For the most part, coming into the HRC candidate debate, we already knew the WHATs of each candidate--their stances on different positions were fairly well known, and nobody said anything very surprising. Down with Don't Ask Don't Tell, up with stronger hate crime laws, up with protection against employment discrimination. (Except maybe for poor Richardson...talk about putting your foot in your mouth.)
What we missed out on are the HOWs. How do they plan to go about changing the things they want to change? Aside from the issue of civil union vs. civil marriage, each of the candidates wants the same things, but which ones actually have a plan to deliver? When push comes to shove, that's really what needs to differentiate these candidates for us.
This debate missed out on a golden opportunity to try and get the heart of this, and try to find out who can actually help us. Questions like, "How would you react to a transgender person on your staff?" and "How are you going to bring our country together?" aren't going to give us anything real to make a decision on. Too much time was spent basking in the glow of hearing candidates love the GLBTQ community, and not enough was spent figuring out how to turn that love into something concrete. Emotion is great, but as a group we need to move ourselves past the pull of emotional support and on to the question of execution.
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