What can legislative action do? The legislature and executive already did their bit: they drafted, debated, passed and signed a law to recognize same-sex marriage in Maine. A referendum in an odd-year election (when senior citizens vote but young people don’t) rejected the law. The legislature and executive (representative democracy) cannot override a referendum (direct democracy). Unless a Maine court finds that this is somehow the kind of matter that cannot go onto a referendum — a question that should have been litigated well before the election — there’s no basis for court action, and particularly no basis for federal court action.

What I’m wondering is whether the old Bradley/Wilder effect has actually become a SSM effect: people tell pollsters that they won’t vote against equality, but in the privacy of the voting booth, they do.