How things change overnight. When I went to bed, Obama was at 338 electoral votes with Indiana, Missouri and North Carolina still dangling…Al Franken was in a squeaker with Norm Coleman in Minnesota…and California's Proposition 8 was leading but still too close to call. And now here we are in the cold, clear morning and Obama is at 338 electoral votes with Indiana, Missouri and North Carolina still dangling…Al Franken is in a squeaker with Norm Coleman in Minnesota…and California's Proposition 8 is leading but still too close to call.
Obviously, Obama's exact electoral total doesn't matter a lot except to those of us who have predictions on the line. If he wins either Indiana or Missouri but not both and not North Carolina, he'd be at my number, 349. I think I'm going to be low here. We'll announce our winner-of-nothing when things settle down.
The last hour before I turned in, Franken and Coleman were truly neck and neck: Franken was up 600, then Coleman was up 1200, then it was Franken by 800, then Coleman. That was on the Talking Points Memo site. Sometimes, I'd peek over at cnn.com and I guess they were getting their numbers in a different order because when Franken was up on one site, Coleman was leading at the other…but both sites said they had identical percentages of precincts reporting. It must have been Roller Coaster Time at the candidates' respective headquarters.
Apparently, a resolution of that race will hinge on a recount. I've met Franken a few times and he seems like a smart, serious guy with a real determination to take on the sleazier conventions of Washington such as lobbyists and tainted money. Coleman's recent legal problems suggest he's typical of the kind of thing Franken stands against so I hope Al prevails. Then again, it might be fun to see Coleman win and then have to stand investigation and trial.
If Proposition 8 indeed passes here, it would be the one real negative of the election for me. I still think gay marriage is not an "if" but a "when"…and this is another example of how lives are harmed and resources are wasted while we postpone the inevitable. Same-sex couples are going to get their full marriage rights some day…why not now? It's not just the 16,000-18,000 couples who were wed and now must endure legal challenges and debates about their lives. It's that the state is still officially making all gays into second-class citizens.
Yesterday afternoon, I was over at Cedars-Sinai for a routine checkup. As I was leaving, I was stopped politely by two women…and I think they said their names were Lynn and Stef. They explained quickly and nervously that they were a married couple and they were approaching as many people as possible, urging them to make sure to vote against Proposition 8. They've been together for almost twenty years, love each other dearly and as one put it, "We aren't hurting anyone but discrimination is hurting us."
Analogies that compare gay rights to the struggles for racial and gender equality are not always fair. In this case though, the arguments that civil unions are "just as good" sure sound to me like that senator who once said that coloreds weren't getting discriminated against. After all, they have their own water fountains and the water's the same in them.
I understand that some people honestly fear that allowing gay marriage is a "loss" for their religion or that it's emblematic of some sort of moral degradation and they feel the need to push back. But I wish those who feel that way strongly enough to back things like Proposition 8 could meet a few more people like those two ladies outside the hospital yesterday. I think a lot of them would be hard-pressed to see same-sex unions as a threat; not if they had to explain that to Lynn and Stef.