The Washington Blade: Clinton for President #DCforHRC
ICYMI--.
Washington Blade: Gay News, Politics, LGBT Rights
America's Leading LGBT News Source
May 10, 2016 at 1:00 pm EDT | by Kevin Naff
CLINTON FOR PRESIDENT
http://www.washingtonblade.com/2016/05/10/clinton-for-president/#sthash.KCydD1EK.dpuf
Hillary Clinton (Photo by Gino Santa Maria; courtesy Bigstock)
Sen. Bernie Sanders has done the country a great service by shining a bright (if shrill) light on the entrenched problem of income inequality but his message failed to produce the revolution he sought and now it’s time for practicality to prevail.
While the Republicans have burned through 16 losing candidates and turned their party over to a racist, sexist bully with zero experience in elected office, the Democrats are still slugging it out — in May. This should be a time for Hillary Clinton’s victory lap, not a time for enduring more misguided attacks on her fitness for office from fellow Democrats.
Sanders deserves credit for running an effective campaign that caught the imagination of a younger generation tired of the status quo. ....................
But he has been mathematically eliminated from winning the nomination with pledged delegates. There simply is no credible path to victory. And the specter of what comes next should scare all voters into realizing the responsible thing for Sanders to do is to withdraw, endorse Clinton and start planning a national tour of college campuses to rally young voters to her side.
With Trump waiting in the wings, there is too much at stake to risk further damaging Clinton in the eyes of Sanders’s supporters, 25 percent of whom in a recent poll foolishly and naively said they would not vote for Clinton. Sanders must disabuse his followers of such self-destructive nonsense. Ralph Nader’s causes didn’t fare so well under George W. Bush. We mustn’t repeat the mistakes of third-party folly or pouty stay-at-home stubbornness.
The notion that Clinton is unqualified for the presidency, as Sanders has intimated, is absurd; .....................
On LGBT rights, Clinton was late to the marriage party but she has arrived — and there’s no turning back now. The time has come to forgive the many Democratic Party leaders who paid lip service to our issues for so long and move forward in this radically changed political environment in which anything but full-throated support for LGBT rights will not fly for any Democrat seeking the presidency. Clinton has pledged her full support for a range of LGBT causes. She even hired a gay campaign manager. Our progress is not only safe in her hands, it will continue.
Clinton has pledged to support the Equality Act, to allow transgender people to serve openly in the U.S. military and to end widely discredited “ex-gay” conversion therapy for minors. In addition, she has said she would expand access to HIV prevention and treatment; confront disproportionate violence facing transgender people, especially trans women of color; and continue her work as former secretary of state on international LGBT rights. She has consistently raised LGBT issues during the primary season, making them a centerpiece of her campaign.
At risk of playing the “woman’s card,” we should also seize this historic opportunity to elect the nation’s first female president...................
- See more at: http://www.washingtonblade.com/2016/05/10/clinton-for-president/#sthash.KCydD1EK.dpuf
= new reply since forum marked as read
