Now we have Maine rejecting marriage equality. The results in Maine, a state that is 95.3% white, make it clear that we can't blame the people of color who live there. So who do we blame? My hunch is that rural white voters are on the hook. But the blame placed on rural white voters will be very different in its tenor and tone than Prop 8.

Blaming rural white voters for their perceived conservatism, religiosity, and class difference will inevitably occur as we look at what happened to Question 1 in Maine. But how we as progressives deal with it will be interesting to watch -- because rural white voters in Maine will not be blamed for their whiteness, they will not be called out for abandoning a civil rights struggle, and they will not be accused of prioritizing their whiteness over their straightness. All of which happened in the analysis of the Prop 8 fight.

I think the post election analysis is important - it helps us figure out what happened, what messages worked, what techniques for engagement worked. But too often, the story that gets told in the first few days only reinforces our beliefs about voters, reveals a thin racial justice analysis, and is incredibly difficult to change once it's out in public.

Kalpana Krishnamurthy is the Gender Justice Program and RACE Program Director at Western States Center. This blog post originally appeared on the Western States Center blog.