”He’ll be remembered for the wrong things.” Hillary Clinton is now risking the possibility that she’ll be remembered for running a racially divisive campaign against the man who would go on to become first African American president of the United States.

When the Democratic primary was fresh and new, Washington Blade editor Kevin Naff wrote an editorial in support of Hillary Clinton. Unless your love of Obama juice was in the red zone, Naff didn’t say anything too outlandish. It was Clinton’s international experience that sealed the deal for him. Well that was then, this is now because earlier this week Naff wrote it was time for Clinton to close up shop and jump on the Obama train.

“The time has come for Clinton to adopt a gracious and conciliatory tone, end her campaign and endorse Sen. Barack Obama for president”

Aside from joining the chorus of folk telling Clinton it’s time to end her quest, Naff wonders what happened to the experienced pol he initially supported. From Iowa on, the Clinton machine seemed unable to get out if its way.

“From Bill Clinton’s ruinous (and arguably racist) campaign swing through South Carolina, to an obvious failure to craft a strategy past Super Tuesday, her campaign staff made so many miscalculations that Hillary went from a coronation to a shocking defeat. “

Naff however, doesn’t want to spend much time going over Clinton’s mistakes because defeating John McCain is his goal, especially after the Republican nominee recently announced he wanted to nominate Supreme Court justices just like Samuel Alito and John Roberts.

But it’s been a brutal process and Naff’s call for Democrats to come together against McCain might go unheeded. Judging by some of the comments left on this site a united front against McCain is never going to happen.

Would you want that finger on the button…?

This week, Hillary Clinton repeated her threat of “massive retaliation” against Iran first made in the run-up to the Pennsyvania primary.

“I want the Iranians to know that if I’m the president, we will attack Iran [if it attacked Israel],” Clinton said on ABC’s Good Morning America on Tuesday. “In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.”

Barack Obama called Clinton’s statement about Iran an example of “cowboy diplomacy,” saying, “We have had a foreign policy of bluster and saber-rattling and tough talk, and in the meantime have made a series of strategic decisions that have actually strengthened Iran.”

When Clinton made her threat against Iran late last month, the Boston Globe called her ‘Hillary Strangelove.’ “She seems not to realize that she undermined Iranian reformists and pragmatists,” the Globe editorial board intoned in its April 27 editorial, calling her declaration a “foolish and dangerous threat.”

As the Globe noted, “The Iranian people have been more favorable to America than any other in the Gulf region or the Middle East.” As the editorial board suggested, “A presidential candidate who lightly commits to obliterating Iran - and, presumably, all the children, parents, and grandparents in Iran - should not be answering the White House phone at any time of day or night.”

Hillary’s foolish and reckless threats against Iran demonstrate that she is more than willing to continue and even to escalate the aggressive posture of the administration of George W. Bush towards the Islamic Republic — a policy that has been a spectacular failure in dissuading the regime from pursuing a nuclear capability.

Granted that the regime in Tehran is authoritarian and vastly unpopular; the mullahs who now rule in the land of Cyrus the Great have not only run the national economy into the ground, they have also commited gross violations of human rights, ordering the execution of two teenage boys for consensual sex as part of the systematic persecution of LGBT people in Iran.

But Bush’s belligerent rhetoric towards Iran has only strengthened the hand of the mullahs and undermined the reformers by making it patriotic to defend Iran’s nuclear program. By joining Bush in his war-mongering rhetoric, Clinton shows that she has learned nothing from seven and-a-half years of the Bush presidency and the failure of Bush administration policy towards Iran and what neo-conservatives like to call ‘the greater Middle East.’

It is quite possible that there is nothing that the United States or the member states of the European Union can do to prevent Iran from going nuclear, but there is growing consensus among Middle East analysts and experts on nuclear proliferation that aggressive and belligerent rhetoric only strengthens the hands of the mullahs and accelerates Iran’s movement to nuclear capability.

John McCain was justly criticized for singing “bomb, bomb, bomb Iran” to the tune of the Beach Boys hit, “Barbara Ann,” underlining his enthusiastic support for Bush administration policy towards the tyrannical mullahs of Tehran. But Clinton joined McCain in voting for a Senate resolution declaring Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (an elite Iranian military unit) a foreign terrorist group. Obama did not cast a vote on the nonbinding amendment to the Defense Authorization Act — which passed the Senate in September 2007 by a 76-22 vote — but said later that he would have voted against it if he had not been campaigning in New Hampshire.

It may be that the junior senator from New York actually has no intention of dropping the bomb on Iran, but if so, her insincere statements about the Islamic Republic would have to be interpreted as a cynical calculation — yet one more attempt to try to pander to particular electoral constituency in the United States as well as to show how ‘tough’ she can be on national security. But Hillary’s foolish and reckless threats against Iran do not show ‘toughness’; instead, they clearly demonstrate why she cannot be trusted with the powers of the presidency.

If you ever described the same sex marriage movement as an extension of civil rights, then you know Mildred Loving (if you don’t you really need to be ashamed). Mildred Jeter Loving was the wife of Richard Loving; in 1958 the then young couple decided to get married. He was white, she black, and the laws of Virginia, their home state, did not look kindly on their union because it was a violation of the state’s Racial Integrity Act. The couple were arrested in their home late one night and sentenced to a year in prison, a punishment that was voided if they left the state and did not to return for 25 years. Here are the words of their sentencing judge, Caroline County Circuit Court Judge Leon M. Bazile:

“Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.”

The passage of time allows us the privilege of mocking the good judge’s ahistorical mixing and matching of history, theology, and politics; however, his opinion, the law, and most citizens were against the Lovings. What’s important to remember about the couple is two things: 1) they had no intention of being activists (they didn’t even attend their own Supreme Court hearing, Loving v. Virginia), and 2) the couple just wanted to make a life for themselves and their children among family and friends. The couple did that when the Supreme Court finally struck down anti-miscegenation laws in 1967, returning to their Caroline County home. It would be nice to give this story a happy ending, but Richard Loving died in a car crash in 1975. From then until her death this week, Mildred Loving stayed away from the press, letting her love and marriage do all the talking.

Happy Wednesday! It’s the episode of Flaming Politics you created! Japhy Grant answers reader questions about what “independent politics” means, whether his friends can stand him and how he fell into this whole politics thing in the first place.

If you think this sounds suspiciously like a canned episode designed to let Japhy go on vacation, you win a gold star for the week.

Last night started early and ended late. The last thing I remember is trying not to snicker as MSNBC’s Chris Matthews tried to say something profound about the Clintons. Fell asleep in my chair and it took the dog’s whining, she had to go out, to wake me up. North Carolina continued to be Obama land by 14 points percentage points. The Indiana race however, was closer than anyone in the Clinton camp wanted. Essentially Clinton’s mathematical chances at taking the nomination took a beating last night because she did no damage to Obama’s lead in the popular vote and pledged delegates.

For months I’ve been saying if the virtual tie remained, Obama had to be be the good soldier for the party and step aside for Clinton. Last night’s results have changed my mind. Clinton needs to end her campaign and start working to make sure Obama wins the November general election.

Hillary has reason to be blue after her poor showing in Indiana and North Carolina…

It wasn’t until the wee hours of Wednesday morning that CNN and the networks declared Hillary Clinton the winner in the hotly contested Indiana primary, but her margin of victory of less than 2% was contrasted with Barack Obama’s 14% margin of victory in North Carolina — or Clinton’s own solid 10% margin in the April 22 primary in Pennsylvania.

“Sen. Barack Obama scored a landslide victory in North Carolina’s Democratic presidential primary yesterday, moving him ever closer to locking up an insurmountable lead among pledged delegates, while Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton posted a razor-thin win in the hotly contested Indiana primary as she sought to keep her shaky candidacy for the nomination alive,” Dan Balz and Shailagh Murray wrote in the Washington Post. Like other commentators, Balz and Murray noted that the May 6 primaries came after Obama’s most difficult month, with wall-to-wall coverage of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright affair and the ‘bitter/cling’ controversy as well as the ascendancy of economic issues — generally thought to give Clinton an advantage over Obama — over Iraq and foreign policy issues.

“Despite narrowly winning Indiana, while losing North Carolina, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton did not fundamentally improve her chances of securing the Democratic presidential nomination,” Adam Nagourney wrote in the New York Times. “If anything, Mrs. Clinton’s hopes for overtaking Senator Barack Obama dwindled further on Tuesday night,” Nagourney added.

As I predicted yesterday, Obama will have come out of May 6 with an even bigger lead in pledged delegates.

In my post, I suggested that “Obama will win North Carolina by a comfortable if not overwhelming margin (5-10%) and that Clinton will win Indiana by a smaller margin (2-7%).” In fact, Clinton fell just short of 2% in Indiana, and Obama exceeded my estimate considerably with his landslide 14% margin in North Carolina.

“Only if Hillary can win both primaries decisively (i.e., by at least a 10% margin) will May 6 be seen in retrospect as the ‘game-changer’ that Camp Clinton has been looking forward to and predicting at every turn,” I wrote yesterday, and that prediction has been borne out by the results of the primaries in the Hoosier State and the Tarheel State.

Only if Clinton can get the Democratic National Committee to seat the contested Florida and Michigan delegations does she have any chance to catch up in pledged delegates, and with the staunch opposition of the Obama campaign, it is exceedingly likely that the DNC or its rules committee will accede to Clinton’s demand.

“But after her disappointing finishes Tuesday night, and with Clinton almost out of political maneuvers, her quest to become the nation’s first woman president appears increasingly unlikely,” concludes ABC’s Jennifer Parker. Even more definitive in his conclusion,Tim Russert declares on MSNBC, “We now know who the Democratic nominee is going to be, and no one is going to dispute it.”

While I’m not quite so ready to declare the contest over, there is no question in my mind that Clinton’s last chance to stop Obama was a double victory in Indiana and North Carolina; having failed to achieve that outcome, Hillary is, in Adam Nagourney’s words, running out of options.