Jun 20, 2008  |  By: PETER ROSENSTEIN  | COMMENTS     

THE BOTTOM LINE for Hillary Clinton’s GLBT supporters is that we must agree that we need a Democrat in the White House on Jan. 20, 2009.

I know what it means to move your support from one candidate to another after months of passionately supporting the person you believe to be the best person for the job.

In addition to believing that your candidate is best there often is a personal commitment to that person that makes transferring your support even more difficult. You never want to do anything to hurt your candidate and friend because you want to give him or her the opportunity to lead and even to secure his or her place for the future.

I have a lot of experience in this area.

I have often supported Democratic candidates who I passionately believed in and who lost. I have the benefit of choosing candidates without any consideration to what I would receive if they won. I had the experience often with Bella Abzug, the first introducer of ENDA and a brilliant person who was also a friend.

Beginning with her Senate primary against Daniel Patrick Moynihan in 1976, Bella tried for office four more times and I came back to support her each time with the same passion. Her commitment to what is right for the GLBT community and for the nation made that easy. If it was a primary, I always ended up supporting the candidate who beat her, but it took time and except for once it didn’t happen until much after primary night. I feel the same way about Hillary Clinton. I supported her and will anytime again because she is committed to me as a gay man and because her solutions for America are right.

I hope now that Barack Obama’s supporters will realize what it will take for Clinton’s supporters to come around. We all need to keep our eyes on the prize, which is to have everyone go into the voting booth in November and vote for Barack Obama. Nearly 18 million people voted for Clinton in the Democratic primary. While some of those votes in Florida and Michigan may not be considered in the final popular vote tallies of the party, it still needs to be acknowledged that more people actually voted for her than for any other person ever in the primaries.

Obama will need many of those 18 million votes, especially those in the swing states. They will make the difference for Obama in November. And although it will take time to bring those voters around I know it will happen if the Obama team handles this right.

AS SEN. JOE Biden (D-Del.) recently said, “With apologies to Nancy Pelosi, win or lose, Hillary Clinton is the most powerful woman politician in the nation.”

I am not suggesting that Obama should make Clinton his running mate, but as Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) said, “It would be a dream ticket.” And to those who say it can’t happen, just remember the animosity between Ronald Reagan and George Bush or JFK and Lyndon Johnson and how they managed to run together and win. And to those who say it would nullify Obama’s message of change, all Obama needs to say to the world is, “Nothing can signify a seismic change in America to the rest of the world more than electing an African American as president and a woman as vice president.”

The GLBT community will come together faster than the rest of the electorate for Obama because we know Sen. John McCain’s record on our rights and it is unacceptable. McCain opposes ENDA, he opposes getting rid of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” he opposes our hate crimes bill and he will support the anti-marriage initiative in California.

Some of Clinton’s supporters will cling for a while to some of the bitterness that results from any campaign. Some Obama supporters will cling to their bitterness over the things they perceive that Hillary said about their candidate. But in truth this was a mild campaign and we need to be prepared for the fall campaign, when, as Pat Buchanan said, and I hate to ever agree with him, “the 527 ads in this campaign will make the Swift Boat ads look like public service announcements.”

The Republicans will not go silently into the night and will cling to the White House like shipwrecked ...