The Good Guys Win - For Now

The President of The United States has come out in favor of Marriage Equality.

This is the big one - second only to the killing of Bin Laden in terms of "things Obama will be remembered for." It's been widely assumed that he supported equality all along, but was holding back on outright support in order to not anger certain voting-blocs (churchgoing African-Americans/Latinos and Catholic-descended blue-collar Union laborers mainly) known to be reflexively-Democrat voters but socially conservative. Whether this was planned via Biden's "trial-balloon" admission of support or whether that really was a "gaffe" that forced the President's hand is for the pundits to decide.

I am a supporter of same-sex marriage and the President overall, so this is pretty elating... but I won't lie and say I'm not a little bit worried. I was with everyone else in assuming Obama was trying to feign the middle-ground until after the election, and I was always fine with it - politics for grownups are about results, not idealism - because I'd rather have him fake-right, win and give me four more years of progressive judicial nominations (the most important thing ANY president can do long-term) than be "true" and lose, saddling me with 4 to 8 years of backwards-looking right-wing governance. So yeah, I'm happy... but I hope he knows what he's doing.

If nothing else, this is the clearest signal yet that the Democrats "get" what the GOP has "gotten" for a year now, that with neither party having the kind of record you can really "run" on, this is going to be a base-versus-base election - re: "swing voters" are being written off in favor of "who can fire up turnout among the already-decided base." This is the gauntlet being thrown and the notion of "changing minds" being back-burnered - it's Culture War time: Thinkers versus Believers, Red versus Blue, Past versus Future, Backwards versus Forwards, Regression versus Evolution, Reason versus "It's In The Magic Book."

I'm excited. I enjoy the relative-clarity of times like these; and it'll be a rare pleasure to actually vote for a candidate instead of just for his likely-politicies (or "against" the other guy.) I just hope there actually are enough Good Guys to win...