It doesn't get any gutsier than this

Barack Obama's open endorsement today of same-sex marriage seems, to me, rather superfluous. No one doubted that a president of such intellect and sensitivity ever really opposed such a thunderingly commonsensical position, and sure enough, he didn't. And because same-sex marriage lies outside the realm of a U.S. president's direct influence, nothing much will change, except the right will go even more bonkers for a while.

Yet, there is one thing I'd wish to gently note. I appreciate the slim possibility of this happening, but would the activist left now please shut the fuck up about what a coward President Obama is. He may have just kissed off a few swing states--and in the kick-off to a presidential reelection campaign, it doesn't get any gutsier than that.

Comments

[MJ]

"Yet, there is one thing I'd wish to gently note. I appreciate the slim possibility of this happening, but would the activist left now please shut the fuck up about what a coward President Obama is."

Dear P.M.-
Thank you for writing this. I hope the folks you're talking about heed your gentle exhortation.

[Darren]

Alright everybody, he bit the bullet and took a stand on principle that is going to cost him a lot of votes in November, so we all better get off our butts and go balls to the wall campaigning for him to make up for it!

[Susan Zoon]

PM and MJ-

I think they (the activist left) are just contrarians and as unhappy and nasty as the extreme right.

NOPE- already carping and spitballing over at the lake.

Not going to bring me down, This is a great day.

[You Don't Say]

In a thank you note to him (forwarded by some group) I added:

"I will work as hard as I can to get out the vote this fall."

[Robert Lipscomb]

Actually, this seems to dovetail with his election strategy as explained in (I believe) today's New York Times. Apparently, big-ticket democrat contributors are loathe duplicate the super-pac approach of the right. (That just sounds right. ;-) ) The alternate strategy is to invest heavily into grassroots organization and get out the vote efforts - which I think is a good thing.

That strategy requires a focus on motivating "the base". To motivate the base, a candidate must either be very much for something explicit or very much against something explicit. In other words, there must be an explicit, active agenda - something that the Dems have not had in the past thirty years. Rather, we have generally been against the GOP and generally trying to hold on to something or the other.

I am not nearly so concerned that the far left shut the fuck up, as I want them to get off their collective asses and get out the vote.

Organize. Organize. Organize.

[Robert Lipscomb]

I also add that I do not Obama did not back into this because crazy Uncle Joe Biden (to quote Andrea Mitchel) "was being Joe Biden". This has all the hallmarks of a well orchestrated move to trip this trap six months before the election, in time to get positive benefits from it.

[AnneJ]

I hope that this does activate the base. It seems to me that the republicans have always succeeded by activating their base with no effort whatsoever to reach out to the other side. They just ride on letting their base assume that their views are the views of the entire country.

[Beauzeaux]

I agree. I thought at the time that Joe Biden was a stalking horse -- though I admit that I didn't think PBO would speak out so soon after Joe tested the waters.
I'm glad he did. And yes, I think it was courageous in the current crazy world of US politics.

[Peter G]

I had expected he would do this but not yet. I thought he would let the right invest a little more of their focus on a social issue, as they did with contraception, and then defuse it as he did that issue. It is a very gutsy move. I don't think anyone alive has seen a faster shift in public opinion and the polls put this marginally in the plus column as far as popularity goes. But, and this is a big but, the younger voters are much more receptive to this idea and they are notoriously fickle when it comes to voter turn out. Furthermore, college students who are very receptive to this, are the very voters being targeted by voter id laws as regards sanctioned disenfranchisement. Tough call.

[Robert Lipscomb]

This also has the benefit of broadening the election beyond the "it's only about jobs" premise.

[rikyrah]

I appreciate the slim possibility of this happening, but would the activist left now please shut the fuck up about what a coward President Obama is.

THANK YOU
THANK YOU
THANK YOU

[Janicket]

Hear, hear, rikyrah -- but I'm sure you're not holding your breath. I'm not gonna link to it, but I just fled snarling from some yammerbrain's op-ed screed at cnn.com about how Obama's all talk, no action on gay rights and how he hasn't done anything since he became President but put on puny meaningless charades about it.

Yeh, me too.

[Flair]

Wait seriously, "Shut up Liberals! Obama said something in support of an idea!"

Yeah fuck the left, who gives a shit about actual policy, who gives a shit about 4 years of (evolving), who gives a shit about this being the exact same thing that Dick Cheney advocated in 2004.

Are you going to call Cheney a hero? No, because he was in favor of keeping Guantanamo bay open, of war in other countries, of a drug war that imprisons too many people, of an innumerable other offenses that Obama would never support.... Oh wait

[Susan M.]

Thank you, PM, for stating my opinion so bluntly. Passing it on...

[WoobieTuesday]

Great post; fascinating thread. Sharing... Thank you!