Anderson@Large

Poll Vault

Election Day is 175 days away.

Last week, President Obama announced his support for same-sex marriage. Newsweek has since labeled Obama “The First Gay President.”

But heavy is the head that wears the crown, or more accurately, a rainbow-colored "gaylo." The New York Times reports:

The survey results made it clear that the president was wading into a divisive area of American life, one that may not top the nation’s priority list but still has the potential to hurt him at the margins in elections in November. About 4 in 10, or 38 percent, of Americans support same-sex marriage, while 24 percent favor civil unions short of formal marriage. Thirty-three percent oppose any form of legal recognition. When civil unions are eliminated as an option, opposition to same-sex marriage rises to 51 percent, compared with 42 percent support.

[…]

The poll showed that relatively few voters consider same-sex marriage their top issue amid continued economic uncertainty, and more than half said it would make no difference in their choice for president. But among those who said Mr. Obama’s position would influence their vote, more said they would be less likely to vote for him as a result; in a close race, even a small shift in swing states could be costly.

A CBS News/New York Times poll found Mitt Romney “has a slight edge” over Obama. Indeed, the latest email from Obama for America acknowledges “this election is going to be close.”

With the new voting changes, there is no margin for error.

Are you ready?

Voter ID Matters

Stop Lying about Voter ID

During President Obama’s address on health care to a joint session of Congress in 2009, Rep. Joe Wilson disrespectfully yelled: “You lie.”

Republicans should stop lying about voter ID and voter fraud. As Pennsylvania state Rep. Eddie Day noted:

Election fraud is a myth. There have only been four convictions for voter fraud out of 20 million votes cast in Pennsylvania since 2004. This bill is putting a roadblock between voters and the ballot box. It’s a big government restriction in search of a problem.

Voter ID supporters continue to draw false equivalences between a constitutional right and a mere privilege to, say, board an airplane.

During an appearance on Fox News’ “On the Record with Greta Van Susteren,” Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, sponsor of Pennsylvania’s voter ID bill, said:

It’s just common sense legislation ensure that we protect the integrity of the vote. For every vote that’s cast legally, that vote should be counted and it shouldn't be undermined by any fraudulently cast vote. And that's our goal is to ensure that each legally cast vote of every citizen is counted.

As a veteran, I want to ensure every citizen that wants to vote is able to vote and that their vote is not canceled out by the forces of corruption, as we’ve seen taking place throughout the history of Pennsylvania, with overturned elections, prosecutions -- prosecution of a Pennsylvania congressman back in 1998 in the Philadelphia area.

We have forces of corruption at work in our elections here in Pennsylvania and across the country. Voter ID will help us to put an end to some of that.

You lie.

Connecting the Dots

Race Still Matters

I am a doer or in the jargon of programmers, a problem-solver.

So it is an honor to be named one of the “Top Ten Race & Civil Liberties Bloggers on Twitter.” After all, in the age of Obama, race still matters.

DePaul law professor Terry Smith, the author of the forthcoming “Barack Obama, Post-Racialism and the New Politics of Triangulation,” writes:

Among other race-baiting, presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has referred to the nation’s first African American president as a “food stamp president,” and someone who engages in “Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior,” a coarse reference to President Obama's African father and a nod to “birtherism.”

Not content merely to demean the president, Gingrich has said that poor black children lack role models and a work ethic - a broadside against millions of black, working-poor parents who each day serve as shepherds for their children and instill in them work and other ethics.

Yet the only person who has responded more passively to the former speaker’s racialism than his Republican rivals has been President Obama himself. The irony of having a black man in the White House is that he is disarmed from responding to white opponents who flirt with a revivification of the Republican Party’s Southern strategy. Indeed, Obama has been disarmed, or has unilaterally disarmed himself, from sustained engagement with questions of race during his first term.

The concern on Obama’s part appears to be that middle-of-the-road white voters will not tolerate a black politician focusing on race, even if his purpose is to upbraid someone like Gingrich for making racially inflammatory comments. This concern is not unfounded, yet in succumbing to political reality, Obama has simply reinforced a different iteration of white racial intolerance.

Read more: Abetting inequality in post-racial U.S.

One Year Out: Electoral Storms Brewing

The 2012 presidential election will be held one year from today.

While the battle for the Republican nomination rages on, the surging front-runner, Herman Cain, is feeling the heat over allegations of sexual harassment.

Although some progressives on New York’s Upper West Side are grumbling about a primary challenger, it’s just a bunch of hot air. That said, President Obama must fight to reenergize and mobilize his supporters. The Los Angeles Times reports:

Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008 by riding two of America's biggest waves of population change — greater racial diversity and a rise in college graduates. With the 2012 election a year away, his reelection chances depend on those trends overpowering the sour impact of a bad economy.

[…]

To win in places like Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico — all key targets — Obama needs the Latino vote to keep expanding and to go heavily to him. In North Carolina, another closely fought state the last time around, his chances depend in part on a very large and loyal black turnout.

Yet minorities have been hit disproportionately hard by the recession — unemployment rates are higher among blacks and Latinos than among whites, and poverty is deeper.

The grim economic numbers almost certainly will discourage some from voting. The economy could even encourage some Latinos to consider the Republicans — although the hard line the GOP candidates are taking against illegal immigrants may lessen that prospect.

They call it “Stormy Monday” but Tuesday – Election Day 2012 – may be just as bad.

Poll Says Obama is One and Done

A Washington Post/ABC News poll found most Americans expect President Obama to lose in 2012.

Things went from bad to worse when Obama handed Republicans a gaffe gift that will keep on giving in attack ads. In an interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos, Obama said the American people are “not better off”:

Well, I don’t think they’re better off than they were four years ago. They’re not better off than they were before Lehman’s collapse, before the financial crisis, before this extraordinary recession that we’re going through. I think that what we’ve seen is that we’ve been able to make steady progress to stabilize the economy, but the unemployment rate is still way too high. And that’s why it’s so critical for us to make sure that we are taking every action we can take to put people back to work.

Sure, some of Obama’s ideas have had bipartisan support in the past. But the only thing voters will hear a year from now is Obama saying Americans are “not better off.”