Let me finish tonight with this.
There’s nothing so powerful as an idea whose time has come. That idea today is marriage equality.
The numbers roll in as more and more Americans accept the idea and young people are seen embracing it—indeed, wondering why it was an issue to debate.
And so tonight we showed you a full-page newspaper ad with the pictures of General Powell and Laura Bush, even Dick Cheney, joining President Obama in support of equality.
We will see. I look at the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution and see a “liberty” clause and think about the Declaration of Independence itself, and its historic protection of “the pursuit of happiness,” and wonder why we didn’t all see it sooner.
Chris Matthews