On Tuesday, news outlets were littered with headlines like "Liberals Are Losing the Culture Wars," "America may be in a reinforcing feedback loop of growing inequality and Republican rule" and "Houston decided it has a problem: Its LGBT nondiscrimination law." The weak attempt at humor in the last headline aside, all three of these articles were written in response to the Nov. 3 election, which was mostly concerned with local affairs and citizen initiatives. As the doom and gloom of these headlines illustrate, it was not a good day for progressive causes, which means it was an even worse day for Democratic politicians.
The first paragraph of The Atlantic’s "Liberals Are Losing…" summarizes Tuesday’s results thusly: "…voters rejected recreational marijuana, transgender rights, and illegal-immigrant sanctuaries; they reacted equivocally to gun-control arguments."
Wow, that does sound pretty awful! It would seem fair to assume the outcome of the Nov. 3 election left many progressive/liberal/filthy-commie-pinko voters with knots in their stomachs. So, what do these results mean? Are American voters categorically rejecting liberalism? Not really.
For the sake of example, let’s take a look at Ohio’s failed bid at marijuana legalization, the proposed constitutional amendment Issue 3. Under the proposal, a group of investors — including Jessica Simpson’s ex-husband Nick Lachey, for whatever reason — known as ResponsibleOhio would have possessed the right to grow and sell marijuana exclusively.
Although Ohio voters and pundits couldn’t decide whether to refer to the arrangement as a monopoly or an oligopoly, they knew bad granola when they smelled it and voted against the measure. Even marijuana advocacy groups like the Drug Policy Alliance and the Marijuana Policy Project refrained from endorsing the measure. In reality, as far as Issue 3 is concerned, the outcome may have been even more progressive than the alternative.
Meanwhile in Houston, the wide margin of defeat for the HERO law (Houston’s Human Rights Ordinance) was also hailed as a sign that vast swathes of American voters may not be as progressive as we have been led to believe. While this may be true, the campaign against the HERO law is awfully similar to that of another initiative with homophobic connotations: California’s Proposition 8.
The HERO law was meant to protect Houston citizens from discrimination, regardless of race, sexuality or gender. Conservative and religious factions, seeing that the law would grant protections to transgender individuals, opted to run a smear campaign that painted transgender individuals as sexual predators and pedophiles. Their "logic" claimed transgender individuals would use bathrooms as dens in which to molest and sexually assault children. Like Proposition 8 — which temporarily outlawed same-sex marriage in 2008 — the conservative campaign was intellectually deceptive and emotionally manipulative.
Houston voters didn’t vote against liberalism; they voted to indulge in xenophobic fears and hatemongering. The only thing the defeat of the HERO bill signifies is that once more, American voters are susceptible to manipulation and deception by narrow-minded but wealthy influences.
No, the progressive dream is not dead. It’s not doing so well either, but it’s hardly the conservative utopia (or dystopia?) headlines on your Facebook feed would lead you to believe. Fear-mongering works both ways in the political realm, as well as the journalistic one.
