Philadelphia
In my newsletter Monday (which you can get for free (!) by subscribing here), I argued briefly that Donald Trump could win the election, and told this anecdote from last week in Cleveland:
A few of us grabbed lunch at a burger and beer joint downtown on the first day of the convention. The burgers and beer were fine—though not as good as at the Winking Lizard sports bar Steve Hayes, John McCormack and I frequented later in the week. (By the way, shouldn’t that excellent Cleveland-area chain go national?) In any case, we were chatting with our waitress, a young (apparently single) mom who was looking forward to taking her two little kids to Disney World, where she’d never been, at the end of this busy work week. We drifted into a discussion of politics, and after some hesitation she acknowledged she intended to vote for Trump. Why, we asked? Because, she said, she had a low opinion of Hillary, thought Trump would be a strong leader and bring about change, and because of Trump’s stance on law and order (one of her cousins is a policeman). I asked her whether she’d voted before. Yes, she said, she’d voted for Obama, hoping he’d bring about change, and feeling the Romney Republicans were out of touch with people like her. Wow, I thought. How many other Obama-Trump voters are out there? They’re not the types who’ll volunteer their views to pollsters. Could there be more of them than there are Romney-Clinton switchover voters? It strikes me as quite possible.
A friend in the media read the newsletter and sent this email:
I just overheard the bartender here at Chili’s in downtown Philly (late 20s, white, female) say: “I know what my opinion is, I’m voting for Trump, I can’t vote for Hillary.” She said this to a black dude (in his 50s) sitting at the bar who agreed wholeheartedly with her! They then continued to banter about locking up criminals and government waste. Not sure what planet I’m on right now…
We could be on a planet on which Donald Trump becomes president.
