| More video from Bill Clinton's speech to Netroots Nation 2009 last Thursday is below the fold. He starts out talking about the new political environment in America -- communitarian and aware that we all succeed or fail together. A few minutes into the speech he is interrupted by someone protesting his Don't Ask, Don't Tell (DADT) policy on gays in the military -- which he then addresses. Clinton finishes up with why the health care debate is fundamentally different in 2009 than it was in 1993 and why he thinks the Republicans are making a big mistake on the health care debate. A partial transcript follows with President Clinton's remarks in italics.
Everybody knows that one major significance of President Obama's election is that he's the first African American president and for people of a certain age, like me, who are Southerners, that's a very big deal. It lifts an awful burden of history off our president, it enables every parent in America to tell every child, not just every African American child 'you can live up to your God-given potential.'
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This is the first presidential election to occur in a country that is self-consciously communitarian. That is not always more liberal on the issues but understanding that we are going to rise and fall together. We don't have time for these phony divisions anymore. We don't have time to major in the minors anymore. We don't have time to pretend that we don't need to care what other countries think of us anymore. We are too diverse, racially, religiously and in every other way.
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Unless immigration slows to nothing, the United States will have no majority race by 2050 ...
Do we need a second party that's vital? We do. The Republicans are making a terrible mistake sitting around just waiting for the President to mess up. Now as a Democrat it suits me fine. But the truth is we need an honest, principled debate on all these complex issues ...
At this point Clinton was interrupted by shouts about his DADT policy. He joked that the shouter needed to go to one of those health care meetings and offered to talk about DADT if the person would be quiet.
I'll tell you exactly what happened. You couldn't deliver me any support in the Congress and they voted by a veto proof majority in both houses against my attempt to let gays serve in the military and the media supported them -- they raised all kinds of devilment -- and all most of you did was to attack me instead of giving me some support in the Congress. ... You may have noticed that Presidents aren't dictators.
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Public opinion now is more strongly in our favor than it was 16 years ago. ... This is a different world.
Clinton said Gen. Colin Powell defined DADT much differently than it was eventually enforced, but that turned out to be a fraud. He said "nobody regrets how this was implemented any more than I do. ... I hated what happened, but I didn't have any choice if I wanted any progress to be made at all."
He also discussed DOMA and said it was an attempt to head off a Constitutional Amendment being sent to the states. "I didn't like signing DOMA. ... I think we're going forward in the right direction now ..."
America has rapidly moved to a different place on many of these issues. ... Right now the Republicans are sitting around rooting for the President to fail as nearly as I can figure. One of the reasons so hysterical at all these health care town hall meetings, and they've been stirred up like they have, is they know they have no chance to beat health care this time unless they can mortify with rigid fears, some moderate and conservative Democrats. Why do they know that? Because they don't have the filibuster this time.
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This time there is no 45 Senators, there is nor filibuster option, and there is no option here but to terrify people. |
