I just got off the phone with my Mom. She is an active 85. She describes herself as a moderate Republican who is a registered Democrat. I'm not sure why, she hasn't voted for a Democrat since Truman. She stunned me tonight by saying she would consider voting for Barack Obama.
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She explained that she would be voting for him in the Oklahoma primary because she could never vote for Hillary. She then quickly added that she would then vote for the Republican come November. I challenged her a little until she admitted that Obama could indeed change her mind and that she thought he would be OK as President.
This is a HUGE development in my relationship with my Mom politically speaking. We have a long, long history of political discourse within my family and I have always been on the outside trying to push to the left against a determined wall of conservative thought. We have been engaged through the civil rights movement, through Viet Nam, through Kennedy, through Reagan, through Bush/Clinton/Bush/
Clinton, through it all. And we have always been on opposite sides of most every candidate, issue and policy.
Until tonight.
If my Mom can vote for Obama, so can a lot of other folks I may never have considered. Big tent indeed.