For those of you who are in the middle of this Prop 8 debate about what went wrong, and where the blame lies, and whatnot, I want to say this.
You can either say one view, or the other, but I don't believe you can have both.
- Obama's victory was mindblowing. It was an amazing blow to conservative ideology. We kicked their asses. We controlled and owned this race in every conceivable way. Except our utter and complete failure in regards to prop 8 and numerous other equality issues, including gay adoption. And Obama did very little to help, considering his massive lead in the electoral-college and even in areas that he didn't win, his margin of victory was close, further proving that he should've helped out more.
- Obama's victory was pure luck. Yeah, it was an amazing amount of work that took place for something that should've been a landslide easily. To have Obama win, we needed a complete economic collapse, 95% support of AA votes everywhere, huge latino turn-out, youth vote, AND on top of that we had to run an expert campaign, and the other side had to run a complete failure of a campaign, and THAT was why Obama had such a hard time finding any extra resources to help us with Prop 8.
I'll give Obama props where props are due. His mention of gays and lesbians in the first 60 seconds of his acceptance speech was probably (historians correct me) a first. And for that I am proud.
The fact that he clarified his statements on gay marriage, in regards to constitutionality. The fact that he went one step further and says that the anti-marriage laws are one thing, but all the horrible effects of how we are second class citizens is more important to focus on now.
Don't get me wrong, Obama's focus on attempting to get equal rights (without the name) is not a bad one. It is just one more method in a long line of methods attempted to get equality for all.
But ultimately what I believe is that you can not have both points of view. You can not say that Obama's victory was tremendous and in the same breath say that Prop 8 couldn't have been avoided... Even the slightest bit of campaigning in the ATM state on this issue could've made a huge difference.