Nobody Better

My somewhat limited life goal as my age odometer rolls toward five-oh is to be the Nate Silver of my corner of the world. The guy got his start "Moneyball" style with baseball stats, then turned his focus to political numbers, at first just on a plain ole Blogspot blog like this. Now gone pro, he nailed every state in 2012 and gets presidential shout outs.


Yesterday Silver turned his genius to the marriage equality trendlines, in light of a couple just re-elected red state Democrats (McCaskill, Tester) who'd come out - I love this term in this contest - for equality. Silver asks, where will their states be by 2018, and as usual both answers and overkills:

By 2016, however, voters in 32 states would be willing to vote in support of same-sex marriage, according to the model. And by 2020, voters in 44 states would do so, assuming that same-sex marriage continues to gain support at roughly its previous rate... It might require a religious revival among the youngest generation of Americans to reverse the trend.

That caveat captures the diminishing opposition.  It's getting easier to list the Democrats who haven't yet signed on to full equality than the ones who have. Marc Ambinder looks at the unprecedented speed of society's flip and concludes:

Once the barrier to gays serving in the military fell, and...nothing apocalyptic happened, and once a few states began to experiment with gay marriage, and...nothing apocalyptic happened, the only remaining arguments against same-sex unions are religious and provincial. They're small. They're associated with bigotry. No one wants to be a bigot.

On the flip side, TheIowaRepublican's Craig Robinson fights history:

"Sure, gay activists want marriage rights, but what they are really after is validation of their lifestyle."

Umm... yeah? You say that like it's a bad thing.