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Why The New ‘Obama Gay Marriage Support Is A Wash’ Meme Is Wrong

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FACTS:

  • Every major, legitimate poll and pollster finds both majority support (or, plurality approaching majority support) for marriage equality and a dramatic embrace for marriage equality and LGBT rights in America.
  • The trajectory of support for equality is unstoppable.
  • Two weeks after the President’s May 9 announcement, the only groups who have come out against the President’s support are those who already oppose same-sex marriage, whereas those who announced support include previously undeclared or opposed politicians, cultural leaders, and organizations, from Senator Harry Reid to rappers 50 Cent and Jay-Z, to the NAACP.
  • There has been no Democrat announcing a switch to Romney because of Obama’s same-sex marriage support, but there have been Romney supporters moving to Obama for his embrace of marriage equality.
  • Had Obama either come out against marriage equality or not voiced his opinion at all he would have lost a portion of his base. Not losing support in this case is gaining support.

A new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll teased this morning and fully released just minutes ago tonight has had pundits and political analysts claiming the poll results find President Obama’s support for same sex marriage announcement two weeks ago on May 9 hasn’t had any affect on his polling numbers. Here’s why that meme is wrong.

Mark Murray at NBC News, who first reported the poll this morning wrote:

In the poll, a combined 17 percent say it makes them “much more likely” or “somewhat more likely” they will vote for him. That’s compared with a combined 20 percent who say the announcement will make them more likely to vote for Mitt Romney, who opposes gay marriage.

Perhaps more importantly, 62 percent say the president’s support for gay marriage doesn’t make a difference in their vote — including 75 percent of independents, 76 percent of moderates, 81 percent of African Americans, and 65 percent of residents in the Midwest.

“From my distance, it looks more like a voting draw than anything else,” says Democratic pollster Peter D. Hart, who conducted the survey with Republican pollster Bill McInturff.

But here’s the money quote:

In addition, the NBC/WSJ poll finds that a majority — 54 percent — would support a law in their state making same-sex marriage legal. Twenty four percent would actively support such a law, while 30 percent would favor it but not actively support it.

By comparison, a combined 40 percent say they would oppose such a law.

54% is the largest majority we’ve ever seen in a same-sex marriage poll. And given that a recent Gallup poll showed a three percentage point drop in equality support, to 50%, 54% in a different poll is strong.

Maggie Haberman at Politico this morning said, “it’s worth remembering that the other metric that matters for Obama on this is the one in the recent NYT/CBS poll, where 67 percent of voters viewed Obama’s coments as political.”

Nit really. The President is a politician. While less than Romney, most Americans know that candidate Obama makes some decisions based on politics.

Nate Silver, the New York Times statistician, said via Twitter, “There’s been a dramatic zero-point shift in the polls since Obama came out for gay marriage.”

And Ezra Klein, at The Washington Post, who mentioned the Silver tweet, also today wrote:

As of this morning, they show Obama with a 1.7 percent lead. Looking back at the Wonkbook Dashboards, on the morning of May 9th, however, Obama had a 0.2 percent lead in the RCP head-to-head average. So since coming out for gay marriage, his numbers have slightly improved.

Gallup on Friday released a poll that found that American’s perceptions of the country’s moral values have declined — but not because of anyone’s position on same-sex marriage — rather, because of a perceived lack of civility and tolerance.

So let’s remember a few facts.

First and foremost, the number of voters who are going to switch from President Obama to Mitt Romney solely because of the President’s new support for same-sex marriage is slim, if not immeasurable. Some claim the President may lose a sliver of the African-American vote, but that’s negligible at best. Let’s remember, too that some African Americans are gay, and some have gay friends, neighbors, and family.

Another poll, released just days before the Fox News poll found that President Obama’s support for same-sex marriage equality is actually more popular among Blacks and Hispanics than among whites. Overall, 45% of whites view the President’s support of marriage equality favorably, while 47% of Hispanics do, and 54% of Blacks do as well.

Most Americans knew in their hearts the president was always a support of LGBT rights, and, given the country’s dramatic embrace of gay marriage, there was no chance he was ever going to come out against equality in the long run.

But perhaps most important is last week’s Gallup poll that found the majority of Americans see gay and lesbian relationships as morally acceptable, and the “new normal,” rising 18 percentage points in 10 years.

Of course, last week, a Fox News commissioned poll on same-sex marriage supposedly found that a mere 37% of Americans support same sex marriage. The poll offered a civil unions option for respondents to choose, which 37% did. 25% opted for “no legal recognition” of same-sex relationships. The poll canvassed only 913 registered voters.

On top of all this we have a leaked memo from a top GOP pollster that told Republicans that they had better support same-sex marriage or else face the consequences.

The remaining poll statistics, just released this evening, find:

Obama leads Romney among African Americans (88 percent to 2 percent), 18 to 34 year olds (55 percent to 35 percent), women (53 percent to 38 percent), independents (44 percent to 36 percent), and seniors (46 percent to 44 percent).

Romney, meanwhile, holds the advantage with whites (52 percent to 39 percent), men (49 percent to 40 percent), suburban residents (47 percent to 41 percent), Midwest residents (48 percent to 43 percent), and high-interest voters (47 percent to 44 percent).

Bottom line: taking a stand on marriage equality was a gamble, that could have backfired on the President. Not only did Obama gain minor ground in the polls, but he re-infused his base and his coffers, and kept his promise. It wasn’t a “wash,” it wasn’t a “draw,” it was a line in the sand that no American president can ever cross. And it earned the President a battle cry and nudged his numbers up.

 

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News

‘Getting Our Clocks Cleaned’: Former Adviser Admits Trump’s Candidates All Got ‘Slaughtered’

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19 mins ago

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December 7, 2022

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The morning after another one of Donald Trump’s high-profile hand-picked candidates lost — this time in a Georgia run-off for a U.S. Senate seat — a former adviser to the ex-president admitted the Republican Party can’t handle any more losses by following Trump’s lead because they are getting “slaughtered.”

Sitting in on a “CNN This Morning” panel, GOP campaign adviser David Urban also said Trump and the Republican party’s aversion to mail-in voting is a primary reason “we’re getting our clocks cleaned.”

Speaking with hosts Poppy Harlow and Don Lemon, Urban explained, “It was the president of the United States saying don’t vote by mail, you can’t trust it. Now Republicans are getting their clocks cleaned in early voting, right? We are getting destroyed by mail-in and early voting.”

“Listen, as you guys know, when you vote by mail you can see the votes come in, if you vote incorrectly you can cure it, you can see who didn’t turn out,” he elaborated. “Democrats have built an incredible machine that can do this, who’s come out, didn’t come out. Republicans wait until election day to vote, so the former president got that completely wrong and we need to really focus on this.”

Continuing in that vein he added, “John Avlon, the hour before this said as long as trump wraps up about 35% of the party, you can’t look across that board and say we did well. Trump can’t wake up this morning and say I did okay — he lost everywhere; my home state in Pennsylvania, we got drubbed. So candidates matter, and candidate quality matters.”

“America sorry you’re waking up to this, but Donald Trump is still the dominant force in the Republican Party, this morning, tomorrow morning, and he’s most likely the nominee and stands as a fact to be the next president again,” he added. “Donald Trump stands a very good chance of being president of the United States despite the Walker loss, the senate candidates going down because they’re the ride-or-die Trumpers with him until the end.”

Watch below or at this link.

 
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News

Raphael Warnock Beats Trump-Backed Herschel Walker – Democrats Increase Senate Majority

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11 hours ago

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December 6, 2022

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Millions of Americans in Georgia voted to re-elect Democratic U.S. Senator Raphael Warnock and send him back to Washington D.C., NBC News projects. It is a clear mandate for the policies enacted by the Biden administration and a strong rebuke for the flailing former president, Donald Trump.

Senator Warnock faced a challenge from a Texas Republican who claimed to live in the Peach State, Trump-backed former NFL star Herschel Walker.

The New York Times, confirming Warnock is the projected winner, reports a huge number of Georgians, more than 3.3 million, voted in the runoff election.

An admitted Texas resident, Walker’s long list of hypocritical claims and actions, falsehoods, lies, and troubling business and tax dealings were only outweighed by the women who accused him of violent behavior, pressuring them and paying for them to get abortions, and revelations he had not one child but four, including a son he almost never sees.

READ MORE: ‘Everything Has Been a Lie’: Christian Walker Drops Damning New Video Blasting His Father’s ‘Lies’ Over Abortion

Warnock, who is also the Senior Pastor at the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s church, Ebenezer Baptist, out-raised and out-campaigned Walker, especially in the last week.

Herschel Walker appeared at only two events this weekend, Politico reported, “a tailgate in Atlanta before a University of Georgia football game on Saturday, where he did not speak, and a Sunday rally in Loganville, where his stump speech touched on everything from complaints about pronouns and critical race theory to funding law enforcement.”

With 51 votes in the Senate, Democrats will not be forced into a power-sharing agreement with Republicans as they were two years ago. President Biden will be able to nominate and have confirmed even more judges, an area he has excelled. And Democrats will have full committee majorities, giving them power to issue subpoenas in investigations.

RELATED: ‘The Child Would Not Be Safe’: Woman Who Says Herschel Walker Pressured Her to Have Abortion Says She Felt ‘Threatened’

The Washington Post on Tuesday noted that Democrats having 51 votes is “an insurance policy against the unthinkable — the possibility that vacancies or party switches could flip the majority. That has happened before, most recently in 2001. The reason that it hasn’t happened more often is mostly because the Senate isn’t usually this closely divided. But vacancies and seat flips do happen — a lot. In fact, since World War II, about 70 percent of Congresses have featured some kind of shift in partisan balance of the Senate between elections.”

The unthinkable includes the possibility that a Democratic Senator in a state headed by a Republican governor could resign or die, allowing a Republican to be installed in their place. As The Post notes, there are 11 cases currently where that could happen.

Warnock unseated a GOP Senator in a 2020 special election, making this his first full elected six-year term.

White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain notes President Biden “becomes the first President since FDR 1934 to see every Senator in his party re-elected (who was seeking re-election.)”

 

 

 

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CRIME

Guilty on All Counts: Trump Organization Loses Big in Criminal Fraud Case

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17 hours ago

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December 6, 2022

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A jury has found thew crown jewel of Donald Trump’s real estate empire, The Trump Organization, guilty on all counts in a state criminal tax fraud case.

Calling it “a remarkable rebuke of the former president’s company and what prosecutors described as its ‘culture of fraud and deception,'” The New York Times reports the details include “conviction on all 17 counts.”

Charges include tax fraud, a scheme to defraud, and conspiracy and falsifying business records, but The Times says it is “hardly a death sentence for the Trump Organization.”

The Times adds the conviction comes “after more than a day of jury deliberations in State Supreme Court in Manhattan,” which “resulted from a long-running scheme in which the Trump Organization doled out off-the-books luxury perks to some executives: They received fancy apartments, leased Mercedes-Benzes, even private school tuition for relatives, none of which they paid taxes on.”

Donald Trump was not a defendant in the case, but the case will be front and center during his presidential run.

According to a press release from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, The Trump Organization and the Trump Payroll Corp. were convicted of the following charges:

  • Scheme to Defraud in the First Degree, a class E felony, one count
  • Conspiracy in the Fourth Degree, a class E felony, one count
  • Criminal Tax Fraud in Third Degree, a class D felony, two counts
  • Criminal Tax Fraud in the Fourth Degree, a class E felony, one count
  • Falsifying Business Records in the First Degree, a class E felony, three counts

The Trump Corporation was also convicted of Falsifying Business Records in the First Degree, a class E felony.

MSNBC reported the verdict on-air:

This is a breaking news and developing story. Details may change. 

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