This is likely to get drowned out by the Afghanistan speech today, but it seems that AIDS activists are as deeply disappointed by President Obama as the LGBT community is. So deeply disappointed that they’re actually comparing him to Bush and finding Bush more praiseworthy, unfathomable though that may seem:

World AIDS Day 2009 is a date that many U.S. activists in the fight against the spread of HIV/AIDS thought would be a high water mark in their decades-long struggle against the deadly disease. President George W. Bush had dramatically increased U.S. AIDS funding during his term in office — albeit with caveats activists say hurt some of their efforts — and President Obama had promised to do even more on the campaign trail.

But as activists nationwide take time today a day to focus on a disease that’s killed more than half a million Americans, some of them say the promises of a renewed focus on AIDS that came with Obama haven’t been realized.

“It’s heartbreaking,” Matthew Kavanagh, director of U.S. advocacy for Health GAP told TPMDC. His group was among four U.S. AIDS groups that gave Obama a “D+” on AIDS policy yesterday. Kavanagh said that to his shock, he felt Bush had a better record on AIDS research than Obama. “I could not imagine I would be saying that now [last year]. Many folks in the global AIDS movement were so looking forward to stepping up the fight with Obama.”

Dr. Paul Zeitz, executive director of the Global AIDS Alliance, said he would have given Bush a B+ this time last year. The shift since Obama has been “shocking” to the activists around the world, he said.

“It’s outrageous,” Zeitz told TPMDC from a protest his group and others held near the White House today. He said activists around the world are “dismayed” by what they’ve seen from Obama’s commitment to AIDS in his first year.

Part of the problem is broken promises about funding for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR):

…the actual administration investment into PEPFAR will be less next year than what candidate Obama promised

And the best Hillary Clinton can do is try to spin that painful fact:

Secretary Clinton steered clear of any dollar figures coming out of the White House, … but indicated that the administration is trying to do more, with less.

The administration is also playing up its repeal of the HIV entry ban, but AIDs activists aren’t really buying that as salve for the broken funding promise:

In a press release issues today the Health GAP, Africa Action, Treatment Action Group and the Global AIDS Alliance called the lifting of the travel ban “superficial when contrasted with the AIDS promises the Administration is breaking.”

It’s probably safe to say they aren’t too impressed either with the large red ribbon that was hung on the North Portico of the White House for World AIDS Day.

One of the upshots of all this is that AIDS activists are bitter about the effort they put into getting Obama elected:

Many of us worked hard to get him elected, based on the things he said… Now we don’t see it happening.

Yet another contributing factor for the enthusiasm gap among Democrats for the 2010 elections.