As our plates steadily emptied of their honey-baked ham and sweet potato pudding last Christmas, I suddenly realized my family had nearly exhausted our usual yuletide conversation topics (including plans for escaping the grimy winter months ahead through trips to Pennsylvania’s version of the Riviera—Florida) and was headed directly for that reliably disastrous discussion topic: politics.
“You can’t be serious about Hillary—that laugh! It’s demonic!”
“What, Obama’s so much better? Tell me that again after he negotiates with the terrorists and we all die.”
I cringed and tried to excuse myself before someone could ask me about John Edwards’ haircut. My only comforting thought against the barrage of knee-jerk reactions was the fact that at least we would be done with this Democratic bickering by the next reunion at Easter.
Of course, the universe had other plans. Three months later, Good Friday rolled around and I braced myself for more diatribes against flag-pin-less lapels as I drove to my grandparents’ small town, an hour-and-a-half outside of Pittsburgh. But something strange happened as an assortment of my aunts, uncles, cousins, great-aunts, second-cousins, and nuclear family gathered around the kielbasa and sweetbread goodness in the kitchen: we started to talk ideas.
An aunt explained her views on which of the two competing health care plans had a better chance of succeeding; an uncle discussed the effects of Obama’s speech on race in America; a cousin argued for her favored method of reducing oil consumption. And even though we still quarreled and traded frustrated barbs like any family does when talking about candidates and ballots, we’d gotten past the irrelevant things that fill up time on cable news shows and got into the meat of actual issues.
There’s an infinite number of reasons why a long, drawn-out primary season could be killing the Democratic party, but when I look at the effect it has had on my family, I only see advantages for the country as a whole. The more time we spend hearing Clinton and Obama’s plans for the country, the more we learn about our own views and values. This primary season, it seems to take an effort not to become engaged with the campaign process. If people are excited about ideas and about how to put those ideas into action as the result of this extended conversation, the can’t be all that bad.
I tend to think that much of the reason my family traded immaterial candidate insults at Christmas was because they knew their votes probably wouldn’t count, so they let pundits do the judging for them. Back in December, when everyone was predicting the race to be finished by Valentine’s Day, I remember looking at a schedule of primaries and feeling crestfallen that my vote as a Pennsylvanian (in my first Presidential race, no less) probably wouldn’t count: the last time the Keystone state mattered in a Democratic primary was 1976. I cared about the race and who would become the eventual nominee, but with the resignation that I couldn’t actually do anything about it.
Once it became clear that I should get an absentee ballot because Pennsylvania would really have a role in the race, I regained my sense of excitement and interest in the details of the two candidate’s policies. My grandma, too, had reason to feel more involved: she called me ecstatically when she found out that Clinton would be speaking at the nearby high school gym, and planned to go cheer her on with her sister.
Of course, the only reason this race has continued for such an abnormally long time is because there are two extremely qualified, likeable candidates—a rarity I’m glad to be witnessing. If it takes months of debates and speeches to get us past musings over who can eat like a local more convincingly and get to the intricate details of how we’re going to get out of Iraq, so be it. I for one will be looking forward to arguing over immigration policies and education with my great-aunt at our annual summer vacation to the beach.
