After the Election
Child.com, December 2004

[Child.com]

The day after the election, I got a frantic phone call from the mother of one of my daughter's friends. “I just need to talk to another Democrat,” she said, before dropping the bombshell. “Did you know that A.'s mother and N.'s mother both voted for George Bush?” I hadn't known. And I was just as shocked as my friend was. One of these mothers is a union member; the other is an earthy type, who feeds her children only organic foods. I like both of them a lot. How could they have voted for a man whom I consider to be a dangerous ideologue, who is making a mess of our country and the world?

Like so many people in the US, I felt this presidential election was the most important one in my lifetime. For the first time, I had not only given money to a presidential candidate but had planted a big Kerry/Edwards sign on my front lawn. When Kerry lost, I--and millions and millions of other Democrats--were devastated, and angry. How could so many have voted for Bush? What were they thinking? Who are these people?

Well, it turns out some of them are my neighbors and parents of my children's friends.

On the night of the election, as we watched the returns with another family, my daughter, Emily, wrote up a list of whom her classmates had voted for in the school election--12 for Kerry, 7 for Bush.

Forget all of the pundits' talk about red and blue states; we have red and blue streets--and red and blue houses. I remember in October seeing a Bush/Cheney sign sitting right next to a Kerry/Edwards sign--on the same

front lawn. Mary Matalin and James Carville may be able to agree to disagree, but after one of the bitterest, most contentious elections, many of us are having trouble making peace with our family members, neighbors, and others who supported the opposition.

One of my friends got into a nasty email exchange with her brother, a Bush supporter, after he sent her an email, gloating about the election. (“It's a sunny day in America!” he wrote.) Another was having second thoughts about going on a long-planned vacation with her cousins because she suspected they might have voted for Bush. In my own case, once I learned that these moms had voted for Bush, I wasn't sure I could ever look at them the same way again. When I ran into one of these women at a school event a few days after the election, I wanted to ask, Why? I truly wanted to understand why she voted the way she did, but I also knew my question would be seen as a provocation. Who am I to ask her to defend her choice? So instead I gave her a quick hello and moved on. That didn't seem right, either.

“You absolutely cannot be friendly with this woman anymore!” one friend of mine, a passionate Kerry supporter, told me after I told her my dilemma. This friend had not spoken to one of her neighbors since last summer, when he put up a Bush/Cheney sign.

“But I can't ignore these moms,” I said. “I see them at Girl Scout meetings and birthday parties. Our kids have play dates. What I am supposed to do? Give them the cold shoulder? Besides, they're really nice people.”

My friend shook her head no. “You don't really know them,” she insisted. “They voted for a man who is eroding our civil rights, destroying the environment, and has waged a war under false pretenses that killed more than 100,000 Iraqis and 1,000 Americans.”

“Come on, aren't these women entitled to vote the way they see fit- even they are wrong?”

“Listen,” another friend said, “it's 1933, in Berlin, are you nice to someone who supports the Hitler party?”

If you think this kind of animosity is one sided--a case of Democratic sore losers--just turn on the radio and listen to the venom regularly spewed on some of those conservative, call-in talk shows.

Or talk to my friend, Marina.

Literally minutes after giving birth to her son, her anesthesiologist stopped by. After hearing that Marina and her husband, Marc, were both writers, he sneered, “Oh, I bet you both voted for Kerry.” As their newborn was being cleaned up by the nurses, the doctor then launched into an anti-Kerry tirade, ranting about the Swift Boat veteran ads and how Kerry was a “big phony.”

My friends argued back, too, until finally after 30 minutes, Marina--in her hospital gown, in a hospital bed, with the effects of the epidural wearing off- realized that the good doctor might never stop. She suggested that perhaps it was time to put politics aside. The doctor took the hint and left.

I am old enough to know that it hasn't always been this way. While I and many of my friends have always voted Democratic, I certainly knew plenty of people in college who supported Ronald Reagan and had classmates in graduate school who voted for Bush 1; we may have gotten into political arguments, but we didn't hold grudges. Sure, there were those Republicans who had an almost pathological hatred for Bill Clinton, but that didn't seem to affect how neighbor viewed neighbor. Is it that the stakes are so high now that most of us are unable to put aside our political differences? Or is it that attack dog politics during this campaign were so vicious that it has turned voter against voter? Or perhaps a little of both?

While Clinton campaigned for Kerry, he recently was quoted as congratulating Bush on his re-election and saying that he believes both Bush and Kerry are both “good people” who “love our country and they just see the world differently.” I don't believe that, and probably neither do most of the voters in this election. And as long as we don't, it's going to be an uphill battle for us to respect those who didn't support our guy. Yet if we, the parents, can't overcome these feelings and be civil to each other, how can we expect our children to do so?

And so, for the sake of my daughters, I am trying.

When I dropped Emily off for a playdate at the home where one of the mothers supported Bush, I made sure to make small talk with her mom, just as I had before November. But I looked at her differently, and probably always will. At least until the next election.

December 2004