Transgender Delegate Blog: Day One In Denver

Actually I arrived in Denver last night and got a good walk around the neighborhood where I'm staying with a good, longtime friend of mine, Sally Anne. Cherry Creek is a really cool neighborhood, and she's in the heart of it: very artsy, tony clothing and furniture shops, haute cuisine in numerous "bistro" type eateries, and of course a number of neighborhood and a smattering of in-crowd nightspots! And they're all within an easy walk!

The weather is astonishingly cool as well! I'm more acclimated to the un-air-conditioned environs of the ever-humid blast furnace of Houston. I'm used to 70's and 80's at night -- not in the day time! This is a welcome respite from South Texas summer!

Onto the super-chat: Vice President Joe Biden. An excellent (and expectedly safe) choice! Once the Georgia conflict hit, and it became crystal clear to America that we are in an extremely vulnerable geopolitical environment with our overstretched and armament-depleted military, it was obvious Obama would be mandated to choose someone with foreign and/or military experience. This knocked Kaine out of logical contention, and helped folks like Wesley Clark, Bill Richardson and Evan Bayh as well as Biden.


From my perspective, I thought Biden was the best choice of them. However, I also feared that the national geopolitics (i.e. countering your opponent with a red state resident) would trump Biden in favor of Bayh. Bayh acquitted himself quite well on last Sunday's talk shows. But in the overall scheme, as things play out in the Bush/Cheney years, it's necessary to have your Veep be the "barking dog" a la Dickless Cheney.

Hands down, Biden knows how to parry with the best of the GOPpers. He's also very good at the "soundbite" press-worthy quotes.

There has been some chatter on the blogs. From a GLBT perspective, some within the gay and lesbian community are disappointed in Hillary not getting the VP nod. They manifest it by saying they're not "enthused" with the choice of Biden. I haven't heard any qualms from the trans community on Biden, however it must be noted that Biden in the Senate has never been asked, nor ever had to deal with anything transgender-related. He's an unknown quantity on his support for trans issues, at least to my limited experience. He's not been known, though, as a great vocal supporter of the Human Rights Campaign, nor their incremantalist philosophy (i.e. you trannies don't deserve rights now).

Electability-wise, though, Joe is a go! Anything that gets Obama elected is a go in my book!

Meanwhile McCain is showing his utter disconnect with the vast majority of America. Politico.com asked him how many homes does he own. He actually didn't know (or certainly wanted us to believe that). That's incredulous. Even if you have multiple holdings, no matter how wealthy you are, unless you're an active real estate-flipper, you know how many homes you own! If he's really that clueless on keep track of how many homes he owns, how does he expect us to have confidence in his ability to keep track of the military in the threatening world? How does he expect us to believe he will keep track of and hold down spending? How does he expect us to think he will know best what is hurting the American economy? At the end, he mumbled around and tossed out an answer: "four". The correct answer, Sen. McCain, was "nine." That wasn't close!

It also brings up another issue: the imperious factor. Being transgendered, I'm on the front lines of getting hammered relentlessly by this Bush Economic Recovery. The majority of all Americans, GLBT or not, are hurting badly. Beyond his lack of anything specific to address this issue, Mr. McCain seems oblivious to how vastly different his life is from the lower 98% of us. How many "regular Americans" do you know that own nine homes? And how many do you know in "regular America" that have so many that they don't even know the answer to that question?

Every time he tries to paint himself as a "regular guy" just like most of us in "regular America," and paints Sen. Obama as an "elitist" it's a slap in the face! Of the two of them, Sen. McCain is the elitist! And he wants -- no, expects -- we in the American public to be brain-dead dupes and just go along with this political marketing message because we're supposed to be stupid! That's our role in neo-con America: all the rest of us "regular" citizens are stupid and should just belive him, no questions asked.

Have we not had enough of this imperiousness in America? Like the old TV sitcom, eight is enough ... eight years is more than enough.

We need change. We need Obama/Biden.