From Rolling Stone:
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
fucked 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."
