To add to St Louis Woman's recommended diary I can tell you that the stories here in central Florida are coming fast and furious and are actually shocking to me. I don't put much faith in anecdotal evidence, but I had some strange and uplifting interactions in the past few days. In the above diary, I related an conversation from just last night when I met a Halliburton employee at a sports bar who tore Bush and McCain a new asshole.
What happened tonight leaves that story in the dust. I am a doctor in a big hospital here, and I do admissions overnight. Around 9:30 pm, I went into the hospital room of a frail 81 year-old woman who was admitted for breathing problems. As I usually do when I talk to a patient, I turned down the volume of her TV, and I spent the next 20 minutes or so talking to her about her history and doing an exam. She was quite weak, and her memory wasn't all that good, but she was otherwise in pretty good shape, and I was able to reassure her about getting her feeling better.
As I was leaving the room, I turned the volume of her TV back up, and I was suprised to see this nice old lady watching the Rachel Maddow show. I assumed she was watching MSNBC because it just happened to be on, and I am loath to bring up politics with my patients, but I just had to say as I left, "I love this show." Well, she must have thought i was being sarcastic, being a conservatively dressed young doctor, and she looked at me with a steel glare, puffed up all 90 pounds of her physique and said, "I dont care what you think, I am Rachel Maddow's biggest fan."
Holy crap, all her seeming frailty melted away, and she suddenly looked like she would kick my ass. I just looked at her, and opened my white lab coat to show her my Obama, YES WE CAN pin, that I wear on my shirt everyday. The look of rage in her eyes melted and she smiled a huge grin, and told me that she has watched "Rachel" ever since her "program" came on the air. Now I know that Rachel Maddow has a hardcore fan base (didnt we here on Kos help her get her own show?), but I never expected to see a sick little old lady this hardcore about Rachel Maddow.
We talked a few minutes more, and she told me all about how she hates the "nuts" running this country, and McCain is the biggest nut of them all. "And dont even get me started on that crazy woman from Alaska, she gets me so mad!" Wow, what a great night.
Another little story, I overheard a few nurses talking about Palin, one informing the others who seemed to be low-info voters, and she was telling them about Palin's incoherent answers during the Couric interviews. Without a mention of Tina Fey or SNL, she merged the two together, and made some references to Tina Fey's impression as if they were quotes from Palin herself. I dont see how the McCain campaign can survive that kind of word or mouth.