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How about this – a crack in the facade of team Obama re: LGBT equality. While Steve Hildebrand, the deputy campaign manager of a team that put Barack Obama in office to usher in change, is not a current staffer, the fact that someone this high-ranking is making public his disatisfaction with the politically slack performance on health care and LGBT rights is significant.
Obama, he said, “needs to be more bold in his leadership.”
“I’m not going to just sit by the curb and let these folks get away with a lack of performance for the American people,” he said, speaking of Washington’s Democratic leadership as a whole. “I want change just as much as a majority of Americans do, and I’m one of the many Americans who are losing patience.”
…“I know where Barack Obama is on these issues and I don't question his sincerity or his honesty towards trying to solve them,” he said. “I do question whether or not the Congress as it is constituted right now is going to have the capacity to ever deliver on some of the most critical issues facing our country right now.”
Still, he remains close to some top Obama aides, and his blast from the left is a mark of the depth of dissent even within elements of the organization that elected the first black president. His public comments are “nothing I haven't directly said to folks in the White House,” Hildebrand told POLITICO in an interview from his native South Dakota, where he came to prominence running former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle’s political operation.
At right is the reaction from the White House. Communications tool Robert Gibbs (no transcript available yet).
Hat tip, Deb G.
7 Comments
Same old bleepin’ story…
We need to make Cyndi Lauper’s song our Obama protest.
People slippin’ in the rain
I watch them get up again
It makes me feel like I can too
Hey hey ya
Just when I get off the ground
You’re back tryin’ to put me down
Like some simpleton you can use
Hey
Well It’s the same old fucking story
With your two different sets of rules
The same old fucking story
One for me, two for you
It’s the same old fucking story
It’s the same old fucking story all around yeah
Still some glory in my eyes
Much to everyone’s surprise
After everything you put me through
Yeah well
Friends tell me you’ve been around
Big fish in a big ol’ town
Gobble up all in one fair swoop yeah
Well It’s the same old fucking story…
Crack like in the Oakland Bay BridgeIt’s one thing to have alot of momentum and energy to elect a President. Everyone gets on the train, it’s a big party, the candidate promises the kitchen sink. The hangover is, now that he is elected, as in the old Burger King commercial with old cranky woman Clara saying, “WHERE’S THE BEEF”
What an Ass!When he was cozy with the Whitehouse he was as pie in the ski as they are now on LGBT issues. So who should we be more angry at: The administration that claims to be the key in support of our salvation, or the fob that gave them a handle into our support? If loyalty is any indication I would guess the later. I just can’t help but feel the timing on this is so crazy. Attempting to chip away at Obama’s support at one of the most critical times in his administration?
Don’t get me wrong, I still have very powerful feelings toward the administration on their weakness on LGBT issues. Especially given that as it has been noted before, the Republicans now sense that the popularity of Obama is no longer untouchable and are now pre-celebrating their wins in the 2010 elections. All of which throws LGBT issues under the bus or at worst moves them further into the future to either the first or second term of office, depending on Obama’s re-electability. Likely placing the popularity of the President in complete opposition to his support of our causes from the viewpoint of the administration’s current advisers.
Now that Hildebrand has moved on he is taking a stand now. The day before the great Health Care debate?? Is he looking for a job at the head of one the LGBT national organizations? Giving himself a leg up in the face of the community by criticizing the very administration he helped to put into office, and then giggling behind his hand as he sells himself to both the national organizations and the administration, as the key bridge builder for both? I can’t say any of this is true but I smell a rat.
Just a minor nitpick. . .I agree with your message. . . but the commercial happens to be Wendy’s.
Where we need to see him next…
While light years from the mea maxima culpa the LGBT community deserves from him, it’s good to see that gay Steve Hildebrand has apparently finally realized that it’s time he stopped being a part of the problem and tried becoming a part of the solution. Remember that widely circulated interview just two months ago, and his oozing, swooning Valentine to Obama that helped accomplish the same thing among many gays across the country that read it that the White House tea party, a few days before, did for those in attendance: it narcotized them. Just when we were finally approaching some leverage [the hastily thrown together drugged tea party was Exhibit A of that], it was knocked out of our hands by gaggles of gays, once again, falling on the floor and speaking in tongues over how much ***Massa luvs us.
Beyond his nonsense then that “Obama was handed a larger number of really big issues to deal with at the beginning of his presidency than any other president in history,” we’ll skip recapping Hildebrand’s multiple inexcusable exaggerations and factual errors, and simply repeat his most revealing statements:
On whether Obama “gets” gays “in his gut” and the importance of gay civil rights:
Just reading it again makes me want to ask for an insulin injection.
Polite applause for his having put down the Kool Aid, but given that the “folks in the White House,” in his own words, aren’t “listening”-and Robert Gibbs proves-given he was one of those who, first, helped convince LGBTs to elect Obama and, then, to give Obama more time which simply resulted in his creating a leadership vacuum that has been hijacked by Repug Brown Shirts-it would be fitting for him to repeat-and amplify-such loyal criticism in front of TV news cameras focused on the platform for the rally after the National Equality March in October.
[***Massa references "plantation mentality" not race.]
What leadership?He wants Obama to be more bold in his leadership but I don’t see any to begin with.
Hildrebrand says:
Does he say this because he’s naive, or because he is dishonest himself?