Give me two reasons.

Dear Bill Clinton:

If you think about what can happen in less than thirty seconds, then a year seems like a real long time. That's about as long as you've been holding title to more power than any other individual on the planet. I know you're a man and not a natural resource or a natural disaster. But you're President of these United States, and that should mean something about safety for those of us who put you in the Oval Office.

Whether earthquake or fire or hurricane or corporate "downsizing" or juries arriving at idiot-incendiary conclusions or affluent and fanatical hatemongers standing tall, the big guy in the big house on Pennsylvania Avenue is supposed to protect us, the people, from harm or, failing that, deliver us from desperation. You're the big guy. That's your job. That's what national security requires: our domestic safety from harm and desperation.

If I remember correctly, most women who voted cast their ballots for you, as did most elderly Americans, most young Americans, most African-Americans, most Mexican-Americans, most Asian-Americans, most Chicanos, and most gay and lesbian Americans. Our de facto coalition of choice gave you the major-league boost you needed to move out of Little Rock, Arkansas. And so, the way I see things, you owe us, the new majority of American citizens, a whole lot - as a matter of reciprocity, if nothing else.

Can you give me two reasons why any one of the original Clinton supporters should vote for you again? Or even speak to you? Can you give me two reasons why I should not call you Spineless Sam or confuse you with George Bush?

Given your track record of equivocation, cowardice, and retreat on one hand, plus active humiliation, appeasement, betrayal, and blustery inertia on the other, why should we - folks who celebrated November 3, 1992 - believe anything good can come of you, except, perhaps, by accident?

Your failure begins and continues with your willing coexistence with genocide: Your refusal to stop so-called ethnic cleansing and the concomitant mass rape of Muslim women in Bosnia.

Then there are your broken promises - to the Haitian refugees, to pro-choice Americans, to gay and lesbian Americans, and to city dwellers ("inner" or "outer" be damned).

Then there is your eating of the defeat of your anyway heavily diluted proposal for jobs.

There is your silence on American poverty except to blame the victims of Federal and state neglect and abandonment.

There is your acquiescence to racist and unconstitutional anti-immigrant uproar and proposed legislation.

There is your beating up on the neediest among us: families that qualify for the miserly assistance our welfare programs use as an excuse to belittle and castigate the poor.

There is your absoute zero performance as regards hungry homeless Americans, who daily increase in number.

Then there is your savage, gratuitous, and unforgivable insult to law professor Lani Guinier.

And, finally, there was that incredible moment of complacency and insolence when you stood in the pulpit of a black church and presumed to speak on behalf of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Your arrogance was matched only by your ignorance of Dr. King who, relentlessly, made it clear that Americans will have to pay billions and billions of dollars in order to reverse this country's pathological, 400-plus years of racist impact on black people living here and dying here.

Yes, I know that more than a year ago, your closest advisers had written, "It's the economy, stupid!" on the wall of your "War Room." But I had voted for you because you had actually said: "We cannot afford to waste a single life."

And I had taken you at your word. But you have failed to keep faith with those of us who wanted to trust you.

And that, Mr. President, is the State of the Union today. We are reeling from unnatural and natural disasters without benefit of the rescue and the relief that follow from true executive commitment to the safety of every single life.

Because you have broken so many promises to so many of us, there was only one "brother" in Los Angeles you could call. Rather than creating a new democratic community of inclusion and justice and mercy, you have surrounded yourself with millionaire white men who remain as completely out of touch with the majority of Americans as you are.

But we, the new majority, we exist. And you will learn, Mr. President, that without us, you will become, for good and for evil, beside the point.