Month: November 2008

Prop 8 fundraising totals:

Spending for and against a ballot initiative that would outlaw same-sex marriage in California has surpassed $73 million, almost twice the total that was spent in the 24 states where similar measures were put to voters since 2004, campaign finance records show.

Opponents of Proposition 8 had a slight lead in contributions as of Monday, having raised $37.6 million. Supporters of the gay marriage ban had raised $35.8 million. A little less than $33 million was spent on campaigns to pass or defeat gay marriage bans in the 24 states where they appeared on ballots in 2004, 2005 and 2006, according to the National Organization on Money in State Politics.

Rove draws up his final prediction. As always with Rove, impossible to know what’s a lie and what’s truth, especially since he forgot the distinction about two decades ago. (Photo: an Obama pie sent in by an Ohio reader whose sister-in-law baked it for an election party tonight.)

A reader writes:

I live in Grant Park, a very nice, upper middle class area in the city of Atlanta. I got up to vote this morning at 630am, and walked less than an eighth of a mile to my polling place, and when I got there, there were 500 people in queue in front of me, and another 500 got in queue behind me before the polls opened at 7am. I am 29 years old (30 is 6 days!), black, and gay, and I have to say, this is turning out to be a great day.  Half of the people in line with me were my age or younger, and openly talking to their line-mates about their first time voting and how they had never been interested in politics before this. I am amazed.

I have voted in every election here since 1998, and I have never seen turnout like this, even .  I know this is anecdotal, but it is not the only polling location here in town that I have been to like this.  I work in a polling place (I’m the office manager for a local affordable housing non-profit that is based in an old school building, and the same dynamics have been playing out here all day.  Long lines and young, first-time voters, very enthusiastic to vote for Obama. 

Maybe we can take Georgia too.

A reader writes:

In past years at this polling place, which is in a park, there was never a line, but the wait was about an hour. Well, it wasn’t really a line, because it wound around a small playground, forming something approximating an "O." At one point, an African-American woman wearing a beautiful leopard-print scarf around her head came out of the polling station and walked along the circle saying "In the White House, In the White House, In the White House." No other words needed to be said. For her, and for all of us watching her expression of sheer joy, hope had arrived.

A reader writes:

My newlywed husband and I just returned from voting. There were Vote No on 8 volunteers at the corners on either side of the polling place. Everyone who walked by them told them they were voting "NO". We were in line about 25 minutes, total. When we came home we found, in the mail, our official marriage certificate from LA County. Delivered just under the wire! 

To misquote another, slightly more famous (and now deceased) Los Angeleno, "they will have to pry it from my cold dead gay hand!"

Change is gonna come:

Yglesias doesn’t understand why McCain spent so much time with Joe:

…the people who identify with Joe are the Republican base. They can’t turn this thing around. And they’re certainly not the people you’re supposed to be talking to in October. It’d be as if Barack Obama were criss-crossing the country with a young, hip lesbian acting as his main surrogate to attack McCain’s health care plan.

Coates adds:

I think it comes from drinking your own Kool-Aid. To these guys, America is still Joe the Plumber. This is why you hear them disqualifying whole swaths of the country with phrases like "the pro-America parts" or "real Virginia." They have mistaken their little retreat in the forest, for the forest itself. Is it not a good thing to live in a democracy? Every four years you get to show your leaders exactly who you are.

As I said: the grave-digger, with less wisdom. But one day, we’ll remember him as hilarious (and kinda hot in a Zionist pseudo-plumber way).

Go ahead and have a good cry. I’m catching the train back to DC. I should be home by the time Kentucky’s polls close. But I’ll be Acela-blogging all the way.

A reader writes:

We live in North Alabama. My husband went to vote before work and got to our polling place just before 7 a.m. Almost 2.5 hours later he cast his vote. Usually we’re in and out in 10 minutes. I got there around 10 and was done by 11:15. I’ve never seen a line like that and never seen traffic like that, and our polling place is the 5th-largest in the county. It was incredible, and I’m so happy to have been a part of it.

A reader writes:

Went to vote at 7:30.  Waited in line for an hour listening to my iPod and playing sudoku on my cell phone. Voted for 2 Democrats (President and U.S. Rep.), 1 Independent (Coleman or Franken … please),  1 Republican (State Rep.), and a bunch of Judges I never heard of.  At work by 9:15.  Ho Hum.   But tonight, Yee Haw.