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Watching Biden tonight, my mind flashed back to this moment in 2008 when my WWII veteran grandpa, a Republican most of his life, left the party to proudly vote for Obama. https://twitter.com/SethCotlar/status/929383670447611905
After we watched that episode of MTP, my grandpa showed me letters he'd gotten from former college classmates of his, also folks in their 90s, who closed their letters with fervent wishes for an Obama victory in November.
I sensed that in the minds of these folks who'd lived through WWII and the Civil Rights Movement as adults, Obama felt like a historical deliverance they could have never imagined would happen so soon. None of these folks were particularly progressive, but they were patriotic.
A good chunk of white Americans responded to a black family in the White House with horror and revulsion, or at least with a sense that somehow there was something wrong with that picture. Hence birtherism.
