Election reaction
There's a lot of excitement out there on the left side of the blogosphere, but I can't quite get into it. Yes, Barack Obama won -- bigger than I had thought, but less than a lot of the DailyKos crowd had been pushing (so much for the polls being off because of cell phones, huh?). And yes, the Dems picked up a few seats in the House and Senate (and managed to defend Paul Kanjorski's seat -- can we get a real progressive to run against him in the 2010 primary? And can Lou Barletta's political career please please be over?) -- but only a few (so much for this being a wave or realignment). But then consider this:
It's gonna be a long four years.
- Arizona, California, and Florida all banned same-sex marriage. I'd expected Arizona to go down -- we've been getting deluged by homophobic mailings, and even the No On 102 ads had this desperate tone to them and didn't dare address the substance of the issue. But Florida (because of the higher threshold) and California (because it's California) I though would go the right way. Of the issues that are controversial in 2008, I can generally understand how someone can see things differently than I do, even if I think their conclusions are abhorrent and their logic fatally flawed. But I just cannot manage to respect the intellectual integrity of opposition to marriage equality.
- Sheriff Joe got reelected handily:
Arpaio took Tuesday's results as a vote of confidence in his office's policies and swore nothing will change.
"In fact, I might even do it more," Arpaio said of his immigration-enforcement policies, which have drawn criticism from across the country.
Pinal County also has a new sheriff, Republican Paul Babeu. And while Babeu is no great friend of Arpaio (having tangled with him as a leader in the Chandler police department), I worry that their differences may be more personal than political. - While Obama is certainly better than McCain or Bush, my money is still on him governing in a center-right Bill Clinton style (not, I should point out, that I would have expected any of the other Dem candidates aside from Kucinich and Gravel to do differently).
It's gonna be a long four years.
3 Comments:
It might even be eight years. ;-)
Hopefully they will be significantly better years for the U.S.A. than the last eight years.
Darn, I knew I forgot something in my blogpost. On one hand it was a good moment in history, but realistically speaking so much crap was happening and I don't know why we let it slide.
Yes, Prop 8 is passing. Alas.
Now for context.
California has certain issues that have been voted on, and voted on, and voted on... and will be voted on again.
For example, Prop 4--parental notification before a minor can get an abortion. It lost--again. It's lost repeatedly.
Back to 8. This is the same issue we voted on eight years ago. In fact, the wording is the same. Identical. That was struck down as fundamentally unconstitutional, which lead to the party of hate seeking to enshrine it in the constitution.
Now let's look at the numbers. Eight years ago, Prop 22 (the same words) passed with either 61% or 62% (I've seen both, I remember 61% myself, I assume that there's a decimal in that that some are rounding...). Eight years later? 52%.
That's a ten point shift in eight years--and that's despite a staggering amount of money spent by Yes on 8, and incredible deceptive ads with outright lies....
Looking at the attitudes of the age cohorts, Prop 8 was particularly supported by those 65 and up, and strongly opposed by those 29 and under.
This was probably the last election in which Prop 8 could be passed. Two years from now and people like my older son will be voting. Two more years and his younger brother will.
If 8 isn't shot down by the State Supreme Court as being an illegitimate item for a referendum (something they should have done pre-election, but they wimped out, I think, hoping it would fail and they could be less of a lightning rod...), but rather an item which revises and thus requires a constitutional convention and 2/3 support by the legislature as well as a majority of the population... then the issue will return to the ballot. Probably in four years. And it will pass--because this time Yes will be to remove discrimination from the state constitution.
It's going to be a very long four years. This is going to be refought, and no one who knows anything about Californian politics thinks differently.
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