It took two weeks for the whole country to fall in love with the NBA’s first Taiwanese-American player. As polls repeatedly show, most Americans, even those who disagree with his politics, genuinely like our first African-American President. Polls also show that the majority of Americans support marriage for gay people. Most Americans don’t want illegal aliens who’ve obeyed the law rounded up and deported by the millions. The majority of us want safe and free access to contracepetion and reproductive health care for women. Whether it’s shifting demographics or a more enlightened populace, whether our faces have changed or our hearts, the question is: Are wedge issues, used so often and so successfully by Conservatives in recent decades, a thing of the past? Is the exploiting of social issues a losing gambit now?•