My parents split up politically when I was a kid; he was a loyal Republican and she a devoted Democrat. Their political differences were the lingua franca of my childhood; They took us to whistlestop appearances by Presidential candidates and what passed in those days for demonstrations and took us to the polls when we were still toddlers They purchased the first TV set in the neighborhood for the Army-McCarthy hearings and were active participants in their respective parties in the Connecticut town I grew up in - I spent the first Tuesday in November every two years in drafty firehouses or school gymnasiums offering coffee and doughnuts to voters or visiting homes for the elderly with absentee ballots. After the Kennedy/Nixon contest, they didn't speak to each other for a week and she never really forgave him for voting for Barry Goldwater.
For a time they were both chairmen of their respective local parties. My mother upped the ante when she ran for the school board and later, as the president of the state League of Women Voters , took on the cause of court reform so successfully that many of my father's colleagues, lawyers like him, saw their lucrative extracurricular duties as justices of the peace were eliminated as sources of patronage . I often wonder whether the presidential election of 2016 might have led to a divorce if they were still alive. I like to think he would have given in after Jen Bush dropped out - Trump's was a line I don't believe he would have crossed. But when I find myself in a school gym or church basement next week, I will hear them arguing again, except this time they won't be cancelling out each other's vote.