My parents are working class folks living in Michigan. They are socially conservative Democrats and will almost certainly vote for Kerry, although they're not quite ready to admit it. I was talking to my Mom tonight and found myself surprised by her blunt, prescient analysis of the presidential contest.
"Why should I vote for John Kerry? What is he going to do for us? He says he has a health plan that will save everyone $1000 dollars a year. He's not going to save me $1000. If he came here and explained to me how he's going to save me $1000 a year, maybe I'd vote for him."
I wish I could say I replied with some incredibly persuasive defense of Kerry's health care policies, but the truth of the matter is that I don't believe John Kerry's election will save my mother any money. I just don't believe it. Sure, I think the country will be better off with Kerry instead of Bush, but when pressed by my mother to give one example of a way in which my parents' lives will be indisputably improved soon after a Kerry presidency begins, I struggled to find an answer. I could talk about the long term fiscal health of the federal government and the future solvency of Social Security, but that's just not that compelling.
"Maybe he could just write me a check for $1000. He's not going to do anything. He's not going to give me a tax cut. I don't make enough money to pay taxes, but I pay $100 a month for health care that doesn't pay for anything. Neither of them will do anything for people like us. They only do things for rich people and really poor people."
Surely you're not considering voting for President Bush, I asked.
"People like him. It doesn't matter if they don't like the things he's doing. They like him."
But you don't like him, right? You like John Kerry, even if you're not convinced he'll follow through on everything he's promising.
"The Democrats should have known right off the bat they were making a mistake. They should have known all of these pictures of Kerry with his hippy hair would come out. They should have known the footage of him throwing his medals away and speaking in that annoying, snooty voice would come out. That's how it works. People find the most embarrassing thing about you and put it in a commercial. Then you look like a fool and it's all over. The Democrats are a sorry bunch. If they can't find a candidate who's worth anything, they're never going to win"
But you're still not going to vote for Bush, right? Right??
"We got a call the other day...someone left a message on the answering machine. 'President Bush wants your vote. President Bush will keep you safe.' He's not keeping me safe. How's he going to keep me safe? Is he going to go over there and fight? The people who are over there dying are the ones keeping us safe, and even that doesn't really have anything to do with the real terrorists."
Surely you must know that America will soon be a much more dangerous place now that the assault weapons ban is expiring.
"The American people can keep themselves safe."
But what about all these terrorists who can get machine guns now?
"Haven't you ever seen Red Dawn? The American people can defend themselves."
(Never in a million years would I have expected my mother to invoke Red Dawn in any discussion, political or not.)
I'm sure there were thousands of conversations just like this one happening all across the country tonight. Real people want real answers to real questions. They're not interested in what year the Selectric came out. They want to know that when they make a choice at the ballot box, that choice will echo in their own lives. Can we convince them that it will? Can we really convince them? I'd like to believe that we can.
I was starting to worry that my Mom was being a little too hard on Kerry when she said something about Bush that just knocked me flat.
"Bush isn't protecting us. The people on Flight 93 protected him while he flew around the country like a dog with its tail between its legs."