Why a disabled lesbian feminist might vote McCain-Palin

It really makes me wonder if she was one of those 'Reagan Democrats.' Say what you will about the Republican party -- they've done a painfully good job of convincing working class White people that they have more in common with wealthy Whites (many of whom couldn't care less about the needs of the poor, whatever their racial/ethnic background) than they do with the assorted brown people who are -- quite often -- their neighbors. It's shameful as all h*ll, and makes me want to send everybody to listen to Tim Wise about the birth of the so-called White race, White privilege, and how the wealthy have been using such things to keep poor people down for hundreds of years.

[cont'd] So what would make someone whose own interests are clearly best served by Senator Obama's platform even consider voting against their own interests? I keep coming back to that email she sent to us and the rest of her email address book.

So many of the accusations against Barack Obama appeal to fear and distrust of "others" rather than rationality. As a feminist and a lesbian (her terms of choice) Sukie has run into people who feared and distrusted her and others like her on the basis of their ideals or sexual orientation. She's seen patently ridiculous assertions like Pat Robertson's infamous accusation that "Feminism encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians" directed at her and her friends and family. I've rarely had trouble seeing such accusations for what they were, regardless of whether I belonged to the group being maligned, but maybe Sukie doesn't as readily recognize the similarities between baseless smears against herself and baseless smears against people different from herself.

Many of the accusations against Obama also don't hold up to logical consideration even in the absence of evidence one way or another. The popular claim that he "pals around with" -- is closely connected to -- domestic terrorists is one example; even without knowing who Bill Ayers is or how much Obama worked with him, it should be obvious to anyone who thinks for a moment that if Ayers were even under serious suspicion of being a dangerous terrorist, he and Obama would both be at the very least on Homeland Security / TSA no-fly lists, if not imprisoned at Gitmo like others with merely tenuous connections to actual terrorists.

Sukie and Betty are, despite a number of glaring differences with how that group is often portrayed, in the demographic the McCain-Palin campaign has been courting: they're both white, both working-class. The majority of these people would do better under an Obama or Biden administration than a McCain or Palin one, at least according to each campaign's platforms.

Despite the increasing number of former McCain supporters deserting his camp over discomfort with the increasingly negative campaign against Obama, many people planning to vote McCain-Palin (or Palin-McCain, as some folks' campaign gear has it, and I can perhaps be forgiven for hoping some of them will write-in their votes that way) have only become more committed to voting for the GOP nominees, and to doing whatever they can to ensure others vote Republican too. Some of them are undoubtedly in the over-$200,000 income bracket and would rather pay somewhat less in taxes at the expense of America's children, seniors and others in need. But judging by who I see at Republican rallies, most of them look more like Sukie or her kids or Betty.

I want to believe that people who have been taken in by the numerous long-since-disproven claims about how and why Barack Obama is "dangerous" just haven't had the chance to evaluate those claims using unbiased sources. That's part of why, although I'll be campaigning for a third-party candidate for local office before Election Day, I plan to spend next Tuesday at the polls with pages printed out from sites like factcheck.org and snopes, offering my fellow voters a chance to see which statements by and about both sides have been less than accurate. "Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government," as Thomas Jefferson said.

In the end, though, there's nothing I or anyone else can do to convince someone whose beliefs are based more on what they want to believe than any other consideration.

(Note: "Sukie" and "Betty" are pseudonyms to protect their privacy, because I included other identifying information about them, all of which is accurate to the best of my knowledge.)