President Obama!

[Roderick]

Metallus; point taken and you're right to advise caution. I'm more saddened because I did assume that some people should know better, not because I necessarily want to dictate what's best for the people. Also, I can't escape seeing not legalizing gay marriage as wrong and stupid, especially if it's for religious reasons.

As for the assumptions on your state, I base those only on everything I know and have heard of it, which is bound to be grossly incomplete and exaggerated. But California (more specifically San Francisco) is decidedly known for its liberalism, which has contributed to the disappointment.

[David]

I'm really disappointed with how stuff went down, but California is complicated. People assume it's some kind of liberal bastion, but it is the state that recalled a Democratic governor and replaced him with Arnold Schwartzenegger, and has been the birthplace to two recent Republican presidents.

[Roderick]

Countries and states are rarely simple. The Netherlands too; it even confuses me nowadays. I was brought up with the idea that we were one of the most liberal, openminded countries in the world, but recent years have been littered with the most awful, bigoted, conservative events ever. From wide-spread acceptance of populist politicians stressing cultural and racial divides to the murder of freethinking individuals (though we seem to have a history of killing people we later make statues of, poor Oldenbarneveldt and William of Orange).

I don't know my own culture anymore. Or maybe I just don't want to be part of it anymore if it's like this.

[Scrobbs]

Your government is trying to stop certain people giving birth now aren't they?

[syntheticgerbil]

Sucks to the max. But surely they can't do this. This isn't an "amendment" it's a "revision" (meaning they need 2/3rds majority). Obama must fix this!

He's not president yet, and in the debate he said he didn't agree with marriage, only civil union. He may have meant it or he may have been pandering to undecided voters and is planning something. Congress would have to be in agreement though on making it a basic right undeniable by any state and Obama would have to not veto it, which I bet hypothetically would be the case. Also it would sure help if maybe the Supreme Court could come in as well and clarify. But I really doubt the federal government is going to give gays rights across every state anytime soon.

While Obama did win tons of electoral votes, 46% of the country voted for McCain who's platform specifically wants to ban gay marriage. They might have voted based on the religious values Palin represents, tax cuts, and whatever else bugs people about gay marriage (I don't know) or not for that reason at all, but I think a lot of the country still gets obsessed with whether or not gay people (a census of 3% of the population I hear) will marry eachother. I don't even see how it affects most people even if they are against it, other than having outrage towards people who aren't exactly like them.

I'd expect it to pass somewhere like Kansas or Texas, but California? Come on

Hooray for Texas!

Actually I was surprised my state actually garnered 45% for Obama out of the popular vote. Maybe even a little bit proud, but, Jesusland will always prevail.

Edited November 8, 2008 by syntheticgerbil

[ThunderPeel2001]

Hey, you know Texas isn't always a Republican State - it seems to switch quite frequently.

[syntheticgerbil]

At least in presidential elections, the last time a democrat won Texas was in 1976 for Carter. I wasn't born then so I can't really comment. It's really not so crazy in the Austin/Dallas areas and surrounding cities.

[Chris]

Obama isn't the governor of California, he's not going to do anything about a Californian proposition.

Also it's fucking disgraceful that prop 8 passed.

Governor Schwarzenegger is also against prop 8, but I don't know if he can actually do anything about it either. If it were a law passed through the legislature, he could veto it, but this was a ballot measure. By the way it's preposterous that a constitutional amendment was on the ballot, what the fuck is that about? God I'm so pissed.

Hey, you know Texas isn't always a Republican State - it seems to switch quite frequently.

As a state, it's red for sure, doesn't do much switching on the whole. But of course, it has pockets of blue. Every state has a lot of both; with the exception of extremely small regions like Washington D.C. (overwhelmingly Democratic) you're very rarely going to see a state that isn't politically diverse.

[Thyroid]

I hope he doesn't truss it up.

Also: I hope he survives his Presidency. The guy's a marked man; there are some real racist nutters out there.

[David]

Every state has a lot of both; with the exception of extremely small regions like Washington D.C. (overwhelmingly Democratic) you're very rarely going to see a state that isn't politically diverse.

I have a visual aid!

Thanks Wikipedia. Apparently Oklahoma is the counter-example to DC/New England.

[DanJW]

Wow. Thank goodness for the electoral college votes system eh?

[Jake]

Wow. Thank goodness for the electoral college votes system eh?

That map still doesn't represent population per state or per county. It would bubble even more. I mean, remember, Obama also won the popular vote.

[Chris]

Wow. Thank goodness for the electoral college votes system eh?

As Jake says, no not really. Obama won the popular vote by a considerable margin so it wouldn't have made any difference. Coastal areas and major cities are much more densely populated than the plains.

[David]

I'm helping again!

Many many counties in the flyover states have like 5 dudes in them, apparently.

[lobotomy42]

What's particularly appalling about the whole thing is that the majority of the 'yes' voters was non-white. Apparently none of them made the connection that it's fucking racism. For some reason, little irritates me more than people with an immigrant background being conservative. It's like... you should know better.

As I understand it, the 'No on Prop 8' campaign didn't really get its act together in terms of targeting minority voters. Whereas, the Christian Right started airing multi-lingual ads and getting community churches lined up right away on their side. By the time the 'No' folks realized what was happening, they were battling against a whole series of misconceptions about the ban - that it was necessary to prevent churches from losing their tax-exempt status or be 'forced' to marry gay couples, that it would prevent schools from forcing some kind of scary gay agenda on children, etc. None of these were really true, but it managed to convince co-host Sherri Shepherd of The View, and apparently a great many other people.

At least, this is the story we gay rights activists have been peddling amongst ourselves over the past few days. I was only in California part of the time, so I didn't really get to witness any of this.

[ThunderPeel2001]

Well, at least one fuckhead got completely confused...

http://static1.firedoglake.com/30/files//2008/11/clove.jpg

[n0wak]

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2008/

[Chris]

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2008/

Interesting link, thanks.

[syntheticgerbil]

Haha, I thought that map n0wak put up was a joke someone did with the liquify tool in Photoshop. Go figure.

Also nice to know all of Houston (and Harris County) ended up blue. Maybe it had a lot to do with the complete mishandling of the Enron trial and Centerpoint Energy's inability to do much right after a major hurricane. The rest of Texas' major cities which made the counties blue in those particular parts were San Antonio, Austin, and some of Dallas/Fort Worth/Denton (I don't know which is where on that tricity setup).

Also, here's my shoddy attempt at merging those other two maps.