President Obama's announcement Wednesday that he supports same sex-marriage is continuing to have political repercussions across the nation and in the city. Our Josh Robin explains.

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UNITED STATES -- "Calling it marriage creates a whole host of problems."

Just hours after his historic shift, President Obama is running an ad and raising money off his new support for gay marriage.

On the other side, Republicans have a new attack line to attack the president: He's a flip-flopper, trying to distract voters from the economy.

"You don't change your position to try and win states, or certain sub groups of Americans. You have the positions you have. And as you know for a long time, I think from the beginning of my political career, I've made it very clear that I believe that marriage should be a relationship between a man and a woman," said presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

"The president was for same-sex marriage before he was against it and now he's for it again," former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani said.

But the current mayor whose endorsement both Obama and Mitt Romney are after is praising the Democrat for shifting stances on marriage equality.

"And my hope would be that Governor Romney also evolves," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said.

That is highly unlikely to happen. What isn't clear, though, is whether his opposition to same-sex marriage will draw conservative voters to the polls in key states, perhaps swinging the election to the Republican.

"I think it shows how out of touch the president is," said Tami Fitzgerald of the NC Values Coalition.
Fitzgerald helped led a successful bid on Tuesday to constitutionally ban gay marriage and civil unions in that state, which Obama won four years ago.

“These are the people that care about families, that care about traditional values in North Carolina and I think that they will be motivated," Fitzgerald said.

The same was said before the 2004 election, when anti-gay marriage laws were on the ballots in eleven states, including Ohio, which George Bush narrowly won. Studies since then, though, argue that they did not contribute to Bush's re-election.

Meanwhile, Vice President Joe Biden apologized to the President, the New York Times reports. Biden is said to have accelerated the President's rollout of his gay marriage shift, when he announced his own support during an interview Sunday.