Talking to voters, talking to friends.

I was so pleased, a few days ago, when BG posted the call for women to endorse Obama. Right away, I darted over to my Gmail account, and started drafting a letter to female friends. It struck a chord with me — partly because my thinking about this election these last few weeks has been so focused on women. As I was putting together my list of e-mail addresses, though, I realized that sending this e-mail was going to mean talking politics with a few old friends — a few old conservative friends — who very likely had no interest in adding their name to the role call list of women supporting Barack Obama.

Most of these friends are old high school classmates of mine. We attended a Catholic high school, where by some skewed tipping political spectrum I was suddenly one of the far-left leaning radicals in the bunch simply because I adamantly refused to join the Lions for Life club, or march in pro-life rallies at the state capitol. Other friends, other close friends, headed up that club, by the way. Somehow, we odd birds — me, equated by my peers with bra-burners and Socialists and heathens and the like, while my friends blithely out God’s will by praying for Terri Schiavo — managed to get through a half-decade of close friendship by studiously avoiding the topic of abortion. When it came up, there was some huffing and puffing, occasional sobs from the mortified innocents, and much eye-rolling on my behalf.

We divided into two camps: those few of us who left not only Washington, but also the Catholic education system, and then the others who largely burrowed further in. And we’ve grown in very different ways. After seeing one of my own dear (new) friends through a heart-wrenching, devastating abortion — the real deal, which High School Me couldn’t begin to understand — I’m only more committed to voting for someone who supports reproductive freedom, and who understands that no one (as Obama so perfectly put it in the final presidential debate) is “pro-abortion.” I’m heartened by signs like this one, that indicate that perhaps Catholic voters who might have previously made their decisions on the single issue of abortion are reconsidering, this time around. On the other hand, there’s this — “non-negotiables” that terrify me, but provide some framework for decision-making for many old friends and acquaintances.

I’ve been thinking about this for a few days. Initially, I decided to just drop it — I let my e-mail slide into the pit of Gmail drafts that never get sent. After all, I’m still largely influenced by that childhood lesson that money and politics do not make for polite conversation. That said, after a few days of thinking, I don’t want to send that e-mail — but I do feel this impulse to call those friends, some of whom I haven’t spoken with in months, and hear about their lives, and talk about our jobs, and then say: “This is why I’m supporting Barack Obama. Tell me about what you’re feeling these days.”

The trouble is, here in my little Vermont enclave, where the closest I come to heated political discourse is when I’m stuck in my car (alone) behind a truck sporting “Nobama” and “Say Yes to Gov. Palin, No to Liberal Media” bumper stickers, I don’t know how to talk to undecided voters or McCain supporters, not really. And even though I’m good at talking points when it comes to calling a stranger — how do I bring these things up with friends and family on the other side of the political fence?

Maybe I just need to jump in. But I thought this might be a good question for the blog, as political discussion ramps up in these last two weeks: how do you talk to the people in your lives (not callers on the receiving end of a phone bank, but honest-to-goodness friends) about why you support Obama? At this point, I have become something of that raging liberal I was rumored to be in high school — which means, with the logic of a small child or an egocentric princess, I honestly have trouble understanding why any rational person would not support my candidate. How do you talk to someone you respect, but whose choices you can’t stand, about something as delicate as politics?

Yes, we’re up. But not by much. And I’d like to be able to talk to that 42 percent of my countrymen who don’t see the world the way I do.