I have a second cousin just a couple years younger than myself. She has always been more conservative than not. Nice, but not very into politics though, to her credit, she did watch the last debate and the VP debate.
After one hour on the phone with her--and going carefully through the repercussions of a vote for Romney v. Obama--we have a winner!
It wasn't that difficult, really. She asked who I was voting for and one hour and twenty one minutes later, she's convinced.
Along with the assault on women's rights, I went through the economy, jobs, healthcare, social services etc. and she was convinced. I had to convince her two months ago to go on food stamps while she works through a disability case. She was shocked she got so little unemployment. I told her to thank the GOP.
She has health issues, so I got her to get help through the state a few months back and and she is now on food stamps to eat. I buy cat food for her. She was averse to asking for any kind of help and I asked her what and who she thought it was there for if not her? Are we only paying taxes to fund wars and build roads? No, we have a safety net. Use it. And, BTW, if you vote GOP you will lose that safety net. Maybe not tomorrow, but lose it you will. How do I know? They said so.
She's on it and will vote a straight dem ticket. I explained how the GOP has blocked Obama every step of the way, quoting Mitch McConnell and explaining that while we now have a lot of named post offices, we still don't have a jobs bill or a farm bill (we talked a lot about this and climate change because my family had a long history of corn farming in Iowa) and how the republicans are big on limiting women's rights. I talked about Bain and what they do and how and about Sensata, for instance. She knows this is wrong. She gets it.
We talked about social security, medicare, medicaid and the implications for both of us losing those programs (she is a few years younger than myself). Her health isn't great. She gets it.
It wasn't that difficult. Actually, it's pretty self apparent to anyone who is truly undecided as she was. WAS.
And yeah, I will loan her another thousand dollars to help her get through and hope I get it back, but I will lose a lot more than that if we elect the wrong president.
It was a good day.