Will the DNC's Charlotte Convention Backfire for Obama?

I see many references across the blogosphere about boycotting North Carolina after the passage of Amendment One earlier this month.  I DO understand that feeling although I will be going to OBX Pridefest next month to support Dare County residents and businesses that voted against Amendment One (Dare County was the only non-metropolitan county to reject Amendment One).  The Counties surrounding Charlotte likewise voted against Amendment One, but that may not dampen the anger and animosity that is palpable in North Carolina.  Given this toxic atmosphere, some see the DNC National Convention as something that may backfire big time.  Here are excerpts from a column in The Daily Beast that suggests holding the DNC convention in Charlotte may not be a good idea: 

When the Obama campaign last year picked Charlotte, N.C., as the host city for the 2012 Democratic National Convention, they hoped to double down on the president’s historic victory four years ago, when his electoral coalition of young, black, and college-educated white voters made him the first Democrat to carry the Tar Heel State since Jimmy Carter in 1976.

But while polls show Barack Obama and Mitt Romney neck-and-neck in the state, the president's choice to hold the convention there could come back to haunt him, given the convergence of angry labor unions, an unfortunately named venue, embarrassing local political scandals, Occupy Wall Street protesters, and the voters’ decision this year to pass a state constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and civil unions.

That vote led more than 30,000 people to quickly sign a petition from a New York–based marriage-equality group to move the convention elsewhere, though timing and logistics alone render that functionally impossible.

[T]he economic backdrop is far from ideal for the president looking to sell voters on the Obama recovery. North Carolina’s unemployment rate has persistently been above the national average, at 9.4 percent last month, and Charlotte is the world headquarters of Bank of America, a bailed-out megabank so closely associated with the financial collapse of 2008 that Occupy Wall Street has devoted a campaign specifically to breaking it up. Protesters will be on the streets of Charlotte taking aim at the bank even as President Obama delivers his acceptance speech—at Bank of America Stadium. And labor unions are fuming that the convention is being held in a so-called right-to-work state (where union membership or dues cannot be required for employment).

Labor, which remains the bedrock organizing arm of the Democratic Party, is miffed that national Democrats chose to meet in the state with the smallest proportion of union members—just 2.9 percent of the workforce last year—to make their case for a strengthening the middle class and broadening economic prosperity. Some locals are planning to skip or even protest the convention, and labor has pointedly declined to contribute its expected share of the convention’s costs, which will be upwards of $36 million this year.

Time will tell whether or not the Charlotte choice proves to be disastrous.  Knowing wat we all know now, I cannot help but believe a different choice would be made if time permitted a change of venues.