Republican 'War on Marriage' rhetoric is wrong strategy to court youth

President Obama made what is - hands down - the largest news thus far of the 2012 election cycle by declaring his support for gay marriage in an interview aired today on ABC News.

His comments, after Vice President Joe Biden made similar declarations last week, make Obama the first sitting president in U.S. history to publicly support same sex marriage.

No matter what side of the aisle you sit on, it's impossible to ignore the significance of this announcement.

Generations of lawmakers are still fighting to run from their vocal opposition of civil rights in the 1960s and 70s, but Obama has set a new standard for Democrats. While his words will not do anything to expand gay rights in the United States — he went on to add that he believes its a states rights issue — it is a crucial step toward moving one of the major parties to the "right side of history."

According to national polling by ABC News and the Washington Post, 52 percent of Americans support legalizing same-sex marriage while 43 percent oppose it. (Take a glance at this chart, which tracks public sentiment on gay marriage since 2004).

Assuming gay marriage eventually becomes accepted and legal nationwide, the Democrats will be able to claim they championed the LGBT cause (which couldn't be further from the truth, but mark my words - they'll do it come 2016).

Besides the a day of headlines, Obama's announcement can have long-term impact on his reelection campaign. The announcement itself, albeit forced by Biden's antics, will mobilize his base, while the GOP response holds the potential to doom their chances of unseating him come November.

Few issues have the potential to stir up the left en masse - a major announcement on a social issue such as same sex marriage is one of those things.

The announcement will help excite young voters (who, as we've reported before, are largely disinterested in this election), a crucial demographic for the Obama campaign.

That same ABC/WaPo poll found that 65 percent of young voters support the legalization of gay marriage — the largest level of support among any demographic.

Meanwhile, the demographic Obama risks alienating by his vocal support for gay marriage is minority voters — specifically black and hispanic voters — who trend socially conservative on social issues. George W. Bush made wooing the black church largely by uniting in opposition to gay marriage, a major 2004 wedge issue, a major component in his re-election campaign.

However, the prospect of black voters abandoning Obama is bleak. His polling among minority communities remains sky high while a number of black political leaders — from the Rev. Al Sharpton to former New York Governor David Paterson — have expressed support for same sex marriage without major political backlash from the black community.

Elections are won and lost in the middle of the political spectrum. While rallying the base is key, Mitt Romney has no chance of defeating the incumbent president without making an appeal to the center of the electorate.

But 2012 is no 2004 and Romney is no George W. Bush.

In '04 Bush successfully appealed to the conservative core of the nation by drumming up paranoia about gay marriage and abortion. Eight years later, the impending moral decline of the country (as preached by the right in the early 2000s) has yet to be realized.

Meanwhile, the bulk of the country has seen much of the vocal opposition to same sex marriage devolve into the equivelent of hate speech. To win the next generation of voters, the GOP must distance itself from gay-bashing and inflated paranoia about gay Americans.

Headlines like the one below (which Fox News has since scrapped from their site), won't help the GOP make that case.

In a column for Newsweek published in 2010, Theodore Olson, a top advisor to GOP presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, outlined why conservatives should embrace same sex marriage. Meanwhile, as the ellectorate becomes increasingly less tied to generational religious convictions, it is only a matter of time before

The days of the "Moral Majority" may be over if millennials become an increasingly active segment of ballot-casters (in which case wedge issues such as abortion, gay marriage and prayer in schools will become increasingly irrelevant in the national political discourse).

Alexander: Is it time the GOP embraced same-sex marriage? With nearly 3 in 10 GOP voters in support of same sex marriage, how long will it be before we see a Republican presidential candidate who supports gay rights? 

An 18-29 win for Romney is eroding President Obama's 2/3 margin of victory

First, we ought to consider the nature of a youth vote victory for Governor Romney this cycle. Even a slight decline in President Obama's 2008-level margin could be considered a win.

We have reported here ‪ad nauseam that capturing at least 2/3 of the 18-29 demographic is essential to Obama's bid for re-eletion.

As Alexandra Jaffe wrote recently in National Journal, Obama is concertedly pushing for young voters "in hopes of [an] Election Day payoff."

"The White House pledged...to help lower-income youth find summer jobs in a move likely to appeal to younger voters crucial to President Barack Obama's re-election campaign," reports Reuters of the White House's new summer jobs initiative.

In his efforts to rekindle enthusiasm among young people, President Obama has targeted U.S. university hubs in battleground states like Ohio and Virginia. The Wall Street Journal's Washington Wire recently chronicled:

There’s a reason Mr. Obama seems particularly interested in rediscovering his mojo with the college set. The votes in those towns may be critical to him in a what’s shaping up to be a close campaign – much more important than they were four years ago. As he hops from quad to quad, however, he may find repeating his 2008 campus magic to be tougher. 

So what is Governor Romney to do? In WSJ columnist Daniel Henninger's recent "Memo to the Youth," he argues that the current administration's policies - particularly its preservation of current entitlements - prevent future economic or job growth (for young people and the country broadly).

The column doesn't address Romney as a potentially positive alternative for young voters.

In a rough economy, it may not be enough to bash Obama's economic policies as a failed, when the presumptive Republican nominee is not proposing specific policies that would enhance social mobility of millennials. Romney also has to stray away from the kind of messages and/or gaffes that turn off struggling young Americans.