2016 Postmortem

Bill never won an election with 50% of the vote.

I was in my young adult years back where my mother lived and still naive about the world and remember not understanding their deranged hatred for Bill, things were going well, he was "bubba." But, the 90s was when the "silent majority" of the 80s had melded into the full on AM hate radio conservative movement. That was when the disconnect between actual reality and what they wanted to believe was starting to take root.

They hate BHO, just not with the red hot hatred they had for Bill and Hillary. That isn't a reflection of anything that BHO did to "reach out to them" as much as it is him personally. BHO was such a calm and soft spoken person, and don't discount his being a prototype family man. He just is such an extraordinary person it made it harder for them have anything tangible to grab ahold of like Bill being a slut.

You are right, they certainly don't think of themselves as bigots, racists and the such, and in fact most are generally cordial and often generous people.

My inlaws are really good people. They know my politics, and we just respect each other and don't ever talk politics, and that being the unspoken rule they have totally accepted me and are great to me.

Because I am good husband and father, honest and genuine person and make an effort to connect with them and they can accept that I think differently, and maybe that I am even right on some of the things that I don't talk to them about. But, I assure you, if I was to try to tell them things different from what they believe, the dynamics between us would change REAL quick.

I remember going up after Newtown and they were all agitated, they were dead sure that this was going to be the thing that had the liberals coming after their guns, the one time we have sort of talked politics because they were genuinely scared and said something to me and looked at me, so I knew they wanted my opinion.

I told them the same thing I told my liberal friends who were equally as sure - not a fucking thing was going to happen. No one believed me at the time, even though I pointed out that the republicans had the House and there was absolutely no chance, NONE that they would pass any firearm legislation.

Next time we visited, half of them had went out and gotten ARs just to be sure and had brought them over to look at them ...

This summer they invited me and my wife to a river boat dinner they invite us to every year. We sat with some of their friends on top and a discussion about Hillary and Trump started - I probably was the only person who would vote Hillary there, and I am not joking that if I would have said anything that my inlaws would have been had their hands full keeping me from from having to swim ashore.