Where I Was From

Debate Night

Here's a new one: watching political TV with people who actually disagree with you! I've been surrounded by left-leaning but mostly pragmatic Democrats most of my life, if you exclude the far-left extremists in SF whose rhetoric I generally tuned out. So it's unusual for me to run into people who aren't voting for Obama.

I watched last night's debate with a couple of radical pinko Trotskyites and we proceeded to argue for two hours about Obama and whether there is any point to them voting for perennial write-in candidate "Skinner Sucks" when we are operating in a TWO-PARTY SYSTEM, oh, sorry, kids. I feel no need to explain here why I support Obama, but even if I was not a fan, we only have two choices here. The candidates are not going to be your perfect ideal human beings and you shouldn't expect them to. These are two men charged with the challenge of appealing to an impossibly diverse population. That requires just a touch of compromise and centrism.

The third roommate eventually came home and said he was undecided but leaning toward McCain, and we had at it for a while. It was all an exciting evening since we all actively listened to each other and I thought I was holding my own pretty well for someone confronted by Obama detractors for the first time (three at once), and they were respecting my ideas after I pushed back against the inevitable "you just blindly vote Democrat every time, don't you?" (Repeat: Two. Party. System.)

But it was a Friday night, and we were drinking some beer, and two of them suddenly started flirting with me and asking about things like my ballet habits and my little red hat. I'm so glad we could hold off on that nonsense until after hearing each other out about more interesting things. That's the way it should be.

Let's hear it for Obama, everybody.

Labels: politics

posted by Leah @ 10:32 AM