I’ve been thinking this for a while now:

After the 2004 presidential election Democrats were crushed. Four more years of George W. Bush seemed unthinkable, disastrous. But now that the Obama era is beginning, Democrats should view John Kerry’s defeat as something else entirely: the luckiest break the party has caught since at least the 1964 election

Yes, the nation and its people suffered mightily under Bush. People died as a result (Iraq, Katrina). But imagine the alternative. Kerry wins, and If anything then goes wrong, for the next 20 years we have to hear about how everything’s Kerry’s fault. We coulda won Iraq if it wernt fer Kerry. Economic meltdown? Kerry’s fault. Yadda yadda. (Okay, so they’ll still blame some Democrat. But now they have to go all the way back to Clinton, which is obviously reaching.) As it happened, the Republicans had to fully own the mess, and it’s destroyed the brand. Sometimes things have to get worse before they get better.

Perhaps Prop 8 could be seen the same way. (No, I’m not even close to done with that issue.) The theocrats overreached, and people are now horrified. They’re realising that godbots can do some real damage to freedoms we enjoy, and they’re increasingly standing with gay people. Like the 2004 election, it really stung. But we won’t forget that sting, and we’ll make sure that Prop 8 and the like were the last victories of their kind.