Archives » Wednesday, October 22, 2008
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Howard Fineman
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Oct 22, 2008 04:19 PM
He is an old gent, in his eighties, but a hale and hearty one, wiry and strong.
Ernie said that he'd never smoked, and drank but little, and watched what he ate.
These all good things, considering that he needed to work, and the work he did required him to lift bags — sometimes heavy, hard-shelled golf bags — for the businessmen who rode his rental car shuttle to and from the St. Louis airport.
He had been reared a Democrat, he said, as had nearly everyone in St. Louis in those days. It was Truman's time in Missouri — a state with more than a dram of Southern Comfort in its blood.
In recent decades, Ernie had voted for Republicans from time to time. But considering recent economic events, he said it was time to return to his ancestral political roots.
And then, in a tone that was as much confession as joy, he told me sheepishly: "I'm gonna vote for the colored boy. I like the way he's talkin'."
I think of Ernie, who I encountered when I went out to St. Louis for the vice presidential debate, when I hear all the talk about the so-called "Bradley Effect."
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