debating

(warning: possible liberal political opinions ahead.)
A couple of nights ago, on the fifteenth, something extraordinary happened.
Well, lots of extraordinary things have happened the last few days - among them Trevelyn dissecting the word extraordinary for me.

This particular incident was the democratic presidential debate.

We had planned on watching "Chased by Sea Monsters", a discovery channel documentary that we have on tape.
I don't know why we were flipping channels - maybe we were waiting for Trev to come back into the room, or something.
We came to the debate at the round table with the three leading democratic runners. Barack, Hilary, and John.
"Oh, no. What's this?" Upon entering back into the room. (This is the first debate that Eric and I have watched.)
"It's the presidential candidate debate."
"It looks boring."
"Well, sometimes it is, but it's important. You know how Bush isn't going to be our president much longer? Well, these three want to be president, and so they are being asked how they feel or what they think about things that some people are interested in."
...
Me: "Ugh. I had no idea that Barack is for nuclear energy. Dang." (and that there are seventeen plants in the planning at the moment. shudder.) He loses points (with me) for that one.
Hilary gets up, and has views that are more in line with our (Eric's and mine) own - and John does even better.
Me: "Well, that's something in her favor (to us)."
"D'you want her to be president, Mom?"
"Well, I have concerns that Hilary thinks children should be raised by the government. That bothers me."
They (all of them) go on to discuss putting children two years old in school. shudder, again.
We talked quite a bit about how her husband was Bill Clinton, who used to be president, and that she has lots of knowledge about how stuff goes, and that her husband was really well liked (mostly) by the leaders of the world. And that the economy was in a pretty good state then.
Trev: "Well, when they kick Bush out...." lol
Me: "Bush isn't getting kicked out, it's just that you can only be president twice, and his time is up."
Eric: "Thank God." Indeed.

From Trev, "Well, I'm going to vote for Hilary. I think she should be president."
So there you have his vote. I didn't tell him that he doesn't count, of course.

"Who's the president of Salt Lake?"
"Actually, we just got a new one a few days ago. But he is called the Mayor. It used to be Rocky Anderson - who we really, really like, but now it's a new guy - Ralph Becker. (Another democrat in a very republican state.) I think he'll do pretty well.

The whole thing (over an hour of discussions and watching) was really interesting. Trev stayed right there with us. Not one complaint, other than in the beginning, which I was really surprised at. He was actually quite taken with it - seemed to understand really well that this was a big deal, and important.
And wanted to be a part of it, and to understand it.
Amazing boy he is.