I don't disagree with your assessment. But there is know way to really know the motivation. We can speculate, but we don't know.
Yes, but the point is to assess which politicians are more likely to pull this stunt. They're all liars and thieves, but just how much they lie and thieve is on a spectrum of lying and thieving.
You'll get no argument from me on that. To be a politician, especially at the higher levels, you have to be basically a narcissistic borderline personality disordered individual. Then it's a sliding scale within that diagnosis.
As far as appeasing voters, isn't that kinda part of the job description? After all, they are supposed to represent their constituents. As voter sentiment changes, I would expect, for the most part, my governmental proxies that I voted for to represent me to evolve as well.
Regardless of motivation, did Biden land on the correct side of history? In my mind, as a voter, a constituent, yes.
The thing is, he didn't. His stated support for gay marriage now doesn't retroactively help it pass in the first place.
I don't know what his impact was, but for the record, Biden “came out” on same sex marriage way before the SCOTUS ruling in 2015. Specifically, in May of 2012 (Granted, an election year, go figure):
Biden was asked by anchor David Gregory on May 4, 2012, whether he had rethought his longstanding opposition to same-sex marriage. “I am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women, and heterosexual men and women marrying another are entitled to the same exact rights, all the civil rights, all the civil liberties,” Biden responded. “Who do you love? And will you be loyal to the person you love? And that’s what people are finding out is what all marriages, at their root, are about, whether they’re marriages of lesbians or gay men or heterosexuals.”And even before Obama “came out”.
Were Biden’s statements genuine? Anyone’s guess.
This is a case of all-too-often mentioned "virtue signaling". Biden is willing to state popular beliefs in order to garner support but he doesn't seem interested in fighting for those beliefs (because, all too likely, they're not genuine). This is why I brought up the student loan debacle. His support for student loan forgiveness likely isn't genuine (as well as most of the DNC's support). He's had a D majority in Congress for two years now. They forgave a few token loans and said "job done, lads!" Bringing it up again at this point is spitting on your supporters and laughing about it.
I'm not super up on the student loan forgiveness thing. But it was a Biden campaign promise. Apparently, something has been done since then:
Biden has forgiven debt for some disabled and defrauded borrowers, and made it easier for those already in the public service loan forgiveness program to have their debt forgiven. So far, his administration has forgiven over $17 billion of student loan debt. Still, borrowers owe over $1.74 trillion, collectively, with federal loans comprising over $1.6 trillion of that.https://fortune.com/2022/05/04/will-biden-forgive-student-loan-debt-where-things-stand/I think the thinking now is some sort of $10k forgiveness per borrower. But a bunch of stuff needs to still be worked out like the final amount, qualifications for forgiveness, retroactiveness, etc.
But, to your point, his polling is disaterously low. Mid-terms are 20 minutes away. So the genuiness of motivation behind any of this is certainly questionable. But maybe the ends justify the means. Pretty much every first term president in modern times loses the mid-terms, so it will be interesting to see how many of these populist policies come to the fore to try and break the cycle of a somewhat guaranteed mid-term gutting of the executive branch party in Congress.