Yes We Did
It's been a very emotional time for me lately. Elation about Obama's victory was quickly tempered by the passage of Prop 8 in CA. I don't think I've ever before experienced such an intense range of emotion in such a short period of time.
But one thing is amazing, fantastic, ovewhelming - we elected Barack Obama as president of the United States of ( Read more... )
It will be interesting to see if he can create that same emotional response when he's not giving a scripted speech, but is talking more informally, in a conversational style, such as in his planned weekly radio and youtube addresses to the nation. FDR apparently managed to sound friendly, wise and omforting in his "fireside chats," which were enourmously popular. Hopefully Obama will be able to do the same. I have to admit that the first one, released yesterday, was kind of mundane when compared with his inspiring stump speeches!
Re Prop 8, yes, it's sad that a majority of African American voters supported it, and there have been some ugly, racist rants posted on various blogs, which is offensive and also harmful to efforts to right this injustice. Also, it's clear the majority of pro-votes were cast by the old and the uneducated. Nate Silver, the brilliant math geek at fivethirtyeight.com (my salvation during the weeks leading up to the election!)posted a good analysis of the votes:
But the notion that Prop 8 passed because of the Obama turnout surge is silly. Exit polls suggest that first-time voters -- the vast majority of whom were driven to turn out by Obama (he won 83 percent [!] of their votes) -- voted against Prop 8 by a 62-38 margin. More experienced voters voted for the measure 56-44, however, providing for its passage.
Now, it's true that if new voters had voted against Prop 8 at the same rates that they voted for Obama, the measure probably would have failed. But that does not mean that the new voters were harmful on balance -- they were helpful on balance. If California's electorate had been the same as it was in 2004, Prop 8 would have passed by a wider margin.
Furthermore, it would be premature to say that new Latino and black voters were responsible for Prop 8's passage. Latinos aged 18-29 (not strictly the same as 'new' voters, but the closest available proxy) voted against Prop 8 by a 59-41 margin. These figures are not available for young black voters, but it would surprise me if their votes weren't fairly close to the 50-50 mark.
At the end of the day, Prop 8's passage was more a generational matter than a racial one. If nobody over the age of 65 had voted, Prop 8 would have failed by a point or two. It appears that the generational splits may be larger within minority communities than among whites, although the data on this is sketchy.
The good news for supporters of marriage equity is that -- and there's no polite way to put this -- the older voters aren't going to be around for all that much longer, and they'll gradually be cycled out and replaced by younger voters who grew up in a more tolerant era. Everyone knew going in that Prop 8 was going to be a photo finish -- California might be just progressive enough and 2008 might be just soon enough for the voters to affirm marriage equity. Or, it might fall just short, which is what happened. But two or four or six or eight years from now, it will get across the finish line.
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/11/prop-8-myths.html
And here's another breakdown of the voters, again showing the old/uneducated voters supported it:
Group % Yes % No
Obama voters 21 73
McCain voters 84 13
Identify as non-partisan 31 60
Female voters 42 51
Male voters 46 47
Voters over 65 62 32
Identify as conservative 87 10
Identify as liberal 10 86
Identify as moderate 40 51
Live in coastal counties 39 54
Live in inland counties 57 37
White non-Hispanic 44 50
Latino 46 48
African-American 49 43
Asian-American 41 51
High school education 62 27
Post-graduate education 33 61
Protestants 60 33
Catholics 44 48
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