Qualified, to the Genth degree

Have you noticed how political activists in early primary/caucus states develop such a keenly-honed sense of superior insight as to who should be president?

Here's Dean Genth, an Iowa gay Democrats apparatchik hosted a do at his and his husband's abode:

“We just felt as a lot of people did that it was [Obama's] moment and it was his time, but I think we feel equally as strong now that this is Hillary’s moment and this is Hillary’s time,” Genth said. “We think she’s tremendously a more mature and stronger candidate than just eight years ago. You could sense in the house today, her demeanor and her sense of knowing what she knows now that she’s served four years as the most traveled secretary of state in the history of our country. I think she’s more comfortable in her skin.”  

But Genth recalled that during the 2008 presidential primary, when he helped set up the first Obama campaign office in Iowa and allowed Obama campaign workers to stay at his home, the split in the LGBT community was palpable.

“A lot of our LGBT folks, especially our lesbian friends, were just adamant for Hillary,” Genth said. “We were back in that mode of saying we got to go for the person that can win in November. Our LGBT issues and progress is going to depend on somebody holding the White House for us.”  

This time around, Genth said Clinton’s experience in the Obama administration as secretary of state places her at the top of the list of candidates seeking the White House.  

“There is no human being alive and breathing on this planet Earth that has her resume,” Genth said. “Not Abraham Lincoln, not Thomas Jefferson, not Ronald Reagan, not Bill Clinton, nor Barack Obama. No one has — male or female, or for that matter worldwide — that resume of hers now."

Grandiose as that sounds, it seems like Genth is setting the bar a bit low. At one end is Jefferson: state legislator, governor, Continental Congress member, author of the Declaration of Independence, minister to France, Secretary of State, Vice President, President, and founder of the University of Virginia.

On the other, there's Lincoln: a one-term Congressman; Barack Obama, a former state legislator and US Senator; Reagan, a former actor and state governor; and Bubba, a former governor. And that's not considering the rest of the planet. Unpacked, Genth's effusion seems like declaring that the moon s round, and pizza is delicious. "Her qualifications put her somewhere between a random phone book listing and God."

Waldo was a she-Clinton skeptic in '08. Her treatment of the gay tribe showed a tin ear and a thin veneer of briefing-book awareness on the part of a woman who, with her husband, used up and threw away all their gay supporters over the years.
Ans as Waldo noted in 2008, if credentials were all, John Quincy Adams and James Buchanan were America's two best-qualified presidents. And what's with this "It's her turn" stuff? Isn't that how the Republicans do it?

In the end, it little matters. If Mrs Clinton can get the nomination, she will get the gay vote. There will simply be no other choice.