"I feel your pain" Nice thing to say to someone or not?

[merrily]

37. Is yelling I feel your pain at an AIDS activist really an expression of empathy from a Presidential

candidate? Or is it only faux empathy? I think that is another way to ask the question of the OP. IMO, empathy is as empathy does; and this was only campaign empathy.

Elected, Clinton went on to create DADT and sign DOMA under a pretense of an impending Constitutional amendment that was not actually impending and trying to have it both ways. Hillary also went on to use the excuse of an impending
constitutional amendment that was not impending regarding her unconstitutional flag desecration bills.

Though his official political position was against same-sex marriage, Clinton criticized DOMA as "unnecessary and divisive",[26] while his press-secretary called it "gay baiting, plain and simple".[27][28] However, after Congress had passed the bill with enough votes to override a presidential veto,[28] Clinton signed DOMA. Many years later, he claimed that he did so reluctantly in view of the veto-proof majority, both to avoid associating himself politically with the then-unpopular cause of same-sex marriage, and to defuse momentum for a proposed Federal Amendment to the U.S. Constitution banning same-sex marriage.[28][29] Clinton, who was traveling when Congress acted, signed it into law promptly upon returning to Washington, D.C., on September 21, 1996; he refused to hold a signing ceremony for DOMA and did not allow photographs to be taken of him signing it into law.[30] The White House released a statement in which Clinton said "that the enactment of this legislation should not, despite the fierce and at times divisive rhetoric surrounding it, be understood to provide an excuse for discrimination, violence or intimidation against any person on the basis of sexual orientation".[30]

In 2013, Mike McCurry, the White House press secretary at the time, recalled that "[Clinton's] posture was quite frankly driven by the political realities of an election year in 1996."[28] James Hormel, who was appointed by Clinton as the first openly gay U.S. Ambassador, described the reaction from the gay community to Clinton signing DOMA as shock and anger.[31] On Hormel's account, Clinton had been the first President to advocate gay rights, push for AIDS funding, support gay and lesbian civil rights legislation, and appoint open LGBT people to his Administration. Thus his signing of DOMA was viewed by much of the community as a great betrayal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_of_Marriage_Act