HRC and HRC: The Love-In

Here's Senator Clinton's speech to Human Rights Campaign volunteers yesterday. Money quote on HRC's talk to HRC:

"I love the fact that it's my initials. Have you ever noticed that?"

There was no press coverage of this speech, and HRC kept it very hush-hush, which is weird, defensive, suspicious - but that's HRC, sucking money out of gay pockets to finance an insider, velvet-rope elite of D.C. hacks. But the speech is significant in one respect, it seems to me. HRC, the organization, is now fully integrated into HRC, the campaign. It is the Clinton campaign. Clinton calls HRC's executive director, Joe Solmonese a "colleague." She talks of a future "relationship" with HRC in a Clinton administration: "You will have an open door to the White House". Among HRC's victories, she cites the 2006 election turn-out campaign ... for the Democrats.

To her credit, she forthrightly backs gay adoption. And she backs ENDA and hate crimes. But no mention of marriage. She's against it. She also makes no commitment to passing ENDA (the Employment Non-Discrimination Act) or hate-crimes laws in the current Congress. That's also significant. I have a feeling that they've run the numbers (that's what HRC does when it's not fund-raising for the Dems), figure that employment discrimination could actually be the first gay wedge issue to work against Republicans, and are going to hold off to use it in the presidential campaign. What matters is what's in the best interest of the Clintons and the Democrats. It's 1992 all over again: