Party platform group backing gay marriage

DETROIT — DETROIT The national Democratic Party's platform committee endorsed gay marriage Saturday for the first time and called for the repeal of a federal law that recognizes marriage as only between a man and a woman.

The committee, meeting in downtown Detroit, let stand the work of a separate group that drafted the platform two weeks ago in Minneapolis. The platform is a broad statement of the party's priorities on the economy, social issues and national defense and next goes for approval to the national convention in North Carolina in September.

Scott Dibble, a committee member and a state senator from Minnesota, said support for gay marriage can attract new voters.

"Young people are looking for a political home right now," Dibble said. "This has become a defining moral question of our time."

The platform says Democrats support "marriage equality" and the "movement to secure equal treatment under law for same-sex couples."

"We also support the freedom of churches and religious entities to decide how to administer marriage as a religious sacrament without government interference," the platform says.

In May, President Barack Obama said he supported gay marriage.

"This certainly has been a journey for many people in this country, a journey for our president," Dibble told fellow committee members from across the country.

The platform also calls for repeal of a 1996 law, signed by Democratic President Bill Clinton, which recognizes marriage as only between a man and woman. Some federal courts have struck the law down as unconstitutional.

Newark, N.J., Mayor Cory Booker, co-chairman of the platform committee, said there are "profound indignities" heaped on people who can't marry someone of the same sex.

"At the end of the day, it'll maybe repel some and attract others to be more engaged," Booker said.

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

Posted

View the original article here

Democrats Draft Gay Marriage Platform

The move would place the party in line with the beliefs of President Obama, who in May became the first sitting president to declare that gay men and lesbians should be able to marry.

Democratic Party officials had squabbled over the issue in the past. But at a platform-drafting meeting over the weekend in Minneapolis, they approved the first step to amend their platform, placing the amendment on track for adoption. In two weeks, the entire platform committee will vote at a meeting scheduled in Detroit. Then, if approved as expected, it would go before convention delegates in Charlotte, N.C., for final passage in early September.

According to Democrats who were briefed on the vote in Minneapolis, there was no objection when the issue came up. Though the language that was voted on could still be revised, party officials do not anticipate any major obstacles going forward.

The platform language approved over the weekend also reiterated the party’s disapproval of the Defense of Marriage Act, which prohibits the federal government from recognizing legal same-sex marriages. The 2008 platform had a similar section.

The Democratic Party’s move comes more than two months after President Obama personally backed the rights of same-sex couples to wed. The president’s reversal — he had said previously that while he could not support same-sex marriage, his views on the issue were “evolving” — was a significant move, though it carried no legal weight.

The Democrats would become the first major party to embrace same-sex marriage. But as historic as the platform would be, the president’s position makes it decidedly less controversial.

News of the platform amendment was first reported by The Washington Blade.

Gay rights supporters praised the Democratic Party’s vote. “Like Americans from all walks of life, the Democratic Party has recognized that committed and loving gay and lesbian couples deserve the right to have their relationships respected as equal under the law,” said Chad Griffin, president of the Human Rights Campaign. “I believe that one day very soon the platforms of both major parties will include similar language on this issue.”

The Democratic Party platform that was drafted four years ago, when Mr. Obama was first running for president, called for “full inclusion of all families, including same-sex couples, in the life of our nation,” and for “equal responsibility, benefits and protections.”

But the platform stopped short of endorsing same-sex marriages, in part because Mr. Obama had said he remained opposed.

Despite the growing acceptance of same-sex marriage, the issue remains a difficult one for some Democrats, particularly those in the midst of hard-fought re-election campaigns in conservative-leaning states. Those include Tim Kaine, the former Democratic National Committee chairman who is running for Senate in Virginia, and Senators Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Jon Tester of Montana.

And while an increasing number of Republicans are coming around to support marriage rights for gays and lesbians, the Republican Party as an institution is still far from declaring that marriage is for anyone but heterosexuals.

Peter S. Sprigg, a senior fellow at the Family Research Council, predicted that Democrats will regret their decision to include the marriage plank in their platform.

“There are many places in the country where Democratic candidates will not want to be identified with the gay-marriage party,” Mr. Sprigg said. “I think this is more politically correct than it is politically smart.”

View the original article here

N.A.A.C.P. Endorses Same-Sex Marriage

The largely symbolic move, made at the group’s meeting in Miami, puts the N.A.A.C.P. in line with President Obama, who endorsed gay marriage a little over a week ago. Given the timing, it is likely to be viewed as both a statement of principle as well as support for the president’s position in the middle of a closely contested presidential campaign.

All but two of the organization’s board members, who include many religious leaders, backed a resolution supporting same-sex marriage, according to people told of the decision.

Borrowing a term used by gay rights advocates, the resolution stated, “We support marriage equality consistent with equal protection under the law provided under the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution.”

In a statement, Roslyn M. Brock, chairwoman of the 64-member board, said, “We have and will oppose efforts to codify discrimination into law.”

A spokesman for the group declined to discuss a breakdown of how the board members voted.

Julian Bond, a civil rights activist and former chairman of the N.A.A.C.P., said that Mr. Obama’s recent support for same-sex marriage was “a tipping point” for many board members. He said the vote debunked the myth that the black community is uncomfortable with same-sex marriage.

“This proves that conventional wisdom is not true,” Mr. Bond said.

The practical implications of the N.A.A.C.P.’s decision are unclear. Several of its leaders have already expressed support for same-sex marriage, and local branches have repeatedly opposed measures to ban such unions, most recently in North Carolina, where voters just passed a referendum against marriages and civil unions for gay people.

The strongest opposition to same-sex marriage within the black community has come from church leaders, whose opinions may not be swayed by the N.A.A.C.P. In its resolution, the board appeared to be sensitive to those objections, reaffirming its support for religious freedom.

The N.A.A.C.P. has been grappling with the issue for several years. Among religious figures on the board, the issue was especially fraught with meaning.

Maxim Thorne, a former high-ranking official with the organization, said that “for certain people, it was a very long evolution and a very long process of reconciling their faith with this, and coming to a very civil rights understanding of marriage equality versus a theological understanding of marriage.”

The group’s endorsement could potentially bolster support for Mr. Obama with a key constituency: black Democratic voters who remain skeptical of same-sex marriage.

Black and white Americans are divided on same-sex marriage in similar numbers, according to the results of four aggregated polls conducted by The New York Times and CBS News over the past year.

Yet there is greater opposition among black Democrats than white Democrats. Sixty-one percent of white Democrats supported legalizing marriage for same-sex couples, compared with 36 percent of black Democrats, while 35 percent of black Democrats opposed any legal recognition, compared with 18 percent of white Democrats.

View the original article here

Gay Marriage and the Democratic Base

There are lots of theories about how President Obama’s decision to embrace same-sex marriage will affect his electoral prospects in November. The truth is, I don’t think we really know. That’s not quite the same thing as saying that I don’t think it will have any impact — although I do think that, in general, the news coverage you read in major coastal newspapers tends to overstate the degree to which social issues affect presidential voting behavior.

But as Alex Tabarrok writes, it’s mostly just another factor that adds uncertainty to the outcome. Four years from now, or four years ago, it might be different. Likewise, it might be different if gay marriage had performed as well in the voting booth as it did in polls — in which case, one might have more confidence in the slight lead that the pro-marriage position now seems to have in surveys.

What I think more easily explains Mr. Obama’s decision is the way gay marriage is perceived among his Democratic constituents.

According to Pew Research, about 60 percent of Democrats now support gay marriage rights. That’s up from about 50 percent in 2008, when neither Mr. Obama nor his two main opponents, Hillary Rodham Clinton and John Edwards, endorsed it outright.

The point is simply this: it’s very unusual for someone who is the leader of his party — and Mr. Obama is the leader of the Democratic Party as well as being the president — to hold a position on a major issue in opposition to the clear majority of the voters within that party. In elections since World War II, instead, a party’s presidential nominee has generally been someone who is close to the median of his party’s voters. You haven’t had that many true centrists nominated since Thomas Dewey and Dwight D. Eisenhower — although Gerald Ford, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter were closer to the center than most other candidates. You also haven’t had very many people on the political extremes nominated, although George McGovern and Barry Goldwater were clear exceptions.

Mitt Romney fits the pattern this year. If you look at various objective ways to measure his ideology, he is neither a moderate nor an ideological extremist but somewhere almost exactly in between, a “generic Republican” who is a good overall representation of where his party stands in 2012.

Mr. Obama did not endure a primary challenge nor really the credible threat of one, but he still faces some of the same issues in keeping Democrats contented with him. It creates friction within a party when the presidential nominee is out of step with his partisan constituents, and it can affect things like fund-raising and voter enthusiasm. It can produce awkwardness in consensus-building exercises like articulating a party platform, and fray interpersonal relationships.

Since breaking from one’s party is burdensome, if a presidential nominee is going to do it he probably ought to do so conspicuously — as Bill Clinton did, for instance, on welfare reform, or as John McCain did in the distance he maintained from George W. Bush. Then you might gain a reputation as being independent-minded, a maverick, a reformer, or what have you — ideally on an issue where your party’s views don’t sit very well with independent voters or other key swing groups.

Mr. Obama was not really doing that on gay marriage, however. His “evolving” position had more in common with Israel’s strategic ambiguity on the question of whether it has nuclear weapons. He was for gay marriage in everything but name only.

Nor is gay marriage necessarily an issue on which there would have been a strategic advantage to bucking one’s party: independents are much closer to Democrats than to Republicans on the issue.

There is the issue of how African-Americans feel about gay marriage — only about 39 percent of them support it, according to the Pew poll, although the numbers have gone up.

But African-Americans are the one group that really aren’t in any danger of breaking away from their party — at least while Mr. Obama is president. If you run a voter-level regression that attempts to predict whether someone will vote for Mr. Obama based on demographics, being African-American swamps everything else. Even if an African-American voter had other characteristics that tended to correlate with Republican voting (like being older, or more rural, or wealthier), he or she is nevertheless overwhelmingly likely to vote for Mr. Obama. It would take a lot of weight on the scale — much more than this issue is likely to provide, I think — to convert any tangible number of them into Romney voters (although turnout could be another issue).

And there are other key constituencies within the Democratic Party — like younger voters, coastal whites and, increasingly, Hispanic voters — who are supportive of gay marriage. And gays and lesbians themselves, and their families, are an important constituent group for Democrats. (They are more numerous, for instance, than Jewish voters.)

It has often been surmised (correctly, I think) that the Democratic nominee in 2016 and in subsequent years is extremely likely to support gay marriage. Indeed, some prospective candidates, like Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York and Gov. Martin O’Malley of Maryland, have actively been seeking to carve out a reputation for themselves on the issue. It did not make a lot of sense for Mr. Cuomo or Mr. O’Malley to so embrace the issue, while the Democratic president — who is not obviously more conservative than them on other issues — did not. In many ways it is surprising that Mr. Obama did not adopt his new position sooner.

View the original article here

Will the Democrats say 'I do' support marriage equality in 2012? - DAILY KOS

On Feb. 13, Freedom to Marry launched their "Democrats: Say I Do" campaign, aimed at lobbying the Democratic Party's drafting committee to formally adopt a position of supporting marriage equality into the party platform. The new platform will be ratified at the Democratic National Convention this summer. The current platform language reads (p. 52):

We support the full inclusion of all families, including same-sex couples, in the life of our nation, and support equal responsibility, benefits, and protections. We will enact a comprehensive bipartisan employment non-discrimination act. We oppose the Defense of Marriage Act and all attempts to use this issue to divide us.

The proposed new language would read:

The Democratic Party supports the full inclusion of all families in the life of our nation, with equal respect, responsibility, and protection under the law, including the freedom to marry. Government has no business putting barriers in the path of people seeking to care for their family members, particularly in challenging economic times. We support the Respect for Marriage Act and the overturning of the federal so-called “Defense of Marriage Act,” and oppose discriminatory constitutional amendments and other attempts to deny the freedom to marry to loving and committed same-sex couples.

Is the time ripe for the Democratic party to finally come out of the closet and say "I do" support marriage equality and not just wink and a nod at it?

Reid Wilson writing in the National Journal this week called marriage equality support "The New Democratic Litmus Test." Wilson argues the 2016 Democratic presidential aspirants will inevitably include marriage equality supporters, and Democratic marriage equality opponents may well find themselves at a significant fundraising disadvantage.

In July 2011, President Obama's pollster Joel Benenson and George W. Bush's pollster Dr. Jan van Lohuizen were hired by Freedom to Marry to crunch the numbers. Here's what their analysis of six national polls from Gallup, Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), CNN/Opinion Research Corporation, ABC News/Washington Post and Pew Research Center (Pew) found:

The trendlines are indisputable, and a general consensus seems to be forming that marriage equality is inevitable, Vice-President Joe Biden even said so himself.

Among Beneson and van Lohuizen's conclusions was the declaration that "support strongly correlates with age. As Americans currently under the age of 40 make up a greater percentage of the electorate, their views will come to dominate."

And look who signed up right away to endorse Freedom to Marry's initiative: the Executive Director of Young Democrats of America. YDA has 150,000+ members from chapters in 46 states and U.S. territories and over 1,500 local chapters. Emily Tisch Sussman writing on the group's website said:

“As the Executive Director of Young Democrats of America, I represent young people, and the way we connect young people back to Democratic politics is by speaking out for what is right and taking action. Polling shows that 70 percent of voters 18-34 support the freedom to marry, and for many of our members, it’s a cause that goes to the core of why they consider themselves Democrats. It is time to realize that marriage is no longer an effective wedge issue; it is a cause that we as Democrats should be leading on.”

Leadership is the key issue here.

The changing trendlines certainly are signaling to many Democratic leaders the water's fine, hop right in. The strong hand of leadership emanting from Democratic Govs. Cuomo, Gregoire and O'Malley in New York, Washington and Maryland were certainly key to marriage equality victories in the last year.

There is certainly a school of thought that Democrats should not engage "social issues" and that what voters really care about is the jobs and economy.

While the second part is almost certainly true, total disengagement from this "social issue" is not a luxury the LGBT community has the privilege to enjoy in the 2012 election cycle. Whether LGBT Americans like it or not, their civil rights will be going to popular ballot referendums, definitely in Minnesota, Maine and all but certainly in Washington and Maryland as well. North Carolina too will be voting on May 8 on a constitutional amendment to ban virtually all unions but opposite-sex marriage.

And for some inexplicable reason Republicans seem anxious to make 2012 the year of a resurgent culture war. Inexplicable as polling shows they are out if the mainstream on all touchstone issues. Abortion, birth control and even marriage equality offers increasingly no advantage to winning the hearts and minds of the middle.

Support by party affliation, average five national polls*Nationally marriage equality supporters are indisputably in the majority.

Viewing support through party affiliations, and non-affiliated voters, the divide is even more revealing.

Increasingly the GOP's rhetoric preaches only to their choir. Supporting marriage equality offers little risk to a Democrat to turn off the base or independents. It's becoming clear that the most adamant opposition is fast boiling down to a hardcore group of 30% mostly religious right conservative Republicans. And it isn't at all clear that a voter that doesn't support marriage equality personally considers a candidate's support a deal-breaker in an otherwise acceptable platform of issues.

Believe it or not, even the Republican party seems to be waking up to this. Earlier this year, National Journal took the temperature of political "insiders"—political operatives, strategists, campaign consultants and lobbyists—in both parties. They found an amazing 20 percent drop in GOP's appetite for opposing marriage equality in just under two years. All the movement on the GOP side was toward a desire to "avoid" the issue:

Republicans insiders on marriage equalityMy party should avoid the issueA smart strategist will attack where he sees his opponent retreating and 84 percent of Democratic opinion leaders recommend their party support marriage equality. Quotes from insiders included this from a Democrat: "It's a huge demographic opportunity for Democrats because almost every voter under 30 supports it."  This one came from a GOP operative: "Only idiots fight demography." In New Jersey, Democrats appear to have used Republican Chris Christie's idiocy against him.

But often Democrats are more comfortable discussing the politics of contrast than playing them. To do that you have to get in front of the issue, and lead the conversation in a new direction rather than just respond to what the other side is saying.

As marriage equality support becomes the majority position it becomes less and less understandable to the LGBT community that leaders should treat the issue as radioactive or an electoral albatross.

There is of course, widespread anxiety about these various ballot fights coming to the 2012 calendar, and also perhaps anxiety at the prospect of a 2008 redux.

Think back to November 4, 2008. While Democrats had every reason to cheer, for the LGBT constituency, the evening was more bittersweet. The landslide win of Barack Obama, and downticket sweeps of Democrats did not stop Proposition 8 in California, nor did it stop similar anti-gay ballot initatives in Florida, Arizona, and Arkansas.

In 2009, during the ballot fight for marriage equality in Maine, there was some criticism that Organizing for America was perhaps, less engaged than many LGBT Democrats might have hoped. That ballot initiative failed narrowly.

Signs are encouraging that the larger Democratic establishment will be more engaged in assisting the LGBT community with these battles in 2012 than in the past.

In Maryland and Washington, the party has good incentive to unite. Like marriage equality or not, the Republicans are coming to take away the Democratic Governor's legacy. Govs. Gregoire and O'Malley's triumphs will be hollow, even viewed as a political misstep, should they be erased by voters. In both states, a united front of the Democratic base can assure the governors' fight for the freedom to marry was not made in vain and the Democratic party's legislative agenda vindicated. In Minnesota, the Democratic party, under the leadership of Gov. Mark Dayton is showing a fierce appetite to adopt the fight as their own.

Unsurprisingly, further south of the Mason-Dixon line, the news is less encouraging in North Carolina. Moving the date of the ballot initiative from the general to be concurrent with Republican primary was anything but helpful, at least for the LGBT community. And Sen. Kay Hagan's comment she was "wary" of the amendment was described by North Carolinian Pam Spaulding as more "tepid" and "pitiful" than fierce, but still better than Democratic Gov. Beverly Perdue's statement.

The platform adoption is but one strategy for solidifying support within the Democratic base for turning these ballot initiatives into LGBT victories.

Adam Bink of Courage Campaign called adopting marriage equality support into the platform "constructive and important." But Courage Campaign's strategy is perhaps more pragmatic than symbolic and can be summed up in four words: "Show us the money!"

Courage Campaign and Grindr 4 Equality are focused on ensuring the DNC chip in to fund the campaign against these discriminatory amendments in Minnesota and North Carolina and ensure equal rights in other states because ultimately, money is what is needed to get our message out to voters in these critical campaigns."

Courage Campaign's petition to the DNC reads:

LGBT voters and their allies have put Democrats in office for years. Now it's time for the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to have our back and help secure equal rights. As many as 5 states (Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, North Carolina and Washington) will face ballot referenda on marriage equality this year, where voters will vote on the rights of same-sex couples to marry.

In 2008, the DNC chipped in $25,000 to help fight Prop 8 and then-candidate Obama called for a "no" vote. DNC Chairwoman and Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz told reporters she would "certainly consider" funding the fight for equal rights. Let's show the DNC how important it is for them to help again.

Submitted to Madame Chairwoman as she considers the appropriating of DNC resources for the 2012 cycle: the voters these equality-minded organizers will be working furiously to drive into voting booths will almost certainly be disproportionately young, progressive Democrats. Please, consider how that might end well for everyone on election night.

The ask seems particularly effective coming from Courage Campaign as they have distinguished themselves as full-spectrum progressive organizer engaging on issues as disparate as fair taxation, racism, health care reform and countless others.

Michael Cole-Schwartz speaking for Human Rights Campaign said:

We are supportive of Freedom to Marry's and Courage Campaign's efforts. Having party support for marriage and a variety of other LGBT issues is important which is why we've testified previously, including in 2008, before the DNC Platform Committee. As we look toward these critical elections with marriage to be on the ballot in a number of states, HRC will be playing a substantial role in these fights.

The LGBT community has a good friend in DNC chairwoman Wasserman Schultz, a supporter of marriage equality. She has not yet commented on the platform language, but has a long history of standing with the LGBT community, including serving as vice-chair of the House LGBT equality caucus. House Minority leader Nancy Pelosi has already voiced support for the proposed change in platform language. She also once said to marriage equality opponents, "The inconceivable to you is the inevitable to us." Secret Service watches President Obama address
Human Rights Campaign, Oct. 2009 (White House)But of course the elephant donkey in the living room is the awkward optics of a party adopting a position that the party leader does not share. (Although exactly such a situation already transpired late last year in Australia on precisely this issue.) This almost certainly presents the biggest hurdle to the successful adoption.

But even the party leader himself seems to be acknowledging the inevitable telling Joe Sudbay and gathered bloggers in October 2010:

THE PRESIDENT: The one thing I will say today is I think it’s pretty clear where the trendlines are going.

Q: The arc of history.

THE PRESIDENT: The arc of history.

The biggest point of debate seems to be when he will—or should—get on the correct side of the arc of history?

Not everyone has lost faith that the president's position will complete its evolution before November 6, 2012. In December, former Clinton White House advisor Richard Socarides wrote of Prop 8 and DOMA constitutional challenges in the New Yorker:

The potential for those decisions, together with a rapid change in public opinion in favor of marriage equality, have clearly become factors in President Obama’s thinking. As a result, I believe that he will announce his support for same-sex marriage before the 2012 election.

Might the president announce his personal endorsement concurrent with that of his party?

It certainly would put a bold exclamation point on his likely place in history as the first American president to declare the freedom to marry as a fundamental human right for every loving couple.

View the original article here

Colorado Dems Hope to Follow New York's Gay Marriage Success (U.S. News & World Report)

Lakewood, COLO.--The gay marriage law that passed in New York late Friday night has its origins in Colorado politics--and Centennial State political implications for 2012. Colorado software entrepreneur and gay rights activist Tim Gill's team was a major player in the effort, an effort that should continue in Colorado next year on both the state legislative and electoral fronts.

While the New York state Senate became the first-ever Republican-led state legislative body to recognize same-sex relationships, Colorado Republican leadership killed a Gill-backed civil unions bill on a party-line vote in a House committee this year.

[See a slide show of the 10 cities with the most same-sex couples.]

Both the state House and Senate sponsors have said they will re-introduce the legislation, and as Senate sponsor state Sen. Pat Steadman, a Democrat from Denver, tells me, "[Republicans'] moves next year will be very interesting to watch. We're at that point in the chess game when each little move becomes make or break. The end game is in sight."

I asked Steadman why New York Republicans succeeded where Colorado Republicans did not, and his answer was simple. "New York Republican leadership is much smarter than we have here." House sponsor state Rep. Mark Ferrandino, also a Democrat from Denver, was equally pointed.

"In New York, their leadership is willing to stand up against fringe," he said. "In Colorado, it's a small minority in their party that they're listening to, and they weren't willing to stand up to them last session." [Check out a roundup of GOP political cartoons.]

The day after the bill died, Gill wrote in the Denver Post:

Unfortunately, the same old divisive politics that brought me into the political sphere 17 years ago reared its ugly head again this past week. The leadership of the Colorado House suffers from a complete lack of vision. ... This legislature will have another chance in the next year to right this wrong for all those who choose to live, work, and raise a family in our great state. I sincerely hope to see civil unions debated on the House floor. And if not, we will have an opportunity to change the legislature, because in the end, Colorado deserves better.

And Steadman and Ferrandino agree that there will be political fallout if Republicans dismiss a civil unions bill in the 2012 legislature. "I definitely think there are political implications; just look at polling data," Ferrandino says. "So many people support civil unions that it shows their leadership is not in touch with mainstream Colorado voters."

Steadman is equally blunt. "I think it should be readily apparent. How much more out of step could they be?"

As he's proven in Colorado and New York, Gill's philosophy is that political money is most efficiently and effectively spent at the state level. A 2007 profile in the Atlantic noted, "Gill and Trimpa decided to eschew national races in favor of state and local ones, which could be influenced in large batches and for much less money. Most antigay measures, they discovered, originate in state legislatures."

Or in Colorado's case, a pro-gay rights civil unions bill that could pose serious problems for Republicans in 2012.

--See a slide show of the 10 cities with the most same-sex couples.

--Check out a roundup of GOP political cartoons.

--See a slide show of the 10 cities with the most union members.

View the original article here

Democrats Are All Cuomosexuals Now: Gay Marriage Puts Cuomo on 2016 Map (The Atlantic Wire)

The race for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination "just began" with New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's successful shepherding of a law to legalize gay marriage through the New York state legislature this weekend, Politico's Edward-Isaac Dovere and Maggie Haberman report. Cuomo's support for marriage equality puts him at the sweet spot in the arc of history, Democratic strategist Jim Jordan told Politico. His work on gay marriage could be as crucial to his political future as opposing the Iraq war was to then-state Sen. Barack Obama. Cuomo is the first national figure  enthusiastically to push same-sex marriage at the exact moment a majority of Americans began to support the issue.

Related: New York GOP Ready to Delay Gay Marriage Vote for Days

New York's LGBT Pride parade on Sunday took on the trappings of a Cuomo campaign rally--or at least a victory lap for the governor. He marched behind a massive banner with his name, while crowds waved "Thank You Governor Cuomo" signs. The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza writes that sure, 2016 is far, far away, but "political strategists are forever looking toward the future and the next big thing--and Cuomo made a claim to that title by finessing passage of the gay marriage bill through the Republican-controlled state Senate." Cillizza spoke to Democratic consultant Jason Ralston, who said that with this huge civil rights victory and his famous liberal name, Cuomo now leads the 2016 pack.

Related: New York Senate Punts Gay Marriage to Next Week

Cuomo even earned praise from combative Republican Gov. Chris Christie of neighboring New Jersey. Christie said on MSNBC Monday morning that Cuomo is "doing great....He gets in the room, he gets his hands dirty and he gets it done...He sets the debate, he defines the debate and then he compromises on the things he needs to compromise on. He's done a great job." The Philadelphia Inquirer's Matt Katz says these will be words to remember if we get a Cuomo-Christie race in 2016.

The New York Times' Michael Powell says everyone should calm down. "First, 2016 is the political equivalent of a millennium off. Second, Andrew Cuomo knows well how quickly approval curdles, particularly if the national economy remains semi-comatose." Sure, he corralled various political factions and "harnessed great poll numbers and notable legislative successes to pursuit of an issue of high principle. ... But in politics, it remains a long way from here to there."

Related: A Fundraiser's Timing Puts Scrutiny on Obama's Gay Marriage Stance

Manhattan financier and social gadfly Euan Rellie tweets, "We're all Cuomosexuals today." Cuomosexuals? Yes, Rellie says: Chris Cuomo--brother of Andrew and an ABC News reporter--"quietly used the term" at a dinner at novelist Jay McInerney's house on Friday ahead of the vote. Rellie says he is "aggressivley promoting/publicising it." Perhaps we'll hear more of it, if not this presidential campaign, then the next one.

View the original article here