Politico on Obama and the gays, pre-election

An interesting article looking at where President Obama stands with the gay community on the even of the 2012 elections. It's long and a good overview.

One small clarification - the reporter spins what I said in the article, a bit. He says that I said Obama could be accused of pandering if he comes out in support of gay marriage before the election. Not exactly. I said that whatever the President does on gay rights (or any progressive issue at this point) in his last year of this term, the electoral bump he gets from it will be somewhat diminished because the base has become so depressed over the lack of action in the first three years that they're now suspicious of his motivates.

That is not to say that the President's action on gay marriage would be seen solely as election year pandering, and would have no benefit. The article quotes me later on, "Aravosis, who founded AmericaBlog, said Obama should go all-in and support marriage equality, particularly because Christian conservatives and others who adamantly oppose it probably won’t vote for him, anyway." Right. People are suspicious, but not doing anything will depress them even further, whereas doing something, while greeted with some suspicion, will still be welcomed (just as Hillary's recent UN tour de force on gay and trans right was heralded by many of us).