There’s something happening here…

I just went to get my (overdue) haircut at the hair salon, deep in that hardcore-Democrat lair that goes by the name of Cook (“Crook”) County, Illinois. The woman who has cut may hair for the past 20+ years works in a working-class hair salon that tends to employ lower-middle class women, many single, and a few (mostly gay) men. I would generally characterize them as pro-labor union, conservative lifestyle-but-religiously Democrat voters who stay marginally aware of political issues. They tend to be very suspicious of business people and wealthy people. The woman who cuts my hair has known me for a very long time and we have kept up with each others families as our kids grew up. So, at this point in time, we have pretty much lost any pretenses in the wide open discussions that we’ve had over the years. Often, we disagree but we always have great discussions. Our standing joke is that, before every election, I tell her that she is a true Republican in her personal and family values but that she just can’t help herself from voting Democrat.

This time, she brought up to me that she had not watched the debate this week but that, the day after, the overwhelming sentiment at the hair salon was that Romney wiped the floor with Obama. I was shocked. But, how many of them would have supported Obama to begin with, I asked. “All of them”. I asked her how many of them would actually vote for Romney now, based on that debate, however. Her reply, “all of them!” She, too, will vote for a Republican President for the first time in her life. I asked her why. Her response, “I would have been willing to give Obama another chance if he had just kept things the same. But he has caused so much damage, I just can’t do that this time.”

Somehow, I suspect that she and her coworkers haven’t shown up yet in the polling statistics, yet.