For many months, her house escaped my notice by fading into the background of my daily commute to work. It was typical for our neighborhood: 20+ year old construction, well-manicured lawn, beautiful landscaping and a decorative, personalized mailbox.
But, one day in late January, her house finally caught my eye with a Hillary sign in the yard. Until that day, my house was one of two homes in the neighborhood that enjoyed a monopoly on election signs (both for Obama). But now a Clintonite had brazenly joined the fray.
"What's with the Hillary sign?," I thought to myself. The sign blended in nicely with her landscaping but was strategically placed for maximum exposure. It revealed the homeowner's thoughtful attention to detail and a commendable seriousness about the primaries. But it clashed with the Volvo in the driveway.
Before I could muster angst that she wasn't supporting my candidate, I reminded myself that this was a good year to be a Democrat. My neighbor and I shared the enviable task of choosing between several eminently qualified candidates.
My drives past the Hillary lady's yard sign remained fairly innocuous until the damning-with-faint-praise-heard-around-the-world:
"Jesse Jackson won South Carolina in '84 and '88. Jackson ran a good campaign. And Obama ran a good campaign here."
That completely changed the dynamics of my drive-bys. Those few words by a former president I hold in the highest regard sparked an angst I hadn't felt since late 2000--back when I realized that I, along with several hundred other principled but pretentious Florida Nadarites, had propelled the idiot from Texas to the White House. My tours past the Hillary sign quickly escalated into cowardly drive-by acts of race-carding.
In the run-up to the Ohio/Texas primaries in late February, the primary became scorching hot, and the Hillary sign down the street gained a sense of grave urgency. One day, as my wife and I yelled "Shame on you, Hillary Clinton!" at the inanimate yard sign, we heard a "booo Hillary" chime in from the rear car seat. "Oh geez," my wife exclaimed,"we need to tone down our rhetoric; we've entered the netherworld inhabited by GOP scum." But tone it down we did not.
By the time Tuzla-gate broke, my wife and I were reduced to rambling, incoherent and malfunctioning Obamabots:
TUZLA! TUZLA! Your Hillary yard sign does not compute! TUZLA! TUZLA!
We had become partisan caricatures by that point. Any Hillary paraphernalia we spotted, especially the Hillary lady's sign, evoked a vitriol-laden display would make a Palin supporter blush.
As the primary came to a close, my wife and I become increasingly sadder representations of the proverbial bitter enders:
Why is your sign still up!? She lost! Get over it! {INSERT DEAN SCREAM HERE}
When she finally did take down the Hillary sign, we weren't appeased. Although by then the Clintons had had us at "convention speech," and we had returned to full love-those-Clintons ahead, we continued our pointless taunts. It was almost as if we were the ones who couldn't "get over it."
Since I found a shortcut to work, I don't drive past her house much anymore. Last week, though, my wife urged me to take the old route. "You have to take the neighborhood tour of newly sprouted Obama signs," she said.
"I've already seen them, honey," I replied.
Being the dutiful husband I was, though, I took her tour. When I arrived at the Hillary lady's house, I couldn't believe my eyes: she had placed two massive Obama/Biden signs in her yard (that's one more than I had!). And her signs were placed with the same strategic love and care that she had used to place her Hillary sign. I had been out-Obamad by the Hillary lady!
For the first time in many months, I was really proud of my political party.
(cross-posted on MYDD)