My mother has been a staunch Republican for 72 of her 80 years. She’ll tell you now that she always voted for the best candidate, regardless of party affiliation, but I don’t recall too many "best candidates" from the Democratic side of the aisle. That is, until George Bush came along. She pegged him for a dangerous sociopath from the beginning. She was even more upset than I was after the Supremes handed him the oval office. I remember the next day, talking to her on the phone, when I said not to be so anxious about it (she has what I call chronic acute anxiety). After all, how much damage could he do in four years? She said she was afraid he could do an unimaginable amount of damage in that time. I stand corrected. I also digress.
In spite of her abhorrence of Bush, I think she would still at least consider a Republican candidate, if they offered a good one. At one time, she had a favorable impression of John McCain, but she is well over that now. She knows his flip-flops, his alignment with Bush policies and his craven "I’ll say and do anything to get elected" campaign. However, I have still been concerned about discussing the Democratic candidate, because of one unfortunate fact. My mother was not just born and raised a Republican; she was also born and raised something of a racist. She has no idea that she is a racist and would be horrified if I took her to task for it. In the interest of family harmony, I have chosen not to do this, for which I am sure some of you will want to slam me, but she is a genuinely kind and generous person. She knows no better than what her upbringing and social circles have taught her. I know she believes in the justice of the civil rights movement in principle, but in her personal world, blacks are still colored people, and are the help rather than equals. In the rural southern area where she lives, the vast majority of the black population lives at or below the poverty line and there are few educated black professionals. Those who leave the area for an education generally do not return to the area to live, so her mind set is rarely challenged in this regard.
Early on in this campaign season, she was very much undecided. She has never like Senator Clinton, and she didn’t know anything about Obama. The candidates she was comfortable with, Dodd, Edwards, Biden, Richardson etc, gradually dropped by the wayside, so she was bemoaning the lack of a good candidate she could really get behind. So I started introducing her to Obama, sending her articles, reading her excerpts from many a DKos diary, and making sure to debunk the right wing smear du jour against him in our daily conversations. Still, I never knew if I was getting through to her, this women who would not let me bring a black friend home from college for a weekend visit (What would the neighbors think? At the time, I got no points for telling her in a moment of frustration that my friend, whose parents were both physicians and one of whom taught at Howard as well, came from a better family than I did.) Would she ever consider voting for a black man? Well, it turns out the answer is a resounding yes.
Here’s how it played out. A representative from the health insurance company who covers her Medigap and Prescription plan came to see her to go over her coverage and help her get the best out of the plan. At some point, my mother made a comment about the fiasco that is Bush’s Part D plan and the obscene doughnut hole she finds herself in. I guess the woman took this as an opportunity to bring politics into the discussion, because she said "I certainly hope you are not planning to vote for Obama". My mother was a bit taken aback by this blunt statement and asked why. The woman started out by saying she would never vote for someone in favor of abortion. My mother took her to task on that, saying abortions had been around for hundreds of years and making them illegal would not stop them. It would just put us back to the days when women died from unsafe procedures. She told her about the many young women her husband (and my father), a general surgeon in this rural area, had to put back together after botched illegal abortions, and about those who he was able to save but were forever unable to have kids because they had been so damaged. So adamant was she on the subject of choice, the insurance woman dropped that talking point and went on to opine that surely my mother wouldn’t vote for a Muslim. Mother debunked that talking point in a minute, explaining that he has a Muslim-sounding name, but he was raised, at least partly by his white grandmother, in the Christian church. The insurance woman tried to get in that he used to be a Muslim, but Mother told her to check her facts. He has never followed the Muslim faith (and please do not start on me about so what if he was a Muslim. This is still a significant broadening of a conservative mindset). Next, the insurance lady started in about his lack of patriotism, as evidenced by his refusal to wear a flag pin. My mother launched into a tirade about how this was nothing but the "news" media trying to make a story out of nothing, that a number of prominent politicians don’t wear the flag pin, and then gave her Obama’s very patriotic response to the furor.
At this point, I think the insurance woman realized she was not going to get anywhere with this sweet little old lady, and ceased her propagandizing, but I have no doubt Mother was ready for her if she had any more wingnut points to bring up! And thanks to my mother, maybe this one will think twice before injecting her personal beliefs into what should have been a strictly professional meeting.