Pro-lifers are essentially the same people who oppose gay marriage (ditto for right-to-die).

I disagree with that assessment. According to recent abortion polls, 66% of Americans oppose overturning Roe v. Wade, and 59% of them believe abortion laws should be either less strict than they currently are (20%) or the same as they currently are (39%), with only 38% wanting more strict abortion restrictions. Contrast that against the number of Americans who oppose gay marriage — 66% according to most polls. Given that 66% support legal abortion and the same number oppose gay marriage, and knowing where the extremes line up, that leaves fully 33% of the population that opposes gay marriage while supporting at least some form of legal abortion.

Kerry was on the correct side of the abortion issue, if you care about what a large majority of Americans want. He was also on the correct side of the tax issue, but did a poor job of framing. Given a choice between receiving a tax cut or cutting the deficit, Americans selected cutting the deficit by better than a two-to-one margin. He simply let Bush get away with asserting we could have our collective cake and eat it too, virtually unchallenged. That’s the problem when you have a populace that’s exceptionally bad at math — they buy transparent bullshit like “supply-side economics.”

As for the War in Iraq (which, despite all attempts to classify it as such, is almost wholly unrelated to the War on Terror), Kerry had the misfortune of being about a year ahead of the nation on that one. Between Iraq, Social Security, and Katrina, if election year had been 2005 instead of 2004, even Kerry would have handed Bush his ass, despite his total lack of charisma.

I don’t know where you got the idea that being anti-abortion was a political liability. Indeed, in light of your contention that gay marriage was “an important factor” in Kerry’s loss, it doesn’t make any sense: Pro-lifers are essentially the same people who oppose gay marriage (ditto for right-to-die).

If they’re powerful enough to defeat Kerry because of his support for gay unions, they’re also powerful enough to elect Bush because of his opposition to abortion.

Kerry lost because he was on the wrong side of, or sometimes both sides of, virtually every “hot button” issue in 2004: gun control, taxes, the War on Terror, abortion, etc. If he had consistently supported the war and voted against the AW reauthorization he probably would have won.

There’s got to be more to it than that, because Bush was on the wrong side of just as many (abortion, right-to-die, social security reform, etc.).

That’s true enough, but you’re ignoring Rove’s “energize the base” strategy. So while those who opposed gay marriage weren’t going to vote for Kerry under any cirucmstances, some number of them, in particular ones who had become disillusioned with his bungling of the war, probably wouldn’t have voted at all if not for the gay marriage issue being so prominent.

No, gay marriage was not the lone reason Kerry lost (there’s also the fact that he has almost as much charisma as Gore), but I guarantee you it hurt him. That issue alone was probably enough to swing Ohio, for example, and that alone would have been enough to change the result of the election.

In short, no I don’t buy the idea that gay marriage cost Kerry the election single-handedly, but at the same time it’s incredibly naive to say it wasn’t an important factor.