If President Obama wasn’t already regretting picking Charlotte as the site of this year’s Democratic National Convention, he is now. Yesterday, by a more than 20-point margin, North Carolina voters approved a state constitutional amendment declaring that marriage is solely between a man and a woman. Or, as Daily Kos‘ Joan McCarter explained:
The LGBT community is not taking this vote lying down. Like the Latino community did after Arizona passed its immigration enforcement bill, activists are organizing to punish North Carolina with a boycott. Their first target: the Democratic National Convention. Over 15,000 people have already signed an online petition asking the Democratic National Convention Committee to “MOVE its convention to a state that upholds values of equality & liberty, and which treats ALL citizens equally.”
This should change Obama’s ambiguous same-sex marriage calculus considerably. As Talking Points Memo‘s Kyle Leighton has explained, until now there was little upside to admitting he favored gay marriage:
…
the office of the President has literally no power to deal with this issue, as it is completely decided by the states. Proponents argue that strong leadership from the bully pulpit on a signature civil rights issue isn’t just the right thing to do, but would serve as a major boost. But the political question for President Obama is why he would endorse a policy that all of the major swing states have rejected when his position on the matter is practically irrelevant.
The bottom line is that same-sex marriage advocates are asking President Obama, who has been very supportive of other LGBT issues, to endorse a policy that remains unsupported as a single issue, low on the priority list for American voters, and something he can only affect from the sidelines. Which is why endorsing gay marriage doesn’t make sense for Obama, despite pressure for him to do so.
A messy convention fight about an issue only far-left liberals care about would mean general election death for Obama. He has to make this issue disappear, and the sooner he does it the better.
