“Hi Bunkie!” Clyde called out as I walked in. “Been waiting for you to come in. I’ve got a question or two.”
“Sure Clyde.” I settled onto a stool while he poured me a double of Bushmills. “What’s on your mind?”
“Well, I was on-line this morning and I see new polls are out that say Obama and Romney are dead even in Virginia. Every where I turn people are saying it’s gonna be close here. Same thing about Allen and Kaine. What do you think?”
“I ain’t no prognosticator, just ask the guy I used to use to pass my football bets through. But I’m kinda doubting Obama and Romney will be as close as everyone is predicting. Kaine and Allen will be though.”
Clyde put a just cleaned margarita glass on that overhead rack thing and said, “You know I voted for Obama last time, I mean what else was I supposed to do? I can’t do it this time though.”
“Clyde, 2008 was a historic election, no one can blame you for voting for Obama, you are black you know. It was a proud time for you guys. The Democrats had nominated someone you could identify with. Even a lot of us melanin impaired guys voted for him, to prove, to themselves at least, that they were past the racism of the 60s, 70s, even 80s. It’s done, history will record it. And we’ll get by.
“To put it simply, though, 2008 was a fluke.
“In a similar way, 1964 was also a fluke. In a time of real racial flux, a dog whistle racist from Texas somehow convinced blacks that he would solve all their problems, at the same time he was convincing people not unlike my parents that Barry Goldwater was out to get us all blown to hell. Which he then went on to try to do. My parents didn’t fall for it, by the way.
“In every other election, even the ones won by Democrats, Virginians have consistently gone Republican. By a wide margin, often winning with 52% or better. In 1992, when Clinton won, the Republican v Democrat ratio was the same, Perot skewed it some, but Virginia still went plus 5% for Bush W’s daddy.”
“So the polls are wrong? Or massaged?” Clyde asked.
“I don’t know. Polls are mysterious stuff. I know people who can read ’em, but I’m not one of ’em. There were polls that had John Kerry up by 1% at this point in 2004. We both know that outcome.
“The other thing I’m using to go out on this limb is crowd size. Or expected Obama crowd size. We know they had planned to use Charlotte Motor Speedway for this year’s acceptance speech. Grab that sports trivia book you have behind the bar and look up the seating capacity.”
After thumbing through it a bit, Clyde announced, “140 thousand.”
“Okay,” I said, “But that’s race weekend, with the infield full of RVs, race car haulers, vendors trucks, you get the idea. I imagine with the infield cleared 200 thousand ain’t impossible.
“They changed it though. Moved it to a football stadium with way less than half that capacity. It even has the poison name of Bank of America Stadium. Why would they do that?
“Any seasoned campaign guy will tell you to never book an event venue you can’t fill up. If you have some people standing around outside who can’t get in, even better.
“Just here recently, in Roanoke where he filled the civic center in 2008, he went to a single city block, a short city block, in front of a fire station.
“There was a high school gym, somewhere in northern Virginia, that had to be divided in half in order to make it seem full. I forget where, exactly. The anti-Obama protesters outside may have even equaled the supporters inside.
“So, to answer your original question, no I really don’t expect it to be as close as it’s claimed to be here in Virginia. Can’t speak for the rest of the country, but I imagine it will be the same. Outside New York City and California, of course.”
Clyde put the sport book aside, refilled my dry as toast glass, and said, “Well, there ain’t nothing I can do about being black, I am what I am and I’m proud of it. But I’m going tomorrow to that church over near Bassett High School to see what I have to do to be a Mormon.”
