The Sex Lives of Cab Drivers

A tweet from Brad Dugard about a fulminating cab driver reminds me of my favorite DC cab driver story.

The cabbie picked me up at Union Station one evening during the Obama-Clinton primary battle. Older black man, a DC native. He recognized me from TV, and began to expound his political opinions.

The Republicans, he said, were dividing Americans from each other. We then had a dialogue that went approximately as follows.

HIM: "The other night I picked up three women. White women. Very attractive women. They'd been out to a club, they were all dressed up. Not one of them had got a date! See that's what I mean about these Republicans."

ME: "It's President Bush's fault those women didn't have dates?"

HIM: "The Republicans divide us. They divide black from white. They divide men from women. That's why I'm living alone!"

ME (suspiciously): "Did you have a girlfriend during the Clinton administration?"

HIM: "Don't get fresh with me."

Policy wonks may scoff, but in all the time since then, I've never been able to erase an intuition that "Vote [FILL IN NAME OF PARTY]; get a date" could be the all-time winning political slogan.