The mainstream media is nearly unanimous, in Washington and Maine, a flood of corporate cash swung popular opinion. The 'Yes' side says democracy was trampled, the 'No' side calls it a victory of science over superstition. Unfortunately none of 'em focus on the fact that the voters didn't have to listen to the corporate propaganda being spewed. The 'people coulda just called bullshit, but the majority didn't call bullshit.
Maybe democracy was trampled by the daily fliers in the mail, ads on most local websites, messages in the coupon envelopes you get in the mail, never ending TV, radio and newspaper ads. Maybe the voters feared the consequences the advertisers warned of, maybe they weren't that ideologically committed to begin with, maybe...
Maybe deep down inside the voters knew that the big issue here -the right to know what's in your food - is a linchpin issue and it's adoption would start a snowball of changes throughout first the agricultural and other food industries, then the chemical industry and the fossil fuel industry it's a devil child of, to the banking industry that finances them all, to the 'markets' that bet on their futures, to the types of jobs folks do which determines where/how they live... to everything.
Like an favorite old sweater after it starts unravelling, the interconnectedness of the capitalist matrix is both its strength and its weakness. Mandatory GMO labeling might change nothing, or it might change lottsa stuff. The vested interests pulled the strings, the sweater didn't unravel and the puppets voted, but they coulda cut their strings and run free, maybe someday, someday before extinction, the puppets will run free and the corporate criminals will fall..but not today...
