Month: November 2009

Matthew Gagnon provides one:

Even more damaging were Kennebec County (delivering a net of 7,000 votes for Yes) and Penobscot County (11,000), both of which hold a strong number of votes and represent a mix of urban, suburban, and rural voters. This was the real battlefield where No on 1 lost.  These voters – and their cousins in other counties – are not “back country hicks” – even though some areas of those counties are remote. 

I myself am from Penobscot country (Hampden, specifically – which incidentally went for Yes 53%-47% for those of you keeping score), and a great deal of these people represent the typical “suburban swing voter”.  In other words, many of them work white collar jobs, live in mostly nice neighborhoods within striking distance of a city, and are pliable for whichever side makes the better case.  We are not talking about culturally conservative “Deliverance” type areas here – this is the home of Maine’s soccer moms.

The failure of No on 1 to make any inroads in these types of voters is what ultimately doomed them. The people who live in townships and in the shadows of mountains may have been decidedly against gay marriage, but they don’t represent anywhere near enough votes to offset what happened in Portland and other No on 1 cities.  This fight was lost among the middle class voters of “middle Maine”, and it was lost badly.

I really don't see how a narrowly divided vote can be seen as losing badly – especially when this issue wasn't even discussed a decade ago. We're urging a real change here, and it is not easy to counter the very well targeted fears and panic about gay people and children.

(Hat tip: Smith)

What we see on YouTube may not be what the Iranians are seeing on TV. In fact, we know it isn't. The Atlantic's Graeme Wood was on the ground at the Quds day rally a month ago. His impression:

For this observer, anyway, the Quds Day rally established exactly what the Islamic Republic wanted it to show, which is that despite the reports of unrest and discontent, there are still vast numbers of Iranians who love their government and hate Israel, and who are as sheltered from their anti-clerical countrymen as their government wants them to be. The opposition, of course, rallied elsewhere, farther north (more on that later). And optimists will point out, with some justification, that totalitarian governments have never had much trouble staging parades, even in their last days. But if the protesters' goal was to force their displeasure into the view of all Iranians, they failed. If I hadn't received the Tweets, I wouldn't have known there was any counter-protest at all.

From Chris Good's reporting on the win for medical marijuana:

A big concern for medical marijuana advocates has been that it's hard to convince voters and state legislators to pass laws that they know the federal government will contradict. If medical marijuana users get arrested by the FBI and DEA, what's the point in legalizing medical pot at the state level? After the effort of putting a bill through the legislature or getting a measure put on the ballot, passage would seem like a pyrrhic victory.

So, with that in mind, Marijuana Policy Project Executive Director Rob Kampia, whose group drafted the Maine proposal that's now law, suggested the Obama administration's new policy had something to do with the vote: "Coming a decade after passage of Maine's original marijuana law, this is a huge sign that voters are comfortable with these laws, and also a sign that the recent change of policy from the Obama administration is having a major impact," he said.

Jacob Sullum has more details on the new law. Pot-shops in Maine is a big step forward to destigmatization.

Silver's take on yesterday's results and the tea party movement:

There's not really any evidence that the…movement is yet anything more than an isolated and regional one. It will almost certainly have some implications in the South — and if I were a Democratic Congressman there, I'd be very nervous. But only 18 of the 52 Blue Dogs in fact come from the South, and if I were a conservative Democrat in California, or South Dakota, or Michigan, I'd be feeling rather relieved.

The spin from the White House is similar.

Dreher:

Unless I'm missing something, in the 31 states in which voters had a say on whether or not gay marriage was going to be the law of the land, they all rejected it. Every single state. Even California, the national bellwether state on liberalizing social trends. Even Maine, in the most liberal region of the country

…unless you're prepared to call more than half the country bigots — and I have no doubt that many, perhaps most, gay marriage supporters are, and let that self-serving explanation suffice — maybe, just maybe, you ought to ask yourself if there's something else going on here. And that maybe, just maybe, serious attention should be paid, instead of paying attention long enough to insult people who disagree with you as evil people who deserved to be excoriated and harassed.

Coates replies:

I probably wouldn't use the word "bigot." I don't think, for instance, that half this country thinks hate crimes against gays is a good thing. But I have no problem believing that half the country–maybe more–is deeply prejudiced against gays. This generally fits into my view of all -isms. I think prejudice is part of who we are as humans, and thus as Americans. Following from that, I think prejudice is one of the many forces that influence how we vote. Hence the notion that half this country is deeply prejudiced against gays really doesn't shock me.

Because it is the right thing to do:

"Never give in–never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense."

Next up: New Jersey, where this married couple live and work, where their lives and the lives of their children cannot wait. Details on how to help here.

Chait gets the ironies dead to rights:

When I attended college just after the height of the political-correctness fad, I was exposed to the exotic but widely accepted theory that racial minorities could not, by definition, be guilty of racism. Limbaugh has formulated a sort of mirror-image philosophy: Conservatives can't be racist. "Racism in this country," he has announced, "is the exclusive province of the left."The victimology of the leftist is bad enough–he is beset by racism. But the persecution complex of the conservative has managed to top that. The conservative is a double victim–of false accusations of racism and of racism itself. Limbaugh moans, "Frankly, the biggest problem I face in the current climate of political correctness is that I'm color-blind about it." Poor Limbaugh–he tries so hard to avoid race, but it just keeps finding him.

In some ways, today's right is the last remaining legacy of yesterday's left.

Despite the loss in Maine, Dale Carpenter remains upbeat:

With close popular votes in two states in the last year, little prospect of additional anti-SSM state constitutional amendments, coming legislative action in more states and D.C., the first-ever electoral victory for civil unions in an election last night in Washington state, gay marriage completely secure in four of five states that still have it, and a federal marriage amendment in rigor mortis, the question is not really whether, but when and where next.

I think this is essential context. From my own perspective, working on this for two decades, I’m both heartsick at losing but also near delirious at the progress we have already made.

Remember: I was regarded as insane for proposing marriage equality in 1989. Twenty years’ later, thanks to a massive new movement, it’s law in five states and very nearly the law in California, where full state rights of marriage are now accorded gay citizens. The recent losses, moreover, were closer than any previous fights. We used to be losing by 2 -1; now we’re losing by the narrowest 52 – 48 type margins. This is extraordinary progress – and the educational impact in which we have shifted the entire next generation to supporting equality has been profound.

We are winning. Remember that. Defeats are spurs to better strategy, not to despair. I know the pain. I feel it deep in my bones. But I also know the truth: this is the right thing to do and it is winning wherever fear surrenders to reason. Know hope. Which is not the same as optimism.

(Hat tip: Nerdcore)

John Cornyn's statement that the NRSC will not fund its own candidates in disputed primaries seems to me to be a surrender to the base activists. What it means is that the same forces that purged Scozzafava will have free rein to purge others. They are already interpreting a Democratic victory in a super-safe red-state seat as a win for … conservatives. And the threat of third party candidates against the GOP across the country has obviously spooked the national party leadership.

But that leaves an obvious question: what about Rubio-Crist?

Crist is vulnerable for being gay in the first place, although his sexual orientation is not as abhorrent as his support for the stimulus package and actually – gasp – appearing with a newly elected president of the United States who carried Florida. But the NRSC has already endorsed Crist and the Club for Growth purists are itching to back Rubio, who has the support of the netroots and the Beck-Palin insurgency. So the apparent surrender may have an inconvenient hangover from the past. And if Crist is taken down by Rubio, then the last remnants of non-movement conservatism will be fast evaporating from the GOP.

Maybe this will indeed be the real long-term consequence of last night: the acceleration of the GOP toward the Christianist right, and a platform of real counter-revolution against the post New Deal Settlement. I do find it remarkable that a Republican in New York State who is actually on the right of her own delegation is nonetheless a "socialist" and a "radical leftist" in the eyes of the base.

It's back to the 1940s we go!