A realistic take on the Prop 8 fiasco. ____ Same-Sex Setback Don't blame Mormons or black voters - the California activists who tried to stop Prop 8 ran a lousy campaign Election postmortems have been quick to scapegoat minorities for the loss. The right pointed out that African-Americans voted overwhelmingly against gay marriage; the left blasted Mormons who obeyed an unprecedented dictate from the church's leadership in Salt Lake City and donated 45 percent of the funds for a campaign to pass Prop 8. But evidence of entrenched homophobia and religious intolerance obscure a more difficult truth. Prop 8 should have been defeated — two months before the election, it was down 17 points in the polls — but the gay-rights groups that tried to stop it ran a lousy campaign. According to veteran political observers, the No on Prop 8 effort was slow to raise money, ran weak and confusing ads, and failed to put together a grass-roots operation to get out the vote. "This was political malpractice," says a Democratic consultant who operates at the highest level of California politics. "They ****ed this up, and it was painful to watch. They shouldn't be allowed to pawn this off on the Mormons or anyone else. They snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, and now hundreds of thousands of gay couples are going to pay the price." full article
I heard another commentator make the same comment on NPR a few weeks ago. This person was a black lesbian activist and she said that the problem with the anti-prop 8 side was that they didn't bother reaching out to minorities and instead primarily campaigned in areas where they already knew they had support, like SF.
