same-sex marriage is paying off for his re-election hopes. a democratic source saying the president raised $2 million in the first 24 hours after making his remarks. that comes as a new usa today/gallup poll shows that a majority of americans, 51% of the approve of the president s position. let s bring in athena jones, where a law allowing same-sex marriage is taking effect next january but opponents hope to stop it from becoming reality. good morning to you. give us a little more about the voter reaction there to president obama s comments. what are you hearing? reporter: good morning, randi. there s going to be a farmers market later today so we re hoping to be our stwoeinformal polling here but the first national poll since the president made his remarks on wednesday shows that 51% of people approve of the president s position on same-sex marriage, 45% disapprove so that s still fairly evenly divide e. but if you look at it by party, you ll find that 71% of democrats app
the historic headline from the white house this week, the president of the united states endorses same-sex marriage. but the story behind the headlines may be just as dramatic and it culminated with vice president joe biden apologizing to president obama for forcing his hand on this hot button issue, a sore subject among some white house insiders. our chief whereas correspondent jessica yellen has been working the story for us. tell our viewers what you are hearing right now. i understand the vice president apologized to the president for putting him in a tough position on this situation and the president gave an understanding reply saying he knows that the vice president was speaking from the heart. the vice president s office also issued a statement saying it was the president who has been the leader on this issue since day one and the vice president never intended to distract from that. president obama says he was planning to say this sometime before the democratic conve
shall be valid or recognized in this state. cnn political editor paul steinhauser is live in washington, d.c., this morning. boy, has this been playing out. we first heard the vice president joe biden. he says that he endorsed marriage equality and he is a roman catholic. how is this going to play out politically in washington? it puts president obama, in a way, in a bind because vice president biden and other top members of the administration has come out in favor of same-sex marriages. he does not. he supports domestic unions. but he does not support an amendment like the one in north carolina, which would prohibit rights for same-sex couples. what happens in north carolina now? this could have wide ranging impacts, and not just on same-sex couples but on male and female couples as well because it will prevent domestic partnerships in the future and any attempt at civil unions. north carolina also a battle ground state, a state that president obama won four years ago, he
why lyndon baines johnson could get things done in washington and the lessons for today. and is china changing from a company into a country? i ll explain. first, here s my take. whatever you thought of president obama s speech on afghanistan this week, it is now increasingly clear that the united states is winding down its massive military commitments to the two wars of the last decade. we are out of iraq and we will soon largely be out of afghanistan. osama bin laden is dead, al qaeda is a shadow of its former self. threats remain, but they are being handled using special forces and intelligence. so finally, after a decade, we seem to be right-sizing the threat from terrorist groups. or are we? while we leave the battlefields of the greater middle east, and we are firmly committed to the war on terror at home. what do i mean by that? well, look at the expansion of federal bureaucracies to tackle this war. since september 11th, 2001, the u.s. government has created or re
skeptical social conservatives. i ll talk about that and more with this former rival who just dropped out of the race newt gingrich. we want to welcome our viewers in the united states and around the world. i m wolf blitzer. you re in the situation room. formally this week, satellites would have been dominated by the race for the white house and the increasingly heating battle between the obama and romney campaigns. but president obama rewrote the script, catching the world by surprise with an unexpected trip to afghanistan where he marked the one-year anniversary of the death of the world s most wanted terrorist. one year ago from bases here in afghanistan our troops launched the operation that killed osama bin laden. the goal that i set to defeat al qaeda and denied a chance to rebuild is now within our reach. the trip wasn t without controversy, some critics accusing the president of playing politics with the anniversary of bin laden s death, questioning whether ro