How I did

Let's see how I did with my predictions:

(1) Obama did win with 300+ electoral votes--and he won all the state I said he would.  Didn't get North Carolina.  I was right about the attempted voter suppression but Obama's victory was too big to be derailed by Republican criminal voter suppression. 

(2) The Democrats did great in the Senate, increasing their majority by two seats.  Akin and Mourdoch were crushed.  Hooray!  Wisconsin elected the first out lesbian senator--Tammy Baldwin.

(3) The Democrats did increase their membership in the House but fell well short of a majority.  I was off there.  Alas, Michele Bachmann and Steve King won.  But don't despair:  the nutcases Allen West and Joe Walsh were defeated.  New gay members were elected; present gay members were re-elected.  This is a triumph for gay people.

(4) All the gay marriage ballot measures won.  Gay marriage is now legal in Maine, Maryland, and Washington.  In 2009 Maine voted to overturn gay marriage law--a bitter defeat for gays. But decent people in Maine fought back and three years later they've won.  Hooray!  I was wrong about Maryland:  the victory was big!  And that victory is due in large part to Barack Obama publicly supporting gay marriage.  He changed the game among black voters.  Thank you, sir.  All measures carried with clear majorities that parallel the national majority now favoring gay marriage.  Gay marriage and marriage equality are now mainstream American politics.  The proposed anti-gay marriage state constitutional amendment in Minnesota failed by a clear majority.  Forty years of anti-gay hate mongering in that state have been utterly defeated.  This is a truly sweet victory.  And there's great news in Iowa.  State supreme court justice Wiggins was retained after a vicious, slanderous attack on him because he voted for gay marriage equality three years ago.  Further, the state senate remains Democratic; majority leader Mike Gronstal refused to present to the senate a Republican state constitutional amendment banning gay marriage; he's still majority leader and he's sworn never to present such an amendment to the senate while he remains leader.  Gay marriage in Iowa is now secure.

I think I did pretty well.  I quit listening to the barrage of news media and blogger BS in the last month of the campaign.  All that blather about Romney's momentum was absurd; the polls reflected nothing of the sort.  The TV pundits are know-nothings; same for political bloggers. Why anyone cares what they think is beyond me.  The national polling was off; Obama won a clear majority of votes; there was no deadlock or tie. The battleground states polling was spot on: Obama was always ahead in those states and always had a winning electoral vote count. The polls told anybody who wanted to see that Romney was trapped inside his base of the Old Confederacy and couldn't find a way out.  He was NEVER a viable national candidate.

This has been the watershed year for gay Americans.  We're now mainstream citizens, no longer fringe or freak or marginal.  We're a mainstream part of the only truly national party, the Democrat Party.  The cause of marriage equality is now mainstream politics.  Anti-gay is losing politics.  Period.  I remember the dark days of 1977 when the hate campaign against gay people was raging across America. We were aliens in our own country.  The religious right wingers have used anti-gay hate for 40+ years.  They've done enormous damage to gay people and to the country in general.  They've divided communities and families--all for raw political power and nothing else.  Their time has come and gone.  It's a new day for gay people in America. 

We persevered, we fought back, and now we've won. How's that for the American dream come true? 

Here are my predictions

For the record:

(1) Obama wins with 300+ electoral votes.  He wins Nevada, Colorado, Ohio, Virginia, and Florida.  Maybe North Carolina.  This despite some pretty astounding vote suppression shenanigans on election day.

(2) Democrats increase their numbers in the Senate by 1 or 2 seats.  They win Indiana.  We get the first lesbian senator in Wisconsin.  Akin goes down the crapper.

(3) Democrats increase their numbers in the House but fall just short of a majority. Michele Bachmann is defeated.  Steve King in Iowa is defeated.  Tea Party kooks get clobbered.

(4) Marriage equality wins in Washington state (big margin), Maine (big margin), and Maryland (narrow margin). The anti-gay constitutional amendment in Minnesota just barely fails by a few hundred votes.  Democrats keep control of the Iowa state senate and thus prevent Republicans from pushing an anti-gay marriage constitutional amendment through the legislature.  Iowa Supreme Court Justice Wiggins is retained.  2012 becomes the watershed year in the struggle for gay equality.  From here on the anti-gay forces get chewed up and spat out.  They're finished as a political force.

(5) The Republican Party ceases to exist as a national party and becomes a collection of regional factions with irreconcilable differences.  The 44-year-old Southern Strategy of Richard Nixon--wedge issue race-baiting and inflaming the racial hatred of angry white males--dies an ignoble death.  Leaderless, agenda-less Republicans descend into intra-party civil war.

You read it here first.  Cross your fingers.