Post a Comment On: Internal Monologue

[Image]Image from Vote No on Prop 8

OOPS: I thought this was new information. It turns out this came out back on June 29th. That renders much of the text below nonsensical. I still wonder if the hypothetical "bean counter" I talk about below exists: will Obama make a public announcement in an ad or stump speech opposing Prop 8? Obama, your awesomeness cred will go up enormously if you do. But of course I'm sympathetic to the argument that Obama shouldn't give the Republicans anything to latch on to at this late stage.

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Late, but welcome nonetheless: Obama opposes the California constitutional amendment to take away marriage rights for same sex couples:
As the Democratic nominee for President, I am proud to join with and support the LGBT community in an effort to set our nation on a course that recognizes LGBT Americans with full equality under the law. That is why I support extending fully equal rights and benefits to same sex couples under both state and federal law. That is why I support repealing the Defense of Marriage Act and the "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy, and the passage of laws to protect LGBT Americans from hate crimes and employment discrimination. And that is why I oppose the divisive and discriminatory efforts to amend the California Constitution, and similar efforts to amend the U.S. Constitution or those of other states.I think there was some interesting political calculation going on here: I bet Obama wanted to come out against CA Prop 8, but didn't want to give the Republicans an issue to beat him over the head with in closely contested states less friendly to gay marriage. My hypothesis is that some bean counter in the Obama campaign had been assigned to keep an eye on certain numbers and let the campaign know when a certain "safety threshold" had been reached. Now that we're so close to the election and Obama's position is so strong, he feels he can do this and still win comfortably. There's just not enough time for the Republicans to make hey with this. Unfortunately, that also means there's not much time for us anti-Prop 8 forces to use Obama's opposition to Prop 8 as much as we'd like.