For the first time- My husband is taking a stand. Read on, we will WIN.

[Mother Of Four]

Please read all the way through, and you'll see the point I'm making.

He myself and my son have already voted- He's on day shift and off that night. He's not having to work the next day, and he came to me and in the process shocked the CRAP out of me.

He's making plans, all by his lonesome, for us on election night.

He wants to make a couple of HUGE bowls of old fashioned popcorn, with the kettle corn glaze. Get ROOT BEER (We don't drink much) and sit up until all the results are in. Cuddle under a warm fuzzy blanket, in jammies. This man who up until this election could not be moved to follow politics said to me "Sweetheart if Obama doesn't win, I think something in me will just die."

:wow:

You have to understand, my husband never plans ANYTHING. Up until this election his attitude was "Meh- if our guy wins, he wins. Every politicians alike anyway right?"

Joe Biden won his heart first, when he addressed the firefighters
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMIt7RTGW7k

My husband is a police officer, with his FF1. My father was a career FF himself.

Obama won his heart later...with this speech.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrp-v2tHaDo

Please also understand, that for the first 48 years of his life (He's 50) he was a life long and adamant R. He is now Independent, and voted for Obama.

I'm very misty writing this, because of all the threads that are less than optimistic.

My dear sweet husband, has taken a stand. As a police officer he's not supposed to go out in public and show who he supports because it would seem as though he was speaking for the department. (The department hasn't shown public backing for either candidate because they want to be seen as neutral, it will make it easier in the days after the election.) Yet, he's sitting at shift change and talking to his fellow officers about Obama and Biden. He's sitting at the local stores and in this very southern small town area is talking to older men and women about what Obama means to them. He went to the rally here in town, in uniform and when he was asked said "I'm 'officially' here as an officer, but unofficially as a supporter."

All of these things could have repercussions, but he feels this election is too important.

My husband, my wonderful husband. With 22 years in the Army, with a STRONG R background, an officer of the law- Over the course of these primaries, and now the GE, has come to understand that his beliefs are his own and he owes no allegiance to the party that has deserted our country. With the beginning of the primaries, the last leg of my husbands journey began. He was already bitterly disappointed in *, he was full of doubt- now his journey of self discovery is done. He is now not just intellectually invested in this election, but emotionally as well.


THIS IS WHY WE WILL WIN. Barack Obama doesn't speak to one set of people, he speaks to all of us. He doesn't feel that he should force his beliefs on all of us, but that we should find a common ground. He has opened so many eyes across this country and abroad-

As an aside, thank you DU- thank you so much for welcoming my family. Thank you so much for understanding that people can have their eyes opened, and can grow. Thank you for your news, your humor and your love. This has been an emotional election season for our family, and you have helped keep us on an even keel in what is the largest change we've ever gone through.

:hug:

[LaurenG]

1. We will win - I agree, we will win.

K and R

[Tesibria]

2. thank you for sharing

it's stories like these ... NO .. it's the REALITY behind these stories around the US that explains why and how we really can "change the world" this year.

[mrreowwr_kittty]

3. Hooray for your husband!

What an inspiring story. Thanks for telling it.

[flpoljunkie]

4. Wonderfully moving account. Thanks so much for sharing!

[crazylikafox]

5. wonderful story. Thanks. And Congratulations!

I'll bet you had something to do with his conversion.

[roguevalley]

6. so, so, so sweet. Hug your husband for me. We will not lose.

[Jane Austin]

7. What a great story!

Thanks for sharing it with us.

[bmartello]

8. beautiful!

So wonderful! Hugs around!!

[JeffR]

9. That is so great!

Thanks for sharing your story.

[flygal]

10. I love this post! thank you

My husband didn't even vote in '96. But in 2000 he wanted McCain and was floored at bush - he was too rednecky and my husband is former military officer. Anyway, the Iraq war did it for my husband and he has been so anti-bush since. he didn't take it as hard as me in 2004 and probably isn't as much into this election as I am.

I wasn't an obama supporter early - in fact I didn't watch his convention speech. But, Biden in the debate, and Obama's 3rd debate and his canvassing in Ohio did it. I feel just like your husband. We'll be watching overseas so we're sleeping on the couch in front of CNN int. and hoping we wake up at 4am to very good news.

anyways, sorry to go off, but I really loved your post - so well said!!!

[Mother Of Four]

11. We'll be thinking of you that night-

Even though you're half a world away. I'm glad there are so many out there that for lack of a better word had an "Epiphany" this year.

I'm excited, scared, hopeful, content, and looking to the future. Nov 4 can't get here soon enough for us.

:hug:

[MadMaddie]

13. If you haven't seen the Convention you should find it and view it.

What's amazing is the diversity of the crowd. The enthusiasm is wonderful too.

:hi:

[MadMaddie]

12. We are glad you found us!

Your husband sounds like a stand up guy! Give him a big hug!

Hope is infectious! Hope is a movement! Hope for America is transcending!

Yes We Can!!

:grouphug:

[Mother Of Four]

19. I gave him a hug-

And freaked him out just a little.

He says "Love you honey"
I said "Oh...this hug isn't from me..."
He leans back and goes "Oh? Ehm?"

I replied with a swat on his butt "It's from someone you don't know" and walked off
:rofl:

[asdjrocky]

14. What a neat post.

Thanks for sharing this with us.

[Coexist]

15. K & R!

[Minimus]

16. Awww! Enjoy your hubby, the kettle corn and root beer on election night!

[Mother Of Four]

18. I love me some kettle corn!

:loveya:

[eshfemme]

17. Such a great story! It's really good to hear about people being moved to action!

This speaks to the significance of Obama's people-powered politics. That's what's scary-- that ordinary Americans can reclaim what was their right as citizens back from the rich and powerful.

[Mother Of Four]

20. It's wonderful nt

[Zhade]

21. If I keep reading these threads at work, I may just cry.

I keep getting chills!

[merh]

22. your post made me misty eyed

I so wish your husband could have talked with my brother. Sadly, his eyes have not been opened and he still believes that only republicans care about LEO.

A belated welcome to you and your husband and family. :grouphug:

Thank you for sharing :hug:

[Cha]

23. I love your story, Mother of Four..thanks

for sharing the inspiration with us!

[susanwy]

24. That is so sweet!

My life long republican brother-in-law, is voting for Obama. He said, what the hell I'll give the guy a chance, he can't f**k things up as bad as the republicans. If Obama can turn my brother-in-law, gun toting, NRA loving, closet racist, then he might just pull this off! I'm so excited.

Now, if I could only get my husband to think curling up in front of the TV together to watch anything political romantic, well....that would be a fun night!

[Richard Steele]

25. And what is PROOF that this year is special is: Your hubby is one amongst MILLIONS.

My rural PA parents, both registered Republicans
who have served as "Elders" in their small Evangelical Xtain church...
they're both gonna vote for Obama.

And my sweet, grey-haired auntie who was Homecoming Queen in 1963
and has never voted for anyone in her life...My Auntie who was always
the person who only saw the BEST parts of everyone she ever met...
she got one look at McCain a year ago, and she ran right out and registered to vote... to vote for Obama.

Any-who, whatever the deal is, or if even if i'm wrong about many other things,
I know I'm right about this one:

If you're gonna go for "root beer", I have it upon the advice of
several (9, if you must know) of the "best of the brightest" minds
of our generation (AKA: nine of the Swarthmore students that preferred
access to the Math Library to free beer in the Student Lounge back
in that notorious media debacle...)
that THIS is consdered to be a pretty damned good root beer:

[Willo]

26. K&R

Beautiful!

[tosh]

27. Wow! Thanks for sharing this story with us.

[youthere]

28. My apolitical husband took Tuesday off...

to volunteer. He didn't even take the day off work after our kids were born.

[Daphne08]

29. My husband was also a Republican.

He was a devout Reagan Republican when I first met him. He is such a good man and such a generous soul that I never could understand his political leanings. In fact, we learned early on NEVER to discuss politics.

Well, over the years he had become disillusioned with the party, and Barack Obama's message finally convinced him. (Yes, I helped a little.)

Anyway, my husband is now a proud Democrat, and the transformation in him is unbelievable.

He used to put on his headphones and frown whenever I watched C-Span or listened to a political show. Now HE listens to Randi Rhodes, Tom Hartmann and Rachel Maddow on the radio (he's on the road a lot).

I cannot tell you how shocked and surprised I am!

My husband has said that he will never vote for another Republican. He cannot believe what his old party has become.

So, you are right. Something IS happening in this country.

[bleever]

33. Now that's change we can believe in.

Congratulations. :toast:

[mrsadm]

30. I had given up all hope - yes, hope

Until this election. I figured this country would have to go as far as gas chambers before anyone would wake up and understand how we were being so screwed. I've been a union organizer for 8 years and almost no one wanted to stand up to our employer, even as jobs went overseas, layoffs were constantly happening, pay was cut and benefits were cut.

Both Gore and Kerry lost. Elections were distorted by the hanging chads and the Supreme Court became "rigged" to decide on a R president.

And now, suddenly, there is this siege of change across the country. My brother - never active politically - called me last night while he was standing in line, in Florida, waiting to hear Joe Biden speak. Incredible!

Hope and Change - the perfect words.....

[HCE SuiGeneris]

31. "He speaks to all of us..."

Thank you for sharing your story. May this nation come together again and heal itself with love, concern, forethought and compassion.

Peace to you, your family, this nation, and our world. :grouphug:

[damonm]

32. Tell yer husband from me -

"Welcome back to the fight - this time, I'm sure our side will win."

-Victor Lazlo(Paul Henried) to Rick Blaine(Humphrey Bogart) in Casblanca

:yourock:

[DiehardLiberal]

34. Another success story...

My personal trainer (who I've had to discontinue due to the business downturn) is a life-long Repub. We started discussing politics early in our relationship at the end of last year. Not without some heated moments, too! She is a firefighter full time and does the training on the side. Her boyfriend is due to be sent to Iraq and she is sick about it. I told her first about Democrats intention to end the war and then Obama's. She still has feelings about health care insurance and "giving money to those who don't work for it" (her fire dept is in a bad part of town with lots of people she thinks abuse the system). Couldn't get her to budge on those issues, but Monday I received the following email from her:

I cast my ballot!  I voted Obama.  I did a lot of research and though I don't agree with everything I feel confident I made a good decision.

One vote at a time - YES WE CAN!!!

[Betsy Ross]

35. A hug and a kiss from me to you and your husband.

Please thank your husband for his service to our country.

[childslibrarian]

36. What a guy

My father-in-law, the retired-FBI agent who voted for Obama early in Virginia, (first time ever to vote Democratic,) and your husband would get along great. Both great guys. I'm proud of them.

[NikolaC]

37. What A Wonderful Account

Thank you for sharing and to your husband for being so active and getting the word out. :hug: to you both.

[OneGrassRoot]

38. I love you and your family :)

Maybe we are neighbors; I certainly could use neighbors like you guys.

It warms my heart to know you're out there. Well, there were approximately 20,000 of us out there in Raleigh today. :)

In what part of NC do you live?

Thank you so much for sharing. Please give your husband a big hug from a fellow DUer.

:hug:

[Mother Of Four]

47. I'm about 30 mins outside of Goldsboro.

:hug: back at you :)

[PatSeg]

39. I've won a number of people over

with that Firefighter's speech of Biden's. Glad to hear your husband was affected by it as well.

Thank you for the encouraging thread!

[Old and In the Way]

40. Great story!

Hope there are millions more like your husband. Barack needs both a huge popular and electoral win to clear the roadblocks for progressive change. Of course, the Republicans fear this the most. If we reright the ship of state and build a new economy that propels the middle-class forward.....the final nails will be hammered into the Republican/conservative political coffin.

[bertman]

41. Too late to rec, but not too late to say thank you for such an inspiring story.

And thanks to the others who told their stories. My MIL and FIL voted for Bush in '00 and '04, but they have already voted early for Barack.

It makes my heart swell when I hear about these types of things.

The HOPE is so huge that it cannot be contained. When I get so upset from all of the news about voter caging and voter suppression I just go and read stories like these and my faith in America is restored.

Thank you again.

And please thank your husband for taking a stand and being the example that others need to see.

[TygrBright]

42. Mother of Four-- I think we're gonna take a leaf from your husband's book...

...on election night. Sounds like our kind of evening, especially the cuddling part.

So glad you're here, and thanks for your story. Something very like this is what I told co-workers today who were saying "Do you really think we're going to do it? Is it really going to happen?" I told them that in all my years as a voting, active Democrat, I have NEVER seen or heard so many stories like your husband's. I have NEVER seen crowds like the one at Obama's Early Voting rally last Saturday night.

My co-workers are young enough that they've only ever voted in disappointing general elections. They're having a hard time believing that the nightmare might come to an end. Yet they are also a big part of the reason it is coming to an end: They've been working hard to get Obama elected, volunteering, getting friends and family on board, talking it up every where they go.

I'm gonna send them a link to your OP.

appreciatively,
Bright

[Mother Of Four]

46. I'm glad-

It's amazing isn't it? It's like a whole new world opening up.

I was a R- then a RINO...then made the switch to Indy and thats where I am now. The breaking point for me with the R party came some time before my husbands though. It was a little over 5 years ago when my Uncle died. They put him in ICU and wouldn't allow his partner, the love of his life for more than 20 years, come in to see him because he wasn't "Family" (He had cancer that was so far advanced when they found it they gave him just a small percentage chance to live)

Rather than go through all the pain for such a small chance without him, he went home with Uncle Frank and died there. With the man he loved.

I can't tell you how hurt and angry I was. I'm STILL hurt and angry, I'm still shaking mad when I see people like my friend Nathan be CAREFUL who he tells about his SO. I get sick to my stomach when I see people act superior because of something they had no choice in, (Orientation, gender, melanin amount in their skin)

I didn't mean to rant, just wanted to give you a small bit of my own little transformation. I can't stand it when I hear about "Intolerance". That word suggests that people must TOLERATE, when what they should be doing is accepting.


EDIT- Read over my last sentence and wanted to clean it up if it wasn't clear. I feel that people should accept others for who they are, how beautiful and unique. That we should never be afraid to speak up, or speak out. That no matter what a person looks like, we owe it to them and to ourselves to understand and ACCEPT that they live, breathe, feel, love, cry, hurt, experience joy and look to the future just as much as we do. We will never all agree on the same thing, conflict is unfortunately a human condition. Tolerance has one definition that make it innapropriate to me.

1. To allow without prohibiting or opposing; permit.
2. To recognize and respect (the rights, beliefs, or practices of others).
3. To put up with; endure. See Synonyms at bear1.
4. Medicine To have tolerance for (a substance or pathogen)

I wish with all my heart, that we will move from "Tolerance" to "Acceptance"

[TygrBright]

48. Amen and what you said.

My favorite uncle and Godfather is gay; so is my sister. When I was little I was too young to know what was going on but I always felt there was something not-good about the way some of the family treated Uncle Joe. It made me closer to him in many ways than to other aunts/uncles. I didn't find out until I was a teenager and then it was because they thought I already knew, and they were warning me not to say anything about it to my dying (and by then, completely mentally impaired by strokes) Grandmother. They were terrified she'd "find out."

Years later, Uncle Joe told me that Grandmother knew all along, he'd talked to her about it in the 1940s, when he got home from the Army. She'd been worried on his behalf because it was so easy for a gay man to get arrested and jailed, and he wanted to be a teacher. So she told him to keep it from the rest of the family. All that deception, all that worry, all that negative stuff.

Uncle Joe did become a teacher, and a good one. More than 20 years in the Chicago public schools. But he never had a chance to have a long-term relationship, because there were "assumptions made" about two unmarried men living together-- assumptions he couldn't afford if he wanted to continue being a High School English teacher. It really distorted a whole part of his life, being in the closet.

My sister is gay also. I found out about the same time as I found out about Uncle Joe. She has had her share of crap ladled out to her, just because she prefers women to men. Fortunately by the time her generation came along there were a few more options, but she still suffered from the stupidity of bigots. It drives me wild, this mindless, vile bigotry against people based on something as non-issue as what kind of plumbing they prefer in their lovers.

Thanks for sharing your story. I think the GOP started losing a lot of its thoughtful, sane people when they hitched their wagon to the fundie wackjob star and started peering into people's bedrooms and doctors' offices. I'm glad us Dems have benefited by some of the fallout, though!

appreciatively,
Bright

[Stump]

43. Awesome story...

If you really want to celebrate, get some of this...
http://www.bulldogrootbeer.com/

[KT2000]

44. I loved that you wrote this

and they way you wrote it - excellent.
You captured the real change of this election.

[orleans]

45. kick and recommending in spirit (too late to actually r) n/t