They are:
3 white men and one Indian looking man.
From what I've been able to gather their paramount concern is the economy.
They talk endlessly about it. They find all the magazines and books and newspapers that have charts related to the stock market. Yesterday they were discussing how the stock market was at a record high in 2000 and since then it hasn't been the same. In fact, they were lamenting the way the stock market plunged recently and how it's going to be plunge anymore.
I really want to emphasize how much they talk about the economy because initially, due to their obsession, I thought they were all Democrats, but then yesterday happened and I realized they were GOP.
One of them - one of the older white men - came and sat down and said:
"I predict Obama wins this election." He had in his hand a chart tracing the history of the stock market since the beginning of the stock market's existence (yes that's how obsessed they are).
Of course when he said that I snickered to myself because I read KOS and Fivethirtyeight and I know that you aren't really going out on a limb when you say that Obama is going to win.
Then I realized, oh, wait, such a declaration is a big deal for you if you are GOP. So I started listening in closely to what they were saying: could it be that these were Republicans?
Indeed they were. I know this because they immediately started talking about the Bradley Effect.
Their one hope for a GOP win is that the Bradley Effect kicks in. To this end they had a few suggestions for the McCain campaign.
One of them said:
"The only way McCain makes a come back is if he starts telling voters that there is going to be a Bradley Effect and tells them that whites and hispanics would never vote for a black man."
This is what they are counting on. A race war.
I thought that was pretty pernicious and I stopped listening.
Nevertheless, I want to go back to how obsessed they are with the economy, because it was really astounding.
First of all they are all people from around the neighborhood. They don't even drive over. I don't want to stereotype but simply based on how close they live to the rest of my family I'd be very shocked to find out if they had very much invested in Wall Street. Rather, it seems to me that they look at the stock market as the "pulse" of the nation. When it is high and going higher they know the country is healthy. When it is low and falling they know that the country is failing.
The fact that after seeing what the stock market is doing they can't help but conclude that Obama is going to win is very heartening to me. It suggests that even as Republicans they know that the right man to solve their problems is a Democrat.
Just as I say that I see that the Recession deepens with unemployment claims higher than expected (I'm unemployed and can no longer collect unemployment) and stock futures are lower than expected.
Go Obama!
ps - One day the men were talking about how Western art treasures - because of the economic downturn - are being bought by Middle Eastern and Chinese firms. They didn't talk about Obama that day but its pretty apparent, again, that they associate economic health with dominance, which is the argument that Obama made in his convention speech, when he said that there has never been a country that had military superiority when its economy was in the gutter (I paraphrase).
Therefore I recommend that as a strategy we dig up all the art treasures, sports teams, monuments, buildings, museums, and other things of pride to a nation that "the west" has recently had to close or sell or auction or just give up interest in.
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