My fiance Paul is voting for Mitt Romney, and I can't for the life of me figure out why. We are only middle class because we borrow all our parents' spare change (definitely not a valid form of survival, Republicans), we are under the age of 30, we are artists, he is a student, and he's marrying a black female.
Maybe if Paul were marrying a black male he would vote Obama. Crap. I should've thought of that.
Here's the thing. I keep hoping that if I heard an educated, reasonable answer, I could be at peace with it. So I ask Paul once or twice a week why he's voting Romney, and every time he asks if we can talk about it later. Usually my timing is terrible and I ask while we're at the bar playing video poker and eating cheeseburgers. But sometimes it's not. Sometimes it is actually during the debate when Romney immediately isolates huge groups of the American people by telling them if they're older than sixty they can stop listening. Therefore, my conclusions are threefold.
1) Paul has no concrete reason as to why he's for Romney besides "my parents are" and doesn't want to admit it.
2) He is smarter than me and knows that if he tells me honestly why he's a Romnoholic I'll just get mad and stop planning our wedding.
3) He is a spy on a mission to see how much an average self-titled intellectual twenty-something [read:me] actually knows about politics, and he's going to report back to Michelle Obama next week and shake his head sadly and that's all he'll have to do to communicate that the future of America is a mess.
One of my downfalls has always been trying desperately to understand people. The downfall part is that I assume they're going to do the same. When it doesn't happen, all hell breaks loose. I cannot for the life of me figure out why Paul won't explain this to me. Doesn't he have a desperate desire to force me to understand him?? Is it because he is afraid I will judge him? (I will probably judge him.) Is it because he, god forbid, doesn't care?! He can't not care! This is our future together! I have endometriosis and a penchant for getting weird sicknesses! What if Romney takes away my birth control and my already-crappy health insurance?! What if we get pregnant because Willard Mitt stole my Yasmin and then told us we couldn't have an abortion?!?!! WHAT IF THE EARTH EXPLODES BECAUSE WILLARD MITT ROMNEY'S HAIRLINE IS SUSPICIOUSLY KENNEDY-ESQUE BUT HE DOESN'T DESERVE THAT KIND OF SUAVE HANDSOMENESS?!?!?!?
For the past three months, I've been scouring political articles. I type things like "unbiased comparison of policies of Romney & Obama" into Google and hope it tells me something I don't know. I try to forget that in third grade I announced that I was a Democrat because my parents were. I watch the debates and try to open my mind with meditational breathing so that I can be a responsible adult and make my own strong educated decision. I throw myself at the DMV so I can be a registered voter in a crucial swing state. I read transcripts of convention speeches and get annoyed at grassroots events when Obama doesn't obsessively detail how he is going to make the changes he says he'll make. And while I'm doing all of this and graying faster than Barry did in his first two years in office, Paul is sitting naked on the couch playing video games and reading sports forums on his Droid.
I feel a little like I did when in my last relationship I got dumped for someone who I'm pretty convinced is terrible. "What could she possibly give you that I haven't given you in abundance, over and over?" I remember wanting to yell indignantly. What does Romney have that Obama doesn't? (I can't see Obama crying with Smirnoff Ice alone on a mattress on the floor and singing to himself, "It's a quarter after one, I'm all alone and I need you now*" if Paul doesn't vote for him, but there's a reason he's El Jefe and I'm not.)
Yesterday I treated myself to a trip to Pasadena to see a very good friend of mine, and I brought this up. She was telling me about how her partner isn't voting because neither candidate really represents him, and how she isn't voting because she is pretty much indifferent. "It's such a difference from four years ago, when I was campaigning for Obama," she said. "I thought I was changing the world," she said, "I thought I was saving the world."
I remember that mindset. I remember being an RA in my senior year in college, watching the TV in the common room with my residents, being afraid because last time we thought it would be different but then Bush won, and then won again. I remember leaving my dorm at the College On A Hill, hearing "O-BA-MA" chanted through the dark. I remember running down a hill I'd fallen down my freshman year, tears streaming down my face, wondering how my grandmother felt, seeing a black man take the presidency of the United States. I remember hugging my friend and wanting to cry harder. I remember staring at the ceiling, thinking things were going to be different now.
We're not saving the world with this election. Things won't just change. The country won't immediately explode if Romney is elected. And by voting for Barack Obama, I'm not trying to save the world. I'm trying to save my own world. I 100% believe that if Romney is president, our country's mindset as a whole will rewind. As a lower-class twenty-five-year-old black actress and musician, I cannot afford that. And it will not happen because of me. I don't want to see bumper stickers that say "Don't Re-Nig." And I don't want to vote for a man who has people on his side who say things like that. I don't want to worry that the threads I'm clinging to with regards to health care are going to become thinner threads that break and leave me sick and incapable of fixing it. I feel strongly about these things not because I care about politics, but because these things are me. I cannot live the life I want if arts funding decreases. I cannot go back to school and pay off gigantic loans. I am backing Obama because Obama backs me.
My fiance is voting for Mitt Romney, and I cannot for the life of me figure out why. He's not telling me why either. And I can't fully judge him because he was born into a conservative family and therefore has conservative values. I was born into a liberal family, and here I am. I do appreciate that my liberal family raised me to make smart choices of my own and identify my own values rather than defaulting to family history. I can only hope that the man I'm choosing to marry is making a smart choice.
And in my heart of hearts, I know that Paul is not telling me why he's voting for Romney because he knows I'll marry him anyway. Kicking and screaming and narrowing my eyes and saying things like, "Well, then, you better make enough money so that you can finance my vagina," and "Your presidential candidate has a stupid face," but I'll marry him.
*When I looked on YouTube for this song it popped up with an ad from Romney talking about how he fully supports the middle class. Stop undermining my blog posts and yet breaking my heart, country music. Stop it now.
