TPM Editor’s Blog

Moonwalking Teh Gay

I’m not sure if we’ll ever find out — because the insider accounts are at least as likely to be spun as not. But I’m curious whether today’s remarks by Joe Biden on marriage equality are another example of Biden’s off-the-cuff indiscipline or something more like the White House trying to moon walk the President’s position on the issue, i.e., nudge and ease the president’s position forward while seeming to walk it back, so we’ll wake up one day and it will simply be different without ever being able to point to a day when it changed.

The upshot of the clarifications of Biden’s remark do less to pull back what Biden said as too subtly move forward President Obama’s position without seeming to.

Needless to say, we all know at this point that President Obama supports gay marriage but thinks the political tides aren’t quite safe enough to come out and say so. Lots of presidents telegraph this kind of equivocation but I have seen few cases where it’s been done so out there in the open. So the whole thing is kabuki theatre of the highest order. But there it is.

Your thoughts?

Josh Marshall

Josh Marshall is editor and publisher of TalkingPointsMemo.com.

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