A House Divided. Still, Better Than the Last Eight Years, Right?

By Robert Wilonsky Tue., Mar. 4 2008 at 9:54 PM

Categories: Politics

Seriously, caucusing in a firehouse looks much cooler than hanging out in an elementary school.

By 7:15 p.m. very long lines stretched into the darkness outside the Precinct 1224 polling place -- the fire station at Belmont and Abrams in Old East Dallas. When the Democratic lines were divided into Obamatones and Hillarites, my wife and I had to sunder our house in twain and line up to cancel out each other’s votes. That’s sort of how we raised the kid.

The Obama line was about 150 people; the Hillary line, half that. We saw only one black person – a lady in the Hillary line. A few Hispanics were there. Everybody else was white as Caspar and mostly young.

The chitchat ahead of me was about how, when you used to move apartments every year, you got rid of your extra stuff, but now that you live in one place for five years, it piles up until you have so much junk it might combust. I resisted a powerful temptation to say to them, “Obama’s gonna take care of that.”

I would call the mood quietly intensely exuberant. Who knows how long it lasts? I have been wondering for eight years what it would take to wake up this country. I guess now we all know. Eight years.

So, we signed our separate lists (Obamatones and Hillarites signed at different tables at our precinct), and then we left for home, because we had to take care of the chickens, the cats and the sole remaining dog. Oh, yeah, and the mother-in-law. So I don’t now how the actual caucusing went.

Now we’re off to a post-vote party in the Park Cities amongst our friends who are so conservative they haven’t heard yet about George W.’s approval ratings hitting a new low. And they still think the mission was accomplished. I just don’t have the heart to tell them.

Oh, no. Wait, I forgot. I don’t have a heart. I can’t wait to tell them. Eight years, man. --Jim Schutze

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