Posibles explicaciones al apoyo de Obama al matrimonio gay

Slate.com señala el dinero, ya que una de cada seis donaciones a Obama proceden de la comunidad gay:

The problem, say Democrats, is that the Biden comments poked an existing bruise among the president’s supporters in the gay community. The rush to bowdlerize  what Biden had said turned  a glancing tap of the bruise into a grinding fist.

A source who raises money for Democrats says that Obama has mostly maxed out with donations from the gay political community, but that his Super PAC and other nonaffiliated support groups still need massive high-dollar donations. A lot of potential donors are influential members of the gay community who follow the same-sex marriage issue closely and who were likely to be most offended by the president holding on to his same, “evolving” stance. How could an Obama bundler—one of those financial backers who raises huge sums from their circle of friends—who had been convincing those same friends that the president was with them, continue to make calls with this fresh slap in the face. Says the Democratic fundraiser: “Once this became a litmus test if you’re a gay bundler, after 100 hours saying ‘the president is going to do the right thing’ now you’re calling saying ‘sorry this happened, but I can’t raise another dollar unless you do the right thing.’ ”

Walter Shapiro cree que se debe a una mezcla de vanidad y obligación moral:

Such political narrowcasting misses an essential truth about Obama: his pride and his fear of embarrassment. Joe Biden, by offering an emotional response to the gay-marriage question Sunday on “Meet the Press,” left Obama looking like the Cowardly Lion unable to find his heart until after the election. For Obama to keep mulling the issue as if he were taking a private course in Talmudic Studies would make the president seem faintly ridiculous.

(...) Both as an African American and as the nation’s first president who grew up after the climactic days of the civil-rights movement, Obama undoubtedly has wondered how he would have reacted if he had found himself on the frontlines of that transcendent moral issue. Obviously, no one is opposing gay marriages with dogs, fire hoses and billy clubs. But this issue is the closest proxy that 21st-century America has to offer to the which-side-are-you-on struggles of the 1960s. In moral terms, it is quite possible that Obama could not personally endure further equivocation.

Michael Medved en The Daily Beast apunta a una distracción para no hablar de economía:

The real reason for the president’s sudden decision to reverse course on gay marriage almost certainly involves a very different sort of calculation: a desperate desire to distract attention from economic issues in order to avoid the imminent collapse of his campaign. After Friday’s sour jobs report, the evidence of anti-incumbent fever from Indiana to France, rumblings of potential catastrophe in the eurozone, and deeply alarming poll numbers on the economy, the administration will do anything to change the subject.

An April Washington Post-ABC News poll showed those who “strongly disapproved” of Obama’s handling of the economy outnumbered those who “strongly approved” by nearly 2-to-1 (42-23 percent). Moreover, the percentage who strongly disapproved of his economic stewardship stood even higher than it did in late October, 2010 – on the eve of the historic Republican sweep that captured 63 formerly Democratic House seats. James (“It’s the Economy, Stupid!”) Carville sounded the alarm on CNN about the need for his fellow Democrats to “WTFU”—or “Wake The F**k Up”—before they blow the election and hand Republicans a victory they don’t deserve.

Where liberals once attacked George W. Bush for talking about gay marriage in order to take the focus away from his failures on the economy and foreign policy, it’s now Barack Obama who wants to talk about gay marriage (and, where possible, foreign policy) to draw attention from his epic failures on the economy.

National Journal lo ve como un intento de consolidar la coalición demócrata del futuro:

Indeed, historians may someday view Obama's announcement Wednesday as a milestone in the evolution of his party's political strategy, because it shows the president and his campaign team are increasingly comfortable responding to the actual coalition that elects Democrats today--not the one that many in the party remember from their youth.

(...) Obama's announcement might not significantly change the overall level of his 2012 support, especially in an election where economic issues will dominate. But the announcement may reflect the Obama camp's thinking about the likely composition of his support. It shows the president, however reluctantly, formulating an agenda that implicitly acknowledges the party is unlikely to recreate the support it attracted from the white working-class and senior voters who anchored Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal coalition. Instead, the announcement shows him reaching out to mobilize the new pillars of the Democratic electorate, particularly younger people and socially liberal white collar whites.