In the previously bright red state of Georgia, two recent polls (CNN and Research 2000) give McCain a 6-point lead -- within the margin of error. The CNN poll is even closer (a 3-point difference) among registered voters. Both polls were completed before the final debate and before the Powell endorsement. Other diaries have noted the massive early voter turnout, and the high percentage of African-American votes in that group. All of these numbers are important, and lead me to hope Georgia might turn blue.
But every vote is personal. Every vote is a judgment call on the part of a person with a unique history.
Thus begins the tale of my two dads.
My biological dad is an 87-year-old die-hard liberal whose values were forged during the Depression when his middle-aged father lost his job in Ohio. In 1934, after two years of near-starvation on a drought-ridden farm, the family drove west in an ancient pickup truck, Conestoga-style, and started over. In 1944, weeks of terror and dread as a combat medic in the Battle of the Bulge left my dad with a Silver Star, the promise of the GI Bill, a visceral antipathy toward war, and a profound distrust of bellicose commanders-in-chief. For thirty years a pediatrician in an excellent cooperative healthcare system, he has voted for a Democrat in every presidential election since WWII, and proudly cast his vote for Obama in Washington's February caucus.
My father-in-law is an 88-year-old archetypal Southern patriarch now living in Georgia. He was raised in a dusty Alabama backwater, the son of a county land agent and feed-and-seed store owner. The family lived in a brown-shingled bungalow around the corner from the store, and my father-in-law still recalls how envious he was of the boys who owned a bicycle. But poverty is relative. The family had an African-American maid for 50 years, and my dad-in-law used to tag along with his father to Tuskegee Institute, where George Washington Carver would administer peanut-oil back rubs. For thirty-five years, my father-in-law was a private-practice surgeon who told racist jokes on the golf course and trumpeted the gospel of free enterprise. He voted Democratic until white Georgia Democrats starting switching parties, and then cast ballots for Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush I, Dole, and Bush II.
This year, for the first time since 1964, my dads will be voting for the same presidential candidate.
The key to their common choice is "self-made." My father-in-law graduated from Harvard Medical School at age 23, succeeding, as did my own dad, not because of family connections but because he worked extremely hard to develop his talents. Like my own dad, he has come to despise Bush for his ill-used privilege and his incompetence, and sees McCain as the same kind of man. Both of my dads feel kinship with the hard-won accomplishments of Barack Obama.
Nor does it hurt that, like Obama, each of my fathers has one wife, one house, and one car!
My two dads are why I am hopeful for a Blue America on November 4th!
This is first diary after years as a faithful Dailykos reader, so I hope correct you'll any errors gently!