So I wasn't going to post a story on this, but considering the latest attempt to drive deep wedges between so-called "beer track" and "wine track" Democrats, I thought I'd chime in with this story.
I live with my boyfriend in a small apartment near a well-known, elite university, where we both are both students. Sure, we have multiple Macintosh products strewn about our living room amongst scores of empty wine bottles, but we've built this liberal elite paradise with student loans and summer jobs.
Now, our faucet has been leaking for weeks. It started out as a slow drip (sometime after Wisconsin, heh) and has slowly gotten worse. Each week more dripping--more water slipping down the drain every day. The incessant drip-drip-drip finally drove me nuts last week so I decided to call a plumber.
We had been making jokes about plumbing all week, naturally, and were actually surprised when a young, athletic, tall, Polish man showed up....
MSNBC was on in the background. As usual the talking-heads were all chattering, but for once, I was ignoring them. The plumber was laying on his back, his head was under the sink. As his arms rose alittle as he put them over his head to reveal a flat, stomache, and well, it was quite distracting. But he was also very talkative. He mentioned his wife several times, and their three-year-old (read: I'm friendly, but not gay, boys) and made a few jokes about doing all the dishes himself, since he's the plumber.
After a while, the MSNBC commentary turned to the Democratic race and the plumber came out of the kitchen to watch Hillary bash Obama for "looking down" on working-class voters. We didn't have a chance to shoot a scornful look at one another before he scoffed loudly that "she's not kidding anyone. He's been all about bringing different people together, and all she wants to do is scare people into voting for her. That's not gonna work." His deep booming voice was very convincing, I must say.
Our initial dismay that he wasn't wearing a toolbelt was turned around instantly as we began a spirited conversation with the lunchpail hottie. His take on the whole race is that Hillary just flails around when she's losing and doesn't really have much to fall back on, because she's been a politician too long and forgot how to "just be real." He also said that she only appealed to rich people and Barack knew what it was like to struggle, something she's forgotten.
I couldn't believe my ears! Granted, we live in Chicago, and everyone around here is an Obama supporter, but to hear this "beer track" worker confess his adulation for Obama to a gay couple was really surprising.
So it's true--a new kind of politics can bring people together. The entire premise of Obama's campaign is not just a speech, as Clinton put it, nor is the change we seek just a platitude! On the contrary, the thirst for an uplifting outlook is as palpable as the pipes beneath our sink and the plumber working on them.....but that's a different story. For now let's just say we were very happy to hear a working-class Democrat enthusiastic about our candidate.....and we tipped him very well.
