That's why Clinton's comments following Nancy Reagan's funeral Friday praising the former first lady's AIDS activism stunned and infuriated even her own supporters in the LGBT community.
Clinton told MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell she really appreciated President Reagan, and Mrs. Reagan in particular, for starting "a national conversation when, before, nobody would talk about it. Nobody wanted anything to do with it.”
By way of fact, while the first cases of AIDS (then called GRID for Gay-Related Immune Deficiency) were diagnosed in 1981, the first year of Ronald Reagan's presidency, the president's first comment on the epidemic came in 1985. That was the year Indiana teenager Ryan White, a hemophiliac who was HIV-positive, was banned from attending high school. By then more than 12,000 Americans had died from AIDS.
President Reagan's first speech on AIDS didn't come until 1987, six years into his presidency. By that time, nearly 41,000 Americans were dead from the disease and thousands more were diagnosed with it.
Those years of public silence included disparaging, hurtful and hateful comments by Reagan supporters like Moral Majority founder Jerry Falwell, who called AIDS "God's punishment for homosexuals" -- and fueled the rise of ACT-UP and other activist groups demanding government action where there was none. Their slogan: "Silence Equals Death."
In that context, Clinton's comments were uninformed at best, but really incomprehensible to many. (They also made Michelle Obama's decision look wise to gracefully decline an invitation to speak at Mrs. Reagan's funeral.)
The Internet soon exploded with outrage.
"I’m just so disappointed in her that I may just vote for Bernie," ACT-UP founder Larry Kramer told Slate. "And I’m hearing that from a lot of gay people. The gay population is up in arms over this. I don’t think that she realizes that this is a big issue for us, what she has said in her stupidity."
Columnist Dan Savage tweeted "You know... in a way... we have Hillary Clinton to thank for reminding everyone just how awful Nancy and Ronald Reagan were on AIDS."
Savage's comment underscores a point that rankles many LGBT Americans to this day, that President Reagan's legacy and history rarely mention his refusal to do or say anything helpful as the epidemic ravaged the nation.
Imagine the outrage if President Obama were silent on Ebola or the Zika virus. It was a matter of days or weeks before he spoke out, and even then some did criticize him for taking so long.
Even the dramatic 1985 announcement by their Hollywood friend Rock Hudson that he had AIDS failed to prompt the Reagans to do or say anything constructive or even empathetic.
After Clinton's comments aired, her campaign realized the damage that had been done.
“While the Reagans were strong advocates for stem cell research and finding a cure for Alzheimer’s disease, I misspoke about their record on HIV and AIDS,” Clinton said in a statement. “For that, I’m sorry.”
Chad Griffin with the Human Rights Campaign, a big supporter of Clinton, tweeted:" " While I respect her advocacy on issues like stem cell & Parkinson's research, Nancy Reagan was, sadly, no hero in the fight against HIV/AIDS."
But after ripping open a scab that many thought had healed so many years after Ronald Reagan's death, many of Clinton's LGBT supporters may be in no mood to give her the benefit of the doubt yet again.
