Pipe Dream

I had a dream that my once-liberal sister was returning to the fold. Once upon a time, she was just as much of a liberal Democrat as the rest of us. I had a dream that we might be getting her back.

I had a dream that she had grown disillusioned with the Bush presidency and with the party that supported him. I had a dream that she had become so disgusted by the McCain campaign tactics that she would not have been able to vote for him. I had a dream that, at least for the next 4 (I'm hoping 8) years, my sister, my parents, and I would have been able to gather for holidays without one of us supporting such radically different politics from the rest of us. Think what nice meals we could have if my uber-politically-aware family could have a nice, happy conversation instead of the tense, sometimes tear-filled conversations that have prevailed (mainly because my father can't not share his contempt for Bush at every opportunity) for the last 8 years.

Sigh. I woke up tonight. She has become a one-issue voter. She voted for the pro-life guy against the baby killer. That's really all that matters to her anymore. Apparently she doesn't care about health care or education or intellectualism or our standing in the world. (If she legitimately thought McCain was better on any of these points, that would be fine, but she doesn't. She only cares about abortion.) And she has totally bought into the right-wing meme of completely biased, in the bag for Obama mass media though she can't actually tell me any concrete, specific examples of what she means by that. Sigh.

And so my family is stuck with 4 more years of tense, uncomfortable holiday meals. But I can hold out hope that it will only be 4. Because President Obama will be such a fantastic president that she will be persuaded to vote for him for his second term and we can once again be a happy, united family. Hey, a girl can dream.