Mobilization Messaging

By Fester:

I applaud the California Supreme Court's decision to equalize marriage's meaning in California civil law.  I am applauding it from an outcomes perspective so it is limited perspective of my own ignorance.  I don't think that this will have significant electoral impact as gay marriage is becoming less of a high salience issue, especially as one of the few nationally popular Republicans, Gov. Schwarzenegger (sic) will be running hard against state constitutional amendment reversing this decision.  It is a great internal fracture point where Democrats can vote the way they want to while the GOP shoots itself in the foot. 

I don't think this decision will move votes directly.  However it could have some second order effects that I think Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money may be neglecting in his analysis:

As I've been through before, though, while I know I'm supposed to see 2004 results in which Bush underperformed structural models as proof of Karl Rove's strategic super-genius the allegedly large effects of gay and lesbian marriage on the 2004 election have been greatly overstated. And needless to say, predictions about how the New Jersey court's ruling were supposed to have a major impact on the 2006 elections will vanish down the memory hole.

I don't really find this surprising. People overstate the extent to which people vote on social issues, and people who get outraged by decisions permitting gays and lesbians in other states to get married are overwhelmingly likely to be Republican voters anyway. I don't think that the decision today will have any significant impact on the 2008 elections

I was recently speaking with a major Democratic field organizer and he is having trouble finding people as all of the engaged early volunteers are still locked up in the Presidential race.  Phone banking and door knocking is tough, tough work.  It is rewarding but grinding work.  An individual either needs to be paid well or be extremely motivated to make 500 calls a day five days a week or to knock 100 doors on a Saturday for several months in a row. 

From what I have been hearing from local Republicans and also from reading national Republicans, a major concern that is being aired is the mobilization the door knockers and phone bankers.  Their traditional pool of door knockers and phone bankers is the Christian Right activists.  And this group was used and then thrown away in 2004 without getting any major policy planks besides the fiasco of Schiavo, and it is understandably reluctant about McCain.  Gay marriage as a motivating boogey-man may get free phone calls made.  This most likely won't do much to impact national margins but if the Republican Party is in a loss minimization mode, as I believe it should be, field efforts can save or lose the last half dozen marginal seats.