Growing up in Virginia, I never had the sense that my state government really did anything of importance. In middle school and high school we studied the constitutional protections for state-level governance (something I suspect history classes in the south emphasized more than other schools), the ways in which states' rights were challenged in the mid-19th century (it took me a while to realize that what I was taught about the civil war was a little askew from the actual history), and then we were told that any semblance of state-level power had deteriorated across the 20th century.

If there was any accuracy in that perception that the real political power in the US was locked up in Washington, it is quickly becoming less true today. Now the states seem to be doing all the real work. Where the federal government has seemed powerless to address disparities in health insurance, Massachusetts has found a unique way to cover its citizens. Where DC seems like a deer in headlights when it comes to gay marriage ("let's propose an amendment that we'll never pass") states have tackled it in an array of ways, from state constitutional amendments that define marriage heterosexually, to judicial moves in New Jersey and other places that require equal protections and privileges for lesbian and gay couples. And then there's South Dakota taking on the abortion issue with a heavy ban on the pending ballot.

Who wins and who loses in this state-level shift? I suppose states win a symbolic battle they really have not been fighting. Pro-choice groups seem poised to win in Dakota, but pro-lifers will surely win similar battles in other states. Marriage equality supporters seem to be winners in New Jersey, but have lost ground in a lot of other places. The uninsured will be big winners in Massachusetts if this new program is successful, but don't expect them to say thanks for what they should have had all along.

The big losers in this assertion of state's rights are the social movement groups, many of whom are organized at the national level and who now have to fight fifty battles, with fifty different sets of rules. It is exhausting their resources rapidly. But, for half of them, it must seem worth it to finally see some movement on these issues.

The big winners are the citizens of these states, who get to experience the end of the stalemates and a little progress (in whichever direction wins). And if they're unsatisfied, and the new policies seem intolerable, the possibility of moving to a new state is a lot more amenable than moving to Canada.