In May 2012 President Barack Obama announced to the world that his position on gay marriage had evolved into one of support. While I don’t give much weight to opinion polls due to the ability to skew results through the phrasing of questions, or the rigging of sample respondents, the fact that a range of polls throughout the next year showed support for gay marriage growing steadily up and down the demographic dial shows in my completely biased view the awesome power of the bully pulpit in action.

President Obama’s recent State of the Union speech was largely designed around defining wedge issues that Democrats can campaign on in 2014.

But stop for a moment, and think about how shocking that is.

The ability of a President to sway broad popular opinion or change the minds of his opponents on a big issue with a speech is fairly limited, but that doesn’t mean that in certain situations the bully pulpit can’t be very powerful. The President can bring a huge amount of focus to a previously overlooked issue. A President’s opinion also has real sway over his own base and can cause members to rethink their position.

I seriously cannot believe I am again writing a post with one eye on the wire, still waiting for a conclusion to the debt-ceiling debacle, looking for real news to read, instead of just thrice re-boiled tea leaves. But here I am—here we are—sweating out a crisis that is as malicious as it is manufactured, knowing that when a “resolution” comes, no matter which version/option/compromise we get, it will be both terrible and impermanent.

  The campaign arm of the DNC, Organizing For America, has delivered over 150,000 phone calls, at last count, in favor of health care reform. The President himself will deliver remarks at a “Time To Deliver” call party tonight.   Less clear is what these callers are actually asking for in the health care reform [...]