It was a perfect day for voting here in Charlottesville -- sunny skies and a balmy 80 degrees. The lines were blessedly long at our polling place; it took us about an hour to get through. We then stopped in Al Weed's campaign HQ -- Weed's the Democratic challenger to Rep. Virgil Goode (R, good ol' boy) -- and got recruited for a "visibility operation"; that is, holding up Weed and pro-Kerry signs at a busy intersection. Some observations:

We probably got about twenty horn honks for every pro-Bush remark/middle finger/boo. Granted, C-ville is a college town where many people actually read, and is not to be confused with the rest of the state.

Unsurprisingly, one Bush supporter yelled, "Al Weed is for homos!" Other Bush supporters tended to low out their windows like cattle: "Boooosh." Nearly all of them drove enormous vehicles.

Speaking of which, the Bush campaign was driving around a red, jacked-up pickup truck with those ridiculously huge tires and a big American flag flapping in the back. It's as if they were trying to be a caricature of themselves.

Lots of people stopped on the sidewalk to thank us, including one guy who said he was an ex-felon who couldn't vote, but that he could pray. He noted that we were doing the lord's work in front of "the good house" (we were in front of a Baptist church).

So here we go, into the night. I can hardly imagine the Powerists surrendering power, but we'll see.