I've never been more pleased to be stuck in traffic in my life. My simple 12 mile commute took me almost an hour tonight, and that made me grin from ear to ear.
Why?
Because Obama came to My tiny little town OF Leesburg VA(that's Leesburg "real" Va to you Republicans) today and had himself a rally, and I'm pretty sure the crowd there was larger than Leesburg's entire population
The rally was pretty hastily thrown together it seems, I only learned about it yesterday (from friendly town officials warning of traffic) and I live less than 1/4 mile from the park in which it was held.
Town officals, pre-show said they expected 10,000
CBS put the number of actual attendees at "over 30,000"
My gut, based, on my worm's eye view of the Rally and watching the foot traffic stream out, says that 50,000 might be an UNDERestimate.
And that, friends, for this area, is, in a word seismic
To understand why, I need to tell you something of my town:
There really is a divide in this state between wealthy, tech savvy, diverse, forward looking Northern Va (or NOVA as we call it locally) and the very rural/blue collar south of the Mason-Dixon Line, Heart of the Confederacy, southern part of the state.
And the dividing line, is, essentially the city limits of Leesburg. To the North on Rt 7 you have endless suburban "paradise" of tract mansions, Big Box Strip malls and Non-descript office towers home to three-letter corporations where techie geniuses with security clearances toil away on projects that don't officially exist.
But then you hit Leesburg proper and go back in time 50 years.
Here's a turn of the last century photograph showing downtown Leesburg, about 1/2 mile from where Obama spoke today"
take away the horse drawn carriages and it looks EXACTLY like that today:
and Yes that IS a statute of Confederate Soldier on the courthouse lawn (which George Washington once visited BTW) thank you very much)
And if that doesn't put it in perspective, consider this: Less than 5 miles up Route 7 from Leesburg is Purcellville Va, home to that infamous Evangelical Madrassas Patrick Henry College
So why does all this matter?
because For Obama to pack in a crowd that was almost twice the population of the town, hell for ANY Democrat to make an appearance here in the third week of October means there "somethin' happenin' here" something very big.
Yes, Leesburg is only 40 or so miles from Washington DC and even less from blue, progressive Northern VA, but don't let anyone explain away the turn out that way (and for the record the Decemberists did NOT play today either) That's NOT where the bulk of the crowds were coming from. How do I know?
Because I watched the crowds leave.
There are really on two roads of consequence that take you out of downtown: RT 7 (Market Street) and Rt 15 (Main Street) and my house is very near the intersection of both(they intersect at the courthouse pictured above).
As I watched crowds of pedestrians standing shoulder to shoulder, forming a solid mass 10-20 wide for at least a 1.5 mile on Main Street, and saw steams of Tail lights crawling down Market, was shocked. The crowds weren't and cars WEREN'T pouring East and North out of town as I expected. They were going SOUTH, and West. In other words back towards "Real" Va, back to the rural Piedmont and Shenandoah regions where pick-up trucks aren't a fashion statement and hunting is nearly a religion.
If Obama is reaching these people in the kinds of numbers I saw tonight; IF we can get these people out to vote on Election Day, then I truly believe Virgina is going to turn DARK Blue this year and as the Man himself said tonight:
"If we win Virgina, we Win the election"
Can we do it?