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Divided We Stand

Divided We Stand
New book about the 2020 election.

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

The Administration's Gay Marriage Muddle

At The Washington Post, Dana Milbank goes full-metal snark:
If Vice President Biden continues to make public appearances during this campaign, White House press secretary Jay Carney should be offered a membership in the janitors’ union
As things stand, the spokesman does not have the supplies necessary to clean up the mess Biden made in his appearance Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Biden gave his full support to same-sex marriage — a position conspicuously at odds with the public stance of his boss, President Obama, who is widely assumed to share Biden’s views but who says that his own thinking is “evolving.”
At Politico, Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Martin, and Glenn Thrush report:
“They had the best of both worlds going up until this weekend where they didn’t have to rock the boat of actually coming out for it. The gay community was fully happy in their belief that he ‘wink, wink’ supported it,” a top Democratic communications strategist said. “Now, in their efforts to contain the [Joe] Biden fallout, they seem to be digging in against gay marriage, emphasizing how they are not for it. That is the opposite of what they have successfully been doing all along.”
At The Washington Post, Peter Wallsten and Dan Eggen add a fascinating datum:
About one in six of Obama’s top campaign “bundlers” are gay, according to a Washington Post review of donor lists, making it difficult for the president to defer the matter. Activists are planning a campaign for the adoption of a pro-gay-marriage plank in this year’s Democratic Party platform. And a series of referendums this year on same-sex marriage — including one in the swing state of North Carolina on Tuesday — are putting the issue at the forefront.
And today, North Carolina voters will probably pass a state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.  The Democratic national convention is taking place in that very state, leading a Daily Kos blogger to write:
This is very, very, very late in the game to consider, but does Charlotte, North Carolina deserve to host the 2012 Democratic National Convention if the state passes a proposed constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and civil unions?
Logistically, it is past the point of no return to suggest that the 2012 DNC be moved to another host city. And it is destructively punitive to hold the city of Charlotte responsible for the bigotry of an entire state, but how can the Democratic Party reward such deplorable electoral behavior?