Yesterday exchanged holiday greetings and wishes for a happy new year with an old college buddy. He and I stay in touch because, you know, we knew each other when we were young. ‘Those were the days.’
Anyway, our connection has not always been the most congenial, since to put it mildly, politically he is to the right of Attila the Hun and I have become a solid progressive social democrat. Sooo, some of our conversations over the years have been very loud and at times we have declared a truce on all things political.
I was debating yesterday whether I would bring up the upcoming election — we haven’t spoken in a long while. When to my amazement, this guy who works deep in the financial world and has the attitudes to show for it, brought up the elections.
What followed was nothing short of amazing. He shocked me by telling me that he couldn’t understand what this country was coming to! ‘Had I seen the debates? What a disaster? Who were those people?’ Thrown for a loop for a minute, I had to make sure that I heard him right. And then asked what he thought. Well, he continued on about what a disaster these candidates were… and what was this country coming to…
Then he started on “The Donald.” He said that no one in the financial world trusts Trump, that they know too much about his shady business dealings and that investors have been cautioned not to invest with him because of his dishonesty. And on and on and on. Then he quoted his bibles, The Wall Street Journal and Barrons, describing all the articles that they had written exposing Trump. There was not enough negative that he could say about him: a liar, a boor, etc. etc. Then he said that all this support for Trump was only the primary voters, and once the general came, if Trump were the candidate, that his support would erode away.
But his final conclusion was much more than I could have imagined.
He said:
“If the election comes down to Hillary or Trump, I will have no choice but to vote Hillary.”
And this from a man who has made no bones about his huge dislike of Democrats, the Clintons and Hillary in particular. And who sang in the Choir of the Bush Mob and thought that Cheney was a great statesman and supported all that they did without the slightest critique.
Now I am convinced that pigs do fly.
I realize that this is just a sample of 1; n=1. But coming from this diehard reichwing financial guy , I thought it was interesting enough to wonder if his reaction was shared by others in his demographic.
Who knows? Maybe some of those polls have been fixed by Trump? Maybe they are not as representative of rightwing as we are led to believe? May be the corporate media has been bought to portray Trump as leading as much as he is? I just don’t know, but I wonder.
Just thought I would share this with you peeps.