Marriage-equality proponents are staring blankly into their coffee mugs today, wondering just what went wrong in Maine. It was supposed to be the place that proved the national tide is turning on gay rights. Yet voters endorsed a proposal to overturn an existing gay-marriage sanction. It's certainly a setback for the movement, but it's not the end. Not even close.

I tend to think of gay rights as a generational issue. Nate Silver, the FiveThirtyEight blogger who builds extraordinarily insightful electoral models, finds that support for banning gay marriage is eroding at a pace of 2 percentage points each year. Young people tend to be more supportive, and over time, I think that view will prevail. In years to come, opposition to gay rights will be as outdated a mindset as denying women the vote seems today.  The train is moving in one direction, and, like many movements before it, young people are driving.

By Jesse Ellison

Yesterday, Mainers turned out in unexpectedly high numbers to vote yes on 1, which actually meant voting no on gay marriage. Voting yes to say no wasn't the only thing that happened that might confound those watching from out of state. Despite making a socially conservative choice on gay marriage, voters made the fairly liberal decision not to limit state government spending, and an almost radical move to expand and regulate the distribution of medical marijuana. Together, it doesn't seem to make much sense.

So what happened? Opponents of same-sex marriage waged essentially the same campaign run last year in California, with endless television ads claiming that not repealing gay marriage, which Democratic Gov. John Baldacci had signed into law in May, would mean that it would be taught in school. One of them showed a forlorn-looking couple from Massachusetts claiming that since their state had legalized same-sex marriage, "our son came home and told us the school taught him that boys can marry other boys.  He's in second grade." In another, a Maine teacher implored voters to "vote yes on Question 1 to prevent homosexual marriage from being taught in Maine schools." The state attorney general publicly disputed the claims, but there's no question that they were effective.

One theme emerging from the post-Election Day chatter is that the results augur well for Marco Rubio, the upstart challenging Florida Gov. Charlie Crist in next year's Senate primary in the Sunshine State. Running as a "true conservative" opposed to Crist's centrism, Rubio has energized some of the same anti-establishment forces that helped elbow aside Dede Scozzafava in New York's 23rd Congressional District. So, the reasoning goes, Rubio just got a fresh jolt of momentum. National conservatives are fired up and turning their attention to Florida. And Rubio is likely to get lots more attention and a fresh infusion of campaign cash. Already, the Club for Growth, which reportedly pumped $1 million into Doug Hoffman's campaign in New York's23rd Congressional District, has signaled its interest in Rubio.

Certainly, this is good news for Rubio, particularly in the short term. But I'd point to some caveats. For starters, conditions are likely to start turning more hostile for him. Until now, he's basically gotten a free ride. The mainstream media has largely covered his campaign in inspirational, David-versus-Goliath terms. That won't last much longer. The race, which has already drawn national attention, will now move more fully into the spotlight. With that will come greater scrutiny—of Rubio's record, of his perceived contradictions, of his tenure as Florida House speaker (which came under plenty of criticism)

Unlike the New York City Mayoral, or the Virginia Governor's race, there is a really bad sign for Democrats out of the East Coast. Via The Times, Republicans made inroads in New York's suburbs. "In Westchester County, where Democrats have a solid advantage in voter registration, a Republican challenger, Rob Astorino, upset the incumbent Democratic County Executive, Andrew Spano, who was seeking his fourth term.... In Nassau County, Republicans recaptured the county legislature, and have come close to unseating the Democratic County Executive, Thomas R. Suozzi, in a race that remained too close to call on Wednesday morning."

Why does this matter so much? Because the New York suburbs epitomize the new Blue America.

Maine should have been an example of strength in numbers for gay marriage proponents, but instead turned into heartache. If you don't count D.C., according to Gary Gates of the Williams Institute, a think tank at UCLA's school of law devoted to gay-rights policies, Maine "has the highest number of same-sex couples per 1000 households (so the highest per capita) of any state." So what happened?

With gains on the national front, such as gay marriages being officially counted (with figures released) for the first time in the 2010 census  and the recent passage of hate crimes legislation that includes protection for gays, the movement is seeing more momentum in the past half year than it has in decades.

Maine should have been part of that momentum. The state is known for its moderate, independent electorate, and gay right activists had mounted a sophisticated media campaign in support of same-sex marriage. But movement on the national stage, it seems, is not translating into progress on the state level.

Bush and Koizumi, together again. (Photo by JIJI PRESS/AFP/Getty Images)

Ahhh, to be a former president. While we were all consumed with the outcome of the 2009 elections, George W. Bush was overseas in Tokyo, throwing out the first pitch at Japan’s equivalent of the World Series. At his side: Junichiro Koizumi, the former prime minister of Japan and Elvis Presley superfan who was widely considered one of Bush’s best friends, among foreign leaders anyway. Back in 2006, Bush gave Koizumi a restored 1950s-era jukebox full of Elvis tunes and took him to Graceland. Koizumi gave Bush a mix CD of him singing Elvis’s greatest hits. But your Gaggler suspects their friendship was set for life when Bush indulged Koizumi’s real weakness: Juicy Fruit gum. The former PM spotted it in a candy dish on Marine One—“Juicy Fruit!” he shrieked, according to a former Bush administration official, who recounted the story to me later. Turns out Koizumi used to chew the gum as a kid, when U.S. soldiers passed it out to Japanese citizens on the street in the aftermath of World War II. According to the White House, Bush bought him a case to take back to Japan.

Last week Glenn Beck prophesied that Sarah Palin was on a potential roll with her upcoming book tour, one that might carry her into 2012—as a real rogue. Beck told Bill O’Reilly that her resignation as governor was a smart move, and that “she’s also positioning herself for a third party. By the time this election runs around for the president, I'm sorry, but unless the Republicans and the Democrats wake up, a third party will win,” he said.

Given the Republican victories—and losses in New York—is that idea still alive? We all know that Dede Scozzafava got essentially “ground up in the gears of the Palin machine,” in the words of one Huffington Post blogger, after which Palin told her Facebook fans: "I want to personally thank Republican Dede Scozzafava for acting so selflessly today in the NY District 23 race. Now it's time to cross the finish line with Doug Hoffman so that he can get to work for District 23 and the rest of America."

Whoops.

While gay-rights activists mourn their loss in Maine, they should not discount the projected victory of Referendum 71 in Washington state. If the measure passes, the Evergreen State will be the first to approve gay equality by direct will of the people, rather than the court or legislature.

Nicknamed "Everything But Marriage," Referendum 71 asked voters to reconfirm the state legislature's recent expansion of domestic partnership rights, signed by Democratic Gov. Christine Gregoire this past spring. Granted, the bill does not protect gay marriage. But it would recognize the rights of domestic partners "to be equivalent to those of married spouses." There's a week's worth of ballot-counting remaining—Washington is one of two vote-by-mail states—but returns so far look good for gay-rights activists.

I have to partially disagree with my esteemed colleague Howard Fineman. Howard writes that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's surprisingly narrow re-election victory shows that Americans "are still mad at the Big Boys, whether they are in Washington or on Wall Street." He concludes that "this is a warning to the president: you better shake things up—give us real reform—or your presidency may go from coronation to condemnation."

Howard is certainly right that there is a general anti-incumbent, anti-status quo sentiment in the country. The 2006 and 2008 elections were largely about that, and it is indeed possible for the disgust with corporate welfare and public corruption to turn against the Democrats in 2010. That's why Holly Bailey and I have argued before that Democrats in Congress ignore the financial and ethical improprieties of their prominent members at their own peril.

But overall, Hizzoner's narrow escape is not bad news for President Obama. Bill Thompson was the candidate of Obama's party, so his strong showing against Bloomberg can hardly be interpreted as anti-Obama sentiment. Thompson tried to associate himself with Obama: the fliers on my subway stop's steps showed Thompson and Obama shaking hands. And since Thompson, an uninspiring candidate who was outspent almost 10–1, did better than expected, that clearly was not a bad strategy for him. A black Democrat overperforms against a rich white Republican? If you see anything in your 2012 crystal ball because of this, it should not be that this augurs badly for Obama against Mitt Romney or Haley Barbour.