I just got back from driving an older lady to the polls so she could vote here in Arlington. Its in the low 50's here today, radio guy said it was the warmest day we've had in a month and 8 degrees above our average for early February.
The lady and I chatted about how this is the first Democratic primary in Virginia in years (since 1988 I think) and hopefully we'd have high turnout due to the beautiful weather. She was saying she heard the turnout for the last Dem primary was about 13% and we both agreed we should beat that today.
She mentioned that after today, she was expecting some people to drop out. I mentioned Edwards was running in second here in Virginia so he had a shot (although I was wearing my "Dean for America" hat, I didn't mention him on the way to the polls -- I was offering a service to the local Dem party, not there to campaign for Gov. Dean).
So she goes in and votes and comes out and says she voted for John Kerry. Then as if a mild tension had been released, she asked, "So you're a Dean supporter?" I said yes although I also liked Sen. Edwards. She said she used to book travel for Edwards and he was a real gentleman. (I thought to myself, "If you worked in the Senate and liked John Edwards, why the heck didn't you vote for him then?"...but I held my tongue.)
Then she said she also liked Gov. Dean but felt he was really hurt by the Iowa speech. I agreed that had hurt him but not so much the speech itself as much as the way the media blew it out of proportion. I mentioned how CNN had aired the clip over 600 times. I asked her if she had heard CNN admitted last week they overdid the coverage -- she hadn't heard that. I asked her if she had heard Diane Sawyer has essentially apologized for the way it was handled -- she hadn't heard that either. ;-(
BTW - when she came out of the poll, I asked her if it was busy in there and she said not at all. She said she asked the poll workers and turnout was only about 9% as of 2pm. Good for the ABK crowd since obviously the Clark/Edwards/Dean voters are going to be more motivated than the "jump on the bandwagon" Kerry folks.
Finally, after I dropped her off and headed back home, I heard the Truthandhope.org ad on WTOP radio -- I wish it had been on while I was driving her to the polling place, maybe it would have started a conversation. I was really proud to think the small donation I made to Truthandhope.org last week resulted in that ad being broadcast.
Thank you, Gov. Dean for inspiring me to get involved.