Former President Clinton spoke at Hamilton College Tuesday night about why he thought his party lost last week's presidential election.
The Associated Press reports Clinton warned that Democrats "cannot be nationally competitive when we don't feel comfortable talking about our convictions:"
"I do not believe either party has a monopoly on morality or truth," Clinton told an audience of more than 4,500 at Hamilton College in upstate New York.
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"I think the current divisions are partly the fault of the people in my party for not engaging the Christian evangelical community in a serious discussion of what it would take to promote a real culture of life," Clinton said.
More interesting is what the Associated Press did not report. According to the Utica Observer Dispatch Clinton put much of the blame for Kerry's loss on gay marriage:
"Gay marriage was an overwhelming factor in the defeat of John Kerry," Clinton told the audience at the Margaret Bundy Scott Field House.
[. . .]"There was astonishing turnout among evangelical Christians who were voting on the basis of moral values," he said. "I do not believe either party has a monopoly on morality or truth."
Clinton said Democrats had a story to tell about abortion and gay marriage. They didn't tell it. Abortions declined during his terms in office, he said, because of policies encouraging adoption and rewarding mothers.
Democrats should have emphasized that gay marriage should be up to the states -- and that state sovereignty is a traditionally Republican value.
"Gay marriage was an overwhelming factor in the defeat of John Kerry," Clinton said. "With one decision of one Supreme Court, all of the sudden we have a constitutional amendment designed, I think, to whip people up, to inflame them, make them stop thinking about other issues."
In responding to questions submitted in advance, Clinton discussed why Americans are the target of international resentment:
Making war in Iraq without world approval, he said, was part of a larger pattern of withdrawal from international agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol and antiballistic treaty.
Clinton warned the nation is moving in a direction of ideological extremism, where people vote not on issues or evidence but party affiliation and the perception of candidates' morality.
"We have no call to go into the future divided based on who's a good or bad person," Clinton said. "The fundamental underlying realities sooner or later will compel us to abandon demeaning one another and start cooperating. Our common humanity in the end will always matter more."
Clinton has blamed Kerry's loss on gay marriage in both of the speeches he has given since President Bush's re-election.
In a speech Friday to the Urban Land Institute, Clinton said Kerry's campaign an Adverse impact from two crucial events beyond his control: the decision of the Massachusetts high court legalizing same-sex marriage, which proved more polarizing than the Democrats understood, and the release of the Osama bin Laden videotape days before the election.
While the reference to gay marriage was in the Boston Globe's version of the Associated Press' report of Clinton's speech to the Urban Land Institute, it was not included in the USA Today or the Tampa Bay Online Versions.
Why are some of the legacy media trying to hide the role gay marriage played in the presidential election? Is this similar to the press not reporting that New Jersey's governor McGreevy was gay until he announced he intended to resign last August.
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