First, the bad news. Out in the Golden State, on a night when Barack Obama won with more than 60 percent of the vote, the proposition to amend the Constitution and legally restrict the rights of gay Americans, passed. Last night, Obama said that this election represented "the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled - Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been a collection of Red States and Blue States: we are, and always will be, the United States of America." He was wrong.Proposition One, the initiative constructing a high-speed rail infrastructure, did pass, by what looks like five percent. But much more warming to my heart was the success of Proposition 2, the initiative guaranteeing farm animals such luxuries as the right to sit down and stand up and spread their limbs while they spend their doors inside, producing food for us. It passed with a downright Obama-like margin: 62% to 36%, with 95% of precincts reporting. And more amazing is that county-by-county breakdown:
Prop 2 carried interior California almost as decisively as Coastal California. The fact that there should be some minimal level of cruelty below which we do not descend was not proven a crazed notion pushed by hippies and dreamed up in co-op meetings. Rather, it's basic decency, and many Californians are decent. Well, not when it comes to marriage rights, but you know what I mean.
Prop 2 carried interior California almost as decisively as Coastal California. The fact that there should be some minimal level of cruelty below which we do not descend was not proven a crazed notion pushed by hippies and dreamed up in co-op meetings. Rather, it's basic decency, and many Californians are decent. Well, not when it comes to marriage rights, but you know what I mean. 
