Let's get the basics out of the way.
I am a Barack Obama supporter. Voted for him on Feb 5 and he won the San Francisco county which is where i cast my vote.
My partner is a Hillary supporter. Voted for her on Feb 5 and she did not win the county where her vote was cast. And she is not winning now.
Thus begin the problems.
We've been fairly civil about our differences up until this point. She knows that my decision to support Barack was slow to arrive because I truly believed Hillary to be a strong candidate and I had known very little about Obama's policies. So I did my homework on BOTH of them. My findings were very positive on both behalfs for the most part and in order to make my decision, I began to watch their campaign strategies closely. Who spoke for them? What was being imparted to the media on their behalf? What were the underlying themes of their platform and what issues were being raised in their stump speeches? What company were they keeping in public and in private? How many lies & spins were leaking from their camps? Needless to say, I was ushered towards the Obama camp more and more as the days went by, and i'm QUITE happy with my decision.
My partner, on the other hand, is pissed. She buys into the whole Barack is an elitist thing and says it's proved in his #'s of the working class who do not support him. She thinks he's a sneaky liar behind closed doors and feels better about Hillary being a proven bold-faced liar in public.
[sigh.]
But the biggest thing that's getting her panties in a bunch is that she feels as if Barack's message of change and hope is a bunch of hot air used to lure the black vote, which he has been successful in doing, and THAT is why he's winning. This is what she believes.
I've sat back and bit my tongue many a time while she ranted and raved on these issues. But last night, hearing her go on about him being this and that...it was the straw that broke the camel's back and I went off. Yeah I had a little chardonnay in my system to help fuel the fire but I was still sound in my arguments dammit and i let em rip.
I pulled out a large sheet of poster paper and using a blood red sharpie I wrote down each and every 1 of her reasons for being so anti-obama. And then I proceeded to attack that list, point by point, shutting down every ignorant, biased, proven WRONG reason that she touts. I told her how disappointed I am in her for being so ill-informed and UN-WILLING to respect my judgment on MY vote. I told her that she does not speak for and does not know every black person, therefore, who is she to belittle the entire race as a bunch of ignorant, gullible, fickle supporters who are ONLY voting for Barack because he's half black. I told her that she has a right to feel angry because the person she supports is behind in every way, BUT she needs to blame it on the sloppily built campaign, President Clinton, that stupid Penn guy, Ferraro, and Hillary Clinton HERSELF for running such a amateur race. Be mad, but be mad at the right damn people!!
At the end of my performance, the poster paper looked like a game of connect the dots meets tic tac toe, I was red and needed another drink, and she was wide eyed and open mouthed, but speechless.
SPEECHLESS! It was a victory for me. Trust me.
So there we were. 9:37 at night. Dinner ruined. Blood pressure up. I was prepared to sleep anywhere else than beside her cuz she had truly pissed me off. And then a John McCain sound bite appeared on the t.v of him making some stupid statement, sounding ultra George W. Bushlike and I looked at her, she looked at me, and we just shook our heads and agreed to disagree on who we support in the primaries, but we also agreed that a house divided NOW will NOT be a house divided come November because we can not afford a McCain presidency. I vowed to help her journey over to being a Barack supporter a little more pleasant IF she let's me, and she promised to stop being an irrational asswipe on the issue. We have an appointment next week with our relationship counselor.
I did not have that second drink. Knowing that I had even slightly shook her stubborn Clinton wall allowed me the most peaceful rest without any aid. If I can bank her in, ANYthing is possible.
Thanks for listening. Reading. Whatever. Have a happy wednesday.