Some Democrats Blame One of Their Own (Gay Marriage NYT article)

[Bread and Circus]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/05/politics/campaign/05newsom.html

Some Democrats Blame One of Their Own

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 4 - A year into his job, Mayor Gavin Newsom could hardly be more popular. A survey last weekend put his approval rating among San Franciscans at 80 percent.

Polls show that a mainstay of the Democratic mayor's support has been his stance on same-sex marriage. But with his party reeling from Senator John Kerry's defeat on Tuesday, Mr. Newsom's decision in February to open City Hall to thousands of gay weddings has become a subject of considerable debate among Democrats....

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Personally, I am not convinced that the "Gay Marriage" thing
affected swing voters but I think it's an issue worth discussing
further. In my opinion, I support civil unions as a legally
recognized entity but I am actually against gay marriage being
legally sanctified. However, if a church wants to marry gay
folks, then that is just fine by me.

However, I think that gay people kissing on TV over and over
did have a big psychological/motivating effect on the
"core base" of Christian voters that might have stayed home
otherwise. I think liberal San Franciscoans and elsewhere were
fairly shortsighted when all the celebration was going on.

Furthermore, I think it was all a setup/trap that those liberals
walked in to. Overall, it hurt the effort to get rid of Bush
and it furthermore hurt gays.

I agree w/ Joe Conason on AAR radio today that we should not try
to "move to the right" to satisfy Bush's base, we will never get
their votes. However, we should try to avoid waking the bear
during an election year. It's called smart politics.

P.S. Even if "Kerry really won", he didn't win big enough to
get in office. Too bad, so sad. What matters is that Bush is
office, again, and we will all likely suffer.