The agony and the ectasy

Well its still hard for me to believe what happened last night. Its important to note that this is still a centrist country (not center-right, forget the pundits) and this year the democrats managed to turn out more of their folks while the republicans net less of theirs.

For me this election is the exclamation point on the end of a very emotional year. Getting married, losing my Grandfather (my enthusiasm last night was severely dampened by his absence, it was so tough not being able to call him when Obama was projected as the winner) and now seeing most of my hopes for the nation come true, electorally speaking that is.

There were some disappointments though. The Senate race in MN was a real barn-burner, Coleman is barely ahead and the closeness will trigger a recount that won't matriculate until mid November, possibly January. There still isn't a projected winner of the Oregon senate race meaning that many folks who voted for Obama also voted for known douchebag Gordon Smith or didn't fill out the rest of their ballots. Talk about depressing. Right now smith is a head but Multnomah and Lane county have enough vote outstanding that many analysts are predicting a Merkley win of between 10,000-30,000 votes. We're also awaiting the results of the anti-union Measure 64 for the same reason. Neither of these contests should have been this close.

Most disappointing of all was the success of Prop 8 in California. If this measure had failed it would have been a huge stride in favor of marriage equality. I'm pretty disheartened that two of the groups that contributed to its success were African Americans (according to exit polls) and the Mormon church (they sunk a TON of money into this race). The fact that on the same night that African Americans had a milestone in their struggle for civil rights they contributed to the denial of marriage equality for the gay community is nothing short of tragic. It wasn't long ago that the Mormon community felt the profound sting of persecution as well, they were literally chased westward to Utah because of their beliefs not being accepted by society at the time. Our family is friends with many LGBT folks, many of them in relationships that lasted longer and were stronger than my parents marriage. These folks have the kind of relationships that I hope to have with my wife and the fact that they are continually told by society that they are inadequate and unaccepted is simply, fucked up, no other term gets the job done.