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One day airports will figure out a civilized way to catch an Uber after a flight, but last Sunday at O’Hare, where throngs of confused travelers stared down an endless stream of gray Toyota Camrys, that day wasn’t it. After meeting face to face with my driver and exchanging names, I settled into the motorcade to my hotel and began chatting.
“May I ask what your accent is like?” I asked. “I travel a lot and I don’t know where the accent is from.”
“Siberian,” he laughed. “I know it’s confusing. I look Chinese, I speak Russian. I won the green card lottery.”
As it turned out, there were only a few spots selected for his area in the Green Card Lottery, so he applied on a whim and won. He arrived in Chicago four years ago not being able to speak English, and is thrilled to be here.
“There is no democracy in Russia,” he said. “Putin is a dictator and if you want one of these cars you need to have a good job and connections. Not at all.”
He no longer travels home to see his parents for fear of being arrested or drafted.
It was a solemn feeling to enter Chicago during the week of the Democratic National Convention, and I wondered if the people here who won the “Born in America Lottery” really realized just how special it was.
Chicago being Chicago, I mostly met Democrats, but not only Democrats. On the first night I met a guy who wore a white-and-gold MAGA hat and liked to troll his hometown. There are many types of Democrats, and each has their own priorities.
This Chicagoan loves to wear a MAGA cap to annoy liberals.
Several of the bartenders and hotel workers I spoke to stressed the importance of unions. Most of them belong to Local 1 of the Service Employees International Union, and they are concerned about Donald Trump’s positions on labor issues and are unclear about where Harris stands on other issues. They are not self-conscious progressives, and they also emphasized the difference between private and public unions.
“We know this business,” one person told me. “We know that if you charge too high a price, you go out of business. The government has unlimited funds.”
For these workers, like many others, voting for president is directly tied to their jobs and their bank accounts. For others, loftier causes take center stage.
I met a millennial couple on their way to a concert sponsored by the Democratic National Convention. They were both Harris supporters, but their political lifestyles were somewhat different. In a dimly lit Chicago steakhouse, I asked them if they had any friends who voted for Trump. She didn’t, but he was from a more rural background and had friends who did.
Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris (Getty Images)
“We can talk politics,” he said of his friends back home, “and it’s usually not too heated. We all try to listen.”
For upper-middle-class and upper-middle-class voters, the domestic politics of President Joe Biden’s financially struggling father aren’t the central issue. They talk about abortion, preserving democracy, and how terrible Trump is.
Another guy I met, who travels for work, works in sports, and didn’t think either team was good: “I don’t know, I don’t think it matters,” he sighed, not angry, but probably a little annoyed by it all.
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Every non-delegate I spoke to said that of course Harris should do interviews and press conferences, but as former delegates were quick to point out, to them that’s not the issue, because at the end of the day, Trump is Trump.
On my Uber ride back to the airport on Wednesday, I was given a ride by another immigrant, this time from Kuwait, who had recently moved to the country. “Why vote?” he asked me matter-of-factly about the convention. “It’s not like whoever gets the most votes wins.”
On this quick daytime jaunt, we talked about the Electoral College, why each state has two senators, and other quirks of our republic.
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“In Kuwait, the prince sometimes gives democracy and sometimes takes it away,” he said. “What’s the difference?”
It was clear that I could not convince him, and I realized that there was no empirical way to prove the primacy of democracy, the dignity that comes from voting to express one’s opinion, or that politicians are part of the people they are willing to serve.
My first immigrant driver understood, the second did not.Meanwhile, in the Windy City of Chicago, everyone had their own view of what it means to live and vote in our democratic republic.
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