A liberal drift

AMERICA’S political landscape is not much changed. Barack Obama occupies the White House, the Republicans control the House of Representatives and the Democrats have the edge in the Senate. But this week some parts of the country made a decisive break with the past.

Perhaps most strikingly, gay-marriage advocates won all four measures they were contesting. Maine, Maryland and Washington became the first states to legalise same-sex marriage by a popular vote (legislatures and courts have granted gays the right to wed in six other states and Washington, DC). Voters in Minnesota saw off a proposed constitutional ban. Few campaigners had dared hope for a clean sweep, and rulings in the new Supreme Court term may provide a further boost.

The right to marry whom you please may have been in Mr Obama’s thoughts when he spoke of “the freedom which so many Americans have fought for” on victory night. The right to spark up a fat one probably was not. Yet stoners in Colorado and Washington will be able to do just that after those two states voted to legalise marijuana for recreational purposes, an electoral first not only for America but for the world. (Oregonians failed to approve a similar measure.) Other states are likely to follow suit in coming years, says Ethan Nadelmann of the Drug Policy Alliance.

Marijuana remains illegal under federal law, and the divergence in state and federal thinking may yet spell trouble—as it has lately in California, where medical marijuana is legal. But Mr Obama’s administration, detecting that Americans are turning against blanket prohibition, may decide that it has better things to do. It remained silent during the campaigns in Washington and Colorado.

The left may also be cheered by the passage in California of Proposition 30, which will increase sales and income taxes to help fund education and close the budget gap. Californians have not made a habit of raising taxes on themselves, and some will see the result of this close-fought battle as a sign that Americans as a whole are ready to see their tax bills rise.

That hints at a broader question: what do this year’s ballot measures reveal about America’s political centre of gravity? The marijuana and marriage votes help confirm what was already clear from polls: that public opinion is relaxing on these (if not all) social issues. There was solace for liberals elsewhere, too. A vote in Maryland to grant in-state college-tuition rates to illegal immigrants may foreshadow an attempt by Mr Obama to fix America’s rickety immigration system. In several states proposals to curtail union rights fell flat.

But America has not lurched to the left. Outside California, tax increases fared less well. Voters in Georgia ignored pleas from teachers’ unions and approved a controversial charter-school measure (Washington may do the same; the count is not complete). Four states stuck two fingers up to Mr Obama, in effect, by pledging not to implement aspects of his health-care law. The measures are unlikely to survive legal challenge, but they show how lively the hostility remains in parts of the country to the president’s hardest-won achievement.

Hundreds of millions were spent on the 176 statewide measures placed before America’s voters on November 6th. But although money can buy a place on the ballot, it cannot guarantee success. Initiatives backed by businesses and rich individuals, including some shameless attempts to pursue private interests through the ballot box, fell flat in California, Michigan and Oregon. Americans cannot rid their politics of special interests. But they can sometimes give them an electoral kicking.