Don’t steal his thunder: why Obama finally came out of the closet

Of course it was the ego.

I was tied up yesterday after reading news in the morning. Even then, I wasn’t surprised the Prez flip-flopped–oh, excuse me, evolved– his position on gay marriage. He just came out of the closet about what he advocated in 1996.  With liberals weeping in their coffee Wednesday morning after the election results, Obama needed to fire up that base. And he did, make no mistake. What I find interesting is this snippet from Politico:

Senior administration officials admit that Biden’s comment was, indeed, the catalyst for Obama to make his historic announcement weeks earlier than planned. But Biden’s remarks on “Meet the Press” deeply annoyed Obama’s team, people close to the situation tell POLITICO, because it aggrandized his role at the expense of Obama’s yeoman efforts on behalf of the community and pushed up the timing of a sensitive announcement they had hoped to break — at a time and place of their own choosing — in the weeks leading up to the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte this fall. Nor did it tickle anyone, from Obama on down, that Biden — who backed the Defense of Marriage Act while serving in the Senate in the 1990s — seemed to be getting more credit in the LGBT community than a president who has actually taken steps to repeal the Clinton-era law that defined marriage as something that could only take place between a man and a woman. And it chafed Obama’s team that Biden had, at times, privately argued for the president to hold off on his support of marriage equality to avoid a backlash among Catholic voters in battleground states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania, according to two officials familiar with those discussions.

Emphasis my own. Normally I don’t put much stock in anything from Politico, but in this case, the ego clash rings true. How dare you steal my thunder.  After all, those brave soldiers fight on my behalf. Indeed.

UPDATE: Linked at Temple of MUT. Thanks!

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