Given the choice between solving a problem and watching things get nasty, the tendency in America is increasingly to opt for the train wreck. Last night's election results were no exception.
The GOP is racing to the bottom of its own depravity. They've stopped at nothing, floating racist memes and lies and distorting facts to achieve goals that are so blatantly pro-business and anti-American as to be laughable -- if it weren't for the fact that their message-making, via Fox News and talk radio, seems to find a home in the hearts and minds of many Americans.
Maine was a huge disappointment last night. Social equality is a progressive goal, and the advent of same-sex marriage is a huge step in the right direction for a democratic society such as the United States of America. Last night a ballot-box effort to overturn same-sex marriage legislation won. Similar ballot initiatives pushed by right-wing, often homophobic activists trafficking in ignorance, fear, hate, intolerance have passed in too many other states. Popular opinion here is driven in large part by a lowest common denominator: ignorant fear. This same factor is a crucial part of what makes conservative media so successful: the careful deployment of social issues designed to pray on fear and the half-understood morality preached in America's evangelical circles.
Make no mistake. Yesterday's vote on same-sex marriage in Maine was a referendum on our collective humanity, and we don't look so great today.
Last week in the <em>New York Times, Marc Mutty, chairman of Stand for Marriage Maine, which led the repeal effort, called the vote "a defining moment." He then went on to parallel same-sex marriage with a spreading fungi and-or nuclear holocaust: "What happens here in Maine is going to have a mushrooming effect on the issue at large."
The bigotry and hate that drives the tea-baggers and birthers seeped once again beyond the confines of familial cesspits into the national arena and the result was a blow for equality.
That said, was it a loss for Obama? Certainly not. He is opposed to same-sex marriage.
So what about Virginia? Is that a huge loss? Arguably. Independents who chose Obama this time opted for Bob McDonnell over the ostensible Democrat, Obama-dissing, awshuckser Creigh Deeds. It's possible, I suppose, to say that Obama lost here, but off-year elections are all about turnout, and Deeds did not have the turn-out machine Obama did. Virginia traditionally patterns against the party in power and this race was no exception. Deeds did a less than stellar job against McDonnell, he didn't tilt progressive enough, students and people of color didn't show up, and he lost.
The same cannot be said about Jon Corzine, but here we are talking about an unpopular governor. While the mainstream media blahbittyblahs about a Obama-backlash sweep because it sounds, well, so dramatic, the fact of the matter is that Jon Corzine lost in New Jersey, not Obama. Maybe he should have worn his seat belt. Maybe he should have been more effective as a governor. Perhaps the crucible of Goldman Sachs was no match for down-and-dirty New Jersey politics.
I say, let the Republicans read a lot into these so-called successes. Keep going farther right. Two races are plenty to decide that you're on the right track. Let Limbaugh and Glenn Beck continue to set the line on issues, and we'll continue to run better campaigns about issues that promise to make the country and more civil and humane society, with more effective laws that help people improve their lives and a level playing field so all its citizens can get where they want to go.
And by the way, in the one race that really mattered yesterday, the GOP lost.
Originally published on Air America.com
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Michael B. Laskoff: Gay Marriage Loss in Maine Is a Straight Loser
Gay marriage is a civil rights issue; it will take a Supreme Court decision or an amendment to the US Constitution to make this right. That's almost inconceivably hard work, but ending slavery was no picnic either.
Don't get me wrong, I am not a big fan of the GOP but even less lately of the Democrats. In fact, its time that this country tossed both of the buggers out on their arse.
Deliver. Deliver. Deliver.
Jobs. Jobs. Jobs.
Was it a loss for Tim Kaine of the DNC...no he risked NOTHING
In 2010 and 2012 I'll payback that NOTHING in abundance.
We can't do anything about the current generation of church bigots. Fortunately, I teach in elementary schools. Liberating the children from the cults should be a high priority if we ever wish to see the rights our nation's founders intended.
In the 2010 elections, we must take off the gloves and expose the villainy of the churches, both historical and ongoing. No more outreach, this is war! Our only weapons are truth and logic, but they will be enough.
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/ryan_smith/2009/11/elections-bellweathers-and-the.php?ref=recdc
But for the short version this election proves pretty conclusively that the pundits, pollsters, and party bosses in DC have no idea what they are talking about.
This name-calling is standard procedure for "progressives" now. Disagreement will not be tolerated.
It's also irresponsible to attack the GOP for "racist memes and lies and distorting facts" without giving any examples. Again, the progressivism is the new prejudice: label people in groups based on your judgments and then smear them with sweeping, inaccurate, emotional attacks.
Would that make ME a thief? I was the victim and you the perpetrator.
Not only a bigot, but also not very smart.
By trying to take this word and institution and make it mean something else, you are the thief.
Your freedom is protected. Your life is respected. Be who you are, but don't try to force people to have the same opinion that you do about everything.