re: #363 SanFranciscoZionist

We picked one guy who didn’t support gay marriage over another guy who didn’t support gay marriage. And the guy who got picked was a Democrat.

Your blithe prediction seems to be based on nothing much.

But he does have a point. The issue swung Ohio for Bush in 2004 and a large chunk of dems/obama voters carried prop 8. Dems, especially dems not in favor of gay marriage like the president, know this is not helpful to their already dim chances this election cycle.

‘Lose the Gays, or Lose the House’
washingtonindependent.com

“Polling indicates that DOMA is really popular in the public nationwide,” said Patrick Egan, a political scientist and expert on LGBT politics at New York University, “and there’s a lot of resistance in both houses of Congress to repealing DOMA, even among Democrats. So they realize that’s pretty much a political loser for them.”

But challenging Tauro’s decision would mean fighting to reverse what the gay community, a strong Democratic constituency, considers important and long-awaited progress. To some activists, a court battle could morph the community’s perception of Obama and the Democratic Party from sympathetic allies into outright adversaries.

“The courts are putting Obama and the Democrats in a pretty difficult spot that will probably force the administration to continue to defend this law that’s unpopular with its base,” Egan said. “They have to make arguments about why DOMA should be constitutional, and those arguments are going to go against the grain of gay and lesbian groups. So it really puts them in a bind.”

That piece was about a different decision regarding the DOMA but it’s obviously related.