Politics Redux

*** continued from previous post ***

At one point during the evening I looked around at our dinner companions. Everyone was smiling, laughing, eating too much and drinking too much and generally having a great time. Even your mom was chatting freely with Jackie and Julie as well as others around the table. I'm sure you've drawn a mental picture. If you were to capture this exact moment in a snapshot, it would represent EXACTLY what I had hoped for in our vacation. As the staff cleared the dinner plates in preparation for coffee and desert I sat back and basked in the glow of the moment. Success. All was right with the world.

Now, if I could manage to navigate us back towards home in the morning life would be good.

"So, Terrence said, turning to me, "do you think Obama has a shot? Or are we going to get four more years of the same?"

Dammit. Really? Again? Couldn't we have just gone on down the rosy, cozy, safe path of banality? Must we enter into these dangerous waters fraught with international overtones and non-requested opinions? Fine. You want politics? Politics it is.

Mom, much to my surprise, jumped right in. "Obama has a good chance. A very good chance of being our next President."

The Canadians murmured. Or were whispering 'rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb'. My hearing isn't what it used to be since I stopped caring about most things.

"Really?" Robert asked. "Do you think that the US is ready for a black President?"

"I don't know how much being black has to do with it, but I know most of us are ready for a change," Mom said.

A wave of skepticism rose like the stink of dead fish on an old pier from our dinner mates.
Julie said, "But what about . . . you know, the south?"

"Oh," Mom said, "there are definitely pockets around the country that won't vote for him because he's black," and here she paused to look around the table, "but it's not everyone in the south, and you don't have to be in the south to think like that." Mom looked to me, "Shoot, there are places in the northwest where racism runs deep." Seeing that she wasn't making any converts, your mom continued. "I think you'll see both coasts vote for Obama, and enough in between to elect him come November."

One of the women at the other end of the table asked, "But aren't those the 'Red' States?"
"That's kind of a misnomer perpetuated by the media," I explained. "In reality there are four or five 'Blue' States, six or seven 'Red' States, and the rest are varying shades of purple." I said, repeating what I had said to our hiker friends earlier.

"That may be", Robert said, jumping into the conversation, "but what about Texas? He's not going to win there."

Texas again. What the hell? Then I realized that for those above the 49th parallel Texas was the epitome of all the gun-totin', whiskey-swillin, right-wing yahoo-ism that made America what it is today. Having a 'Bush' hail from there, (but he isn't really FROM Texas, now is he?), didn't help. Well, that and all the capital punishment. And the hats probably colored their opinion as well.

"Probably not," I agreed. "But Texas isn't necessarily the US."

No one spoke to this, they all just sat there, chewing what I'd said with their minds. Deciding whether to spit or swallow.

Finally, Niagria bicycle-guy said, "You have to admit though, that Texas might be the extreme, but it's where the country is headed."

"I'm not sure I'd agree with that," I said. "You know the funny thing about the US is that we're all one country, but it's really like we are a collection of separate and distinct sovereign nations. Kind of like the UK and her territories. Well, without the whole inbred Royal Family thing. I'm sure you know what I mean."

I looked around the gathering to see if what I said registered. Seeing that it didn't I continued.

"Look, take the Pacific Northwest where we're from. In our State, Washington, you have the Cascade mountains running north and south bisecting the State into Western and Eastern Washington. Western Washington is known for our rain, our forests, our coast and fisheries, Seattle, and a liberal attitude."

I looked to your mom to see if I was making sense, and she gave me a nod so I went on.

"Eastern Washington is dry, agricultural, not nearly as densely populated as the west. They tend to be a bit more conservative on that side of the State. If you ask them what they have in common with the average person in Seattle, they're likely to respond 'Not much."

You know that I was born in Tonasket, and our family was from the Okanogan, so I couldn't REALLY tell them what Eastsiders thought because . . . well, I didn't want to use that many curse words at once.


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