Tuesday morning I worked the polls for a friend, handling the 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. shift.
About 6:10 a.m. a county police Ford Explorer parked across Telegraph, facing me, so, I was never alone on a low turn-out election day in Oakville.
Still, I got to engage about 80 voters.
One man, just before dawn, brushed me off in a friendly way, “Sorry, I wouldn’t vote for a Democrat to save my life.”
He must have felt bad about that because on the way out he stopped to show me his gold card, his name embossed as on a credit card, proving his special place as a Trump supporter of several years standing.
Now, Oakville is much more economically diverse than most realize. The Cliff Cave Library polling place area includes some half million dollar houses but it has many mid-century three bedroom frame homes with sloping roof carports. The friendly gentleman drove up in a decade old cargo van and dressed as if self-employed in blue collar work, meaning he’s more likely to have a carport than a four car garage. Yet his heart and vote belong to Trump.
An hour or so later a nicely dressed woman of my era stopped to talk. She explained that she came to vote for Joe Biden in the primary, yet, in the general election she’d “have to” vote for Trump “because of abortion.”
Okay.
If I’d been promoting my candidacy I would have spent many minutes talking through that statement. Since I was helping out a friend the golden rule of campaigns – never piss off a voter – took first place.
Alas, I know the gentleman and the lady represent many others feeling the way that they do. The road to the general election includes many such boulders in the driving lanes. Many good people ignore their economic self interest and suspend their moral indignation to allow themselves to support a dangerous wanna be tyrant.
Oh, in a perfect world I could show the van guy how Trump’s tax cuts caused a friend who needs 24/7 care to pay $31,000 more in taxes last year while billionaires enjoyed stupendously lower tax bills. I could challenge that lady to justify kids in cages on the border as a fair exchange for following a generation-old Supreme Court ruling. Those discussions, of course, won’t happen.
Watching the campaign process separate the gold from the dirt, I’m feeling better about the prospect of Donald Trump being a one-term president.
Still, we need to drive around those boulders in the road. If we can’t convince many to deal with reality, we need to get all those with open minds to the polls in November.
Oh yes, at the end of my shift I headed north of Telegraph: making a left to go straight south towards home is legal but not smart. By the time I used the stoplight to reverse course the Ford Explorer was gone.
Glenn