I love David Frum. But his account of the Brown/Coakley race fails to note that Scott Brown was one of a small band of state legislators who voted to let the people decide marriage — through a state marriage amendment defining marriage as the union of husband and wife — and that Martha Coakley, as attorney general, championed the current lawsuit aimed at overturning DOMA.
Being a gay-marriage champion (as Corzine and, most lately, Dodd have found) apparently doesn’t help you win many elections, even in the the liberal Northeast.
The Dems now have serious trouble from their loyal gay-rights base. The Advocate has an intelligent analysis of the gay-rights folks’ conundrum. But the Advocate’s analysis does not recognize one core truth: When a political movement makes their key, defining issue something that the majority of Americans decisively reject, politicians are bound to disappoint them repeatedly.
If you want to get back to being the powerhouse, pick a different defining issue.