For hope.

what it will take to get these people to embrace Senator Obama.

Change his name to "McCain."

Great diary. Rec'd.

One thought. I can't possibly speak for your grandmother, but I'd like to mention a possibility you may not have considered. Her opposition to a mixed-race date may not have had anything to do with racism.

Like a lot of people her age, she would have witnessed the reaction of people in your community to mixed-race liaisons. She would have been well aware of the tragedy that often accompanied such pairings. That might have had more to do with her reaction than any other thing.

It wouldn't help your case by starting off name - calling .

I can't imagine trying to convince my dad to send me some funds and I start off by telling him I think he is an a**hole. ( of course that would be after taking a shot of vodka to get my courage up )

I suspect my prospect of being successful would be marginal lol.

In the end I think the intent of the diary is not to  reason with such folks.

I really can't speak for PUMA and other like-minded Democrats, but I think they are embracing the politics of change. It's just a matter of what change means to you.

I think they want to see change in the party as much as you do.

did you get permission of your grandmother before posting her pic online? just curious.. if not, then I guess the right thing to do is remove her pic from the diary..

haviong said that I do agree with your theory of deadenders.. that should change.. however we also dont want Obama to be constantly change his message of hope and change under the pretext of "finetuning" his own message.. this is democrats year.. it should be landslide..

If you hadn't used the term they would have conjoured up a reason to be against the Democratic nominee while making it sound like concern.

I very much enjoyed your diary. I would love to meet your grandma.

Very nice

recced. Nice meeting y'all

Did you know (and this is all in Ryan Lizza's profile of Obama in the New Yorker) -- http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/ 07/21/080721fa_fact_lizza?printable=true  

That Obama plotted Gov. Blago's campaign when David Axelrod would not?  And why not?  

That year, he gained his first high-level experience in a statewide campaign when he advised the victorious gubernatorial candidate Rod Blagojevich, another politician with a funny name and a message of reform.**
David Axelrod, the preëminent strategist in the state, declined to work for Blagojevich. "He had been my client and I had a very good relationship with him, but I didn't sign on to the governor's race," Axelrod said. "Obviously he won, but I had concerns about it. . . . I was concerned about whether he was ready for that. Not so much for the race but for governing. I was concerned about some of the folks--I was concerned about how the race was being approached."

That some of his early, strong backers feel he has sided with anti-reform interests?

Obama's establishment inclinations have alienated some old friends. During the 2004 Senate primary, Obama sometimes reminded voters of his anti-machine credentials, but at the same time he shrewdly wrote to Mayor Daley's brother, William, who had backed one of Obama's primary opponents, asking for his support if he won the primary. As he outgrew the provincial politics of Hyde Park, he became closer to the Mayor, and this accommodation, as well as his unwillingness to condemn the corruption scandals ensnaring Daley and Blagojevich, both of whom he supported for reëlection, have some of his original supporters feeling alienated and angry. "I am not thrilled with Barack, simply because we elected him as an Independent, and he switched over to Daley," Alan Dobry said.

Read the whole article.  I think you'll see that Obama has a history of forgetting his friends and backers when it suits him:

There was also a more general belief that, after Obama won the 2004 United States Senate primary, he ignored his South Side base. Preckwinkle said, "My view is you have to bring your constituency along with you. Granted, you have to make some tough decisions. Granted, sometimes you have to make decisions that people won't understand or like. But it's your obligation to explain yourself and try to do your supporters the courtesy of treating them with respect." Ivory Mitchell, who for twenty years has been the chairman of the local ward organization in Obama's neighborhood--considered the most important Democratic organization on the South Side--was one of Obama's earliest backers. Today, he says, "All the work we did to help him get where he finally ended up, he didn't seem too appreciative." A year ago, Mitchell became a delegate for Hillary Clinton.

And what did Obama do for the poor of the city?  When the Dems took control of the State House, the Dem legislators got to redraw their districts.  Obama went after a new constituency rather than staying with the poor neighborhoods that helped him:

Like every other Democratic legislator who entered the inner sanctum, Obama began working on his "ideal map." Corrigan remembers two things about the district that he and Obama drew. First, it retained Obama's Hyde Park base--he had managed to beat Rush in Hyde Park--then swooped upward along the lakefront and toward downtown. By the end of the final redistricting process, his new district bore little resemblance to his old one. Rather than jutting far to the west, like a long thin dagger, into a swath of poor black neighborhoods of bungalow homes, Obama's map now shot north, encompassing about half of the Loop, whose southern portion was beginning to be transformed by developers like Tony Rezko, and stretched far up Michigan Avenue and into the Gold Coast, covering much of the city's economic heart, its main retail thoroughfares, and its finest museums, parks, skyscrapers, and lakefront apartment buildings. African-Americans still were a majority, and the map contained some of the poorest sections of Chicago, but Obama's new district was wealthier, whiter, more Jewish, less blue-collar, and better educated. It also included one of the highest concentrations of Republicans in Chicago.
"It was a radical change," Corrigan said. The new district was a natural fit for the candidate that Obama was in the process of becoming. "He saw that when we were doing fund-raisers in the Rush campaign his appeal to, quite frankly, young white professionals was dramatic."

Barack is only interested in himself, not you, not your family.

I really enjoy it when people are willing to discuss their personal political journey on MyDD.

Regarding the "PUMA" crowd - most of those people were never going to vote Dem.

A blogosphere myth.

Same 50 nuts circling the same lunatic fringe sites.

I love laughing at them though. SoCal Darlin has me in stitches with her quest for Obama's REAL birth certificate. Check it out at NoKKKwarter if you want a good laugh.

Now that's being delusional.

As a Hillary primary voter and currently an Obama supporter (Unity ticket promoter), I'm a little tired of hearing this particular line trotted out when it makes no logical sense. (I mean the "X is voting for Barack, so why aren't you?" where "X" is some former Hillary or even McCain supporter. But usually a Hillary voter.)

It goes like this:

1) I love my cat.  (I supported Hillary)

2. My cat likes tuna fish. (Hillary supports Obama)
   
3. Therefore, I like tuna fish. (Therefore, I must logically support Obama.)  

Except I despise tuna fish (except as sashimi.) And although I deeply respect Hillary Clinton, she doesn't control my vote. My reasons for supporting Obama are practical; I'm not enthusiastic about him, I continue to prefer Hillary Clinton, but I'll take either of them over John McCain by several thousand light-years.  Simple as that.

So it's a big mistake to go up to a former Hillary supporter (self-identified PUMA or not) and say, "Hey! This other person here supports Obama! What's YOUR problem, loser??!"   I think you can see the problem that question presents for a friendly discourse.  

The best thing you and others can do to defang the PUMAs is to get behind the Unity ticket and bring Hillary Clinton aboard the ticket. (Yes, I think Obama can handle her. Yes, Bill too. Give Obama some credit, eh?) This won't make all of them happy, but it will bring some of them over and will make the protests of the others sound even more hollow.

And it will help with what I think of the "silent PUMAs" -- Democrats who aren't, at the moment, convinced to vote for Obama but who have probably never visited a blog in their lives.  There are a LOT more of those people than there are active PUMAs and they carry much, much more weight at the polls. Those are the folks Obama needs to reach out to. And you as well.  Posting here isn't going to reach ANY PUMAs. The only ones who show up here do it to be disruptive (primarily. Might be a couple of exceptions, I'm not sure -- haven't been here that long myself.)

Anyway, a bit first step toward reaching more "silent PUMAs" is not to trot out the "Get on the bandwagon, vote for Obama like my Grandma!" line.  

I have yet to meet a disgruntled Clinton supporter who isn't between the ages of 35 and 60.  Speaking in generalities, if you're younger Obama's message of change and transformation is appealing (this the demographic right now that's supporting him by ratios of 2-1 and in some states even 3-1, which means he's getting the votes of indies and some Republicans).  

Those voters who are older than 60, in my experience, generally supported Clinton in the primaries, but they also have a loyalty to the Democratic party which goes beyond personalities and would consider sitting out this election to be an expensive indulgence (again, just talking about the people I know, but the older voters who don't like Obama all that much don't seem particularly conflicted).

It's the baby boomers who are having a tough time, and I think there are several different issues in play.  One is generational solidarity.  Baby boomers are famous for believing that "the personal is political", and the idea that they should support someone they don't like all that much offends many to the core (in a manner which doesn't bother voters, I think, who are younger and older).

Another issue which doesn't get mentioned all that much.  If one looks at the sweep of American politics during the past 30 years, baby boomers, ironically, and very contrary to their reputations, are actually the age cohort which is friendliest to Republicans within the entire electorate.  

Older voters have actual memories of the Kennedy/Johnson years (when the New Deal coalition, one can see with hindsight, was experiencing its last glow).  Voters under 35 developed their politics during the Clinton/Bush years (when, in some sense, the contemporary Democratic party was at its best and the GOP was at its worst).

Many voters in this middle band, though, flip-flopped all over the place.  It's not difficult to meet someone who cast his or her first ballot for Eugene McCarthy in '68, McGovern in '72, Carter in '76, but then jumped on the Reagan/Bush bandwagon, voted GOP the next three times, then returned to the Dems when he or she voted for Clinton, but then got tired of that and voted for Bush in 2000, etc.  And that's just one path.

And the unifying thread, I'll suggest, is a belief in politics as a form of self-actualization (whereas older and younger voters don't believe in this quite so much).  

Who is your father and mother voting for?  And whom did they vote for in 1980 and 2000?  These are questions which, I think, would possibly shed more light on who has problems voting for Obama this year and why (your grandmother isn't really the problem, though it's quite possible your parents aren't the problem, either, since we're talking about a subset within a subset).

Great diary...especially this..

She marveled to me that she could have never dreamt of having to pick between a woman and an African American for her ballot; but how hopeful that made her for the future of this nation.

This is what gets lost in all the arguments about racism, sexism and how the Democratic contributed to it.  Someone please explain to me how the Democratic party and America has not made substantial progress in the rights of women and AA when our last two Democratic nominees were a Woman and an African American, who kicked the shit out of 7 white men.  This speaks volumes for our party and the citizens of the US..and doesn't receive the attention it should.

Thanks again, zcflint05, for an excellent diary!

Wonderful diary. thanks. I love these stories and you are right they do make things personal and much closer to home. Lucky you with a grandma like this :)

Since you are gay, may i ask for whom did you vote for? And if for Obama why? Hillary did a lot for our community despite taking hits from the right while Obama cater to us when convenient and is not with us when it does not suit him. So my question is why did you pick Obama over Hillary? I hope you now understand why many are not for Obama.

As for donating to Obama, i rather spent the money helping Hillary clear her debt and donate to local campaigns. And i did as i already max my donation for Hillary.

I'm in my 20s and i'm an optimist. I have lots of hope and i believe that we will be able to get a progressive on the ballot. Barack Obama has shown that he is not a progressive while our 'progressive' reputation has been attached to him. The irony of that. Politics is not a game. it affects the lives of millions. With 2 wars, 9 trillion in debt, healthcare, environment, and many many more problems that Bush had caused, the next President not really have to ensure things don't get any worse, but solve those problems as well. If Obama failed to do so, then the progressive era which took place starting in 2006 will fail alongside with Obama.

P.S. i know many who have been voting for democrats all their life but is not on board yet. PUMA had stated that they had raised 6.5 mil for Clinton. If this is true, then Obama has a much bigger problem uniting the democrats than he thought.

A vote for Obama is a vote to endorse and support the onslaught against Hillary Clinton in the media (which supposedly the "netroots" hates so much).  By even having HRC kowtow to this Kennedy and be "interviewed" is an insult to her 18 million supporters, when she should be the obvious choice for veep.  It's an astonishing insult.  And for people like me, it's not about my "ego" on this matter--it's about saying "NO"--not this time again.

Dear zcflint05,

Although at 58 I am not as old as your grandmother, I may be closer to the age of your mother and I too am voting for Obama.

But what this race has already revealed it that there are two separate realities involved.  We all look at the same facts (usually) but the conclusions drawn are at times so contradictory that it doesn't seem possible that we even share a common language.  And this is only amongst the Democrats.

Remember that the differing reality was actually started when Bush looked at all of the facts and decided that the only way to remove the threat of bin Laden was to depose Saddam Hussein through military force.

The fact is that the PUMAs and others like them will not vote for Barack Obama under any circumstances and trying to discuss it rationally with them doesn't really resolve anything.  Humor doesn't work either, BTW as was shown yesterday in the Why Would Any Fool Vote for Obama diary.

Your energy might be better directed towards the dissatisfied Republicans who don't recognize the Bush reality and the Independents who don't know enough about our candidate to make a decision yet. That is probably where the race will be decided.

Good luck (you're already very fortunate in your choice of grandmothers)

People have different reasons for not supporting Obama. We don't all think alike and my ideology and values are not the same as yours.

It's nice that you and your grandmother see eye to eye when it comes to voting though. Also, does your grandmother know that you've posted her image on the Internet for all to see? :D

This diary has confirmed my worst fears. We have a young generation bringing a real sense of maturity to the campaign while going around claiming around people are 'deadenders' for having a differing political opinion.

Gee grow some political acumen...people aren't normally guilted so heavily into voting for a candidate who is doing their job.

thrilled to be part of the contingent of MyDD, gay Hillary supporters now supporting Obama. BTW, I never pictured you to be so young. A bizarre aspect of anonymous blogs is the mental picture that one forms from the various interactions and writings of other bloggers. It is almost never acurate. Your writings have always given me the impression that you have been around much longer than what your picture suggests. It is nice to have a "real" picture in my mind to associate with your user name.  

and you were bi, I'd date ya!!!!   What a cute photo!   Instead, I'll just "rec" ya.  

I understand the hurt and frustration of the PUMA's.  As a Hillary supporter,  its been very hard to get this close and feel that it was yanked away.  I think if the shoe were on the other foot,  many Obama supporters would have their own version of PUMA.  

I just hope they come back to the party and vote on the issues, not the personality or the gender in the end.  I believe most will.  The stakes are too high, as Hillary said.  

Nice diary

I'm not a racist. Obama is just a marketing scam, he is dumb and naive and inexperienced. What hope and chnage? His campaign began a year and a half ago, but its the same thing over and over again, no new ideas or innovative solutions, just rallies and speeches.