For the first time in eight years, Republicans are on the brink of an electoral loss so large that even voting machine fraud would be too obvious, and they are starting to show their desperation. From the top of party, where the McCain campaign is openly admitting that personal attacks are all the have left, to the neighborhood level where men are forcing their wives to publicly deny their support for Obama, the pressure is starting to be too much for them and the cracks that began to show two weeks ago are now turning into gaping fissures in their facade. This diary is about my own small brush with this last night.
This is a story about an angry, angry man and some Obama yard signs. Here's a picture to set the scene:
Driving North up Route 1 in Alexandria near the Chuck-E-Cheese (yes, really), I noticed a man on the side of the road wresting with something. It was 10pm and a bit dark so it took me a second to realise that he was angrily tearing an Obama sign out of the ground. Know that there were many other signs along the road in the vicinity, I thought I should make the man aware someone had seen him in a simple attempt to dissuade him from pulling up more, or else grab a picture of him in the act so I could report it to the police with evidence, so I swung my car into the parking lot just past where I'd seen him and went back in his direction. I saw him walking with the plastic part of the sign in his hand, balling it up even more angrily, as if he hoped he could squeeze it down into a tiny diamond or something. That is when I grabbed the first picture with my iPhone. Here's a closeup that's slightly easier to make out:
As I was taking this picture, the guy noticed me and mumbled something. I said, "You shouldn't be touching those signs, they aren't your property," and he started walking faster. I thought, at first, that I had accomplished my goal--knowing that someone had seen him committing an act of vandalism and had even taken his picture, he would now stop what he was doing and try to get away before I could take another one that might show his face more clearly. As I watched, though, he started to head straight toward where the next Obama sign down the street was located, so I backed my car up to get in between him and the sign. He happened to walk right under a light, and I tried to take a second picture (iPhone has no flash), but as I did, he screamed, "Why the fuck are you takin' my pitcher?" and ran over to my car, semi-hitting me in the face with the balled-up plastic sign he still held in his hand (yes, his accent really was that think, btw). It only took a second and with the iPhone in one hand, I hadn't had time to roll up the window, put the car in gear or even effectively block the punch, but luckily it didn't really connect anyway.
As soon as he did this, though, he took off running across the parking lot. I had to make a long wide turn to get my car facing the right direction again and he managed to disappear in those few seconds. I contemplated calling the police at that point--since that had been part of my original plan--but I felt like I hadn't gotten a clear picture of (or a good look at) him, so I figured it would just be a waste of their time, and plus I was supposed to be somewhere. So I just decided to get back on my original path North. I had only gone about half a block, however, when I saw him again, crossing a grassy field in the direction of yet another Obama sign. It was pretty dark in that area so this photo is really blurry, but you can make out his shape, and the blurred Obama/Biden logo on the sign:
I was in the right hand lane of Route 1. There was no traffic, but after slowing down a second to take this picture I realised I couldn't very well just stop my car, and there was no shoulder. When he saw me again, he threw the (now larger) wad of Obama sign plastics at my car, and once again took off running. At this point I decided I should call the police anyway, because the man seemed to be wandering over a pretty wide area, angry and lashing out at Obama signs. Knowing there was a neighborhood only another block away with a lot of African American families in it, I was worried about the source of his deep anger at the signs, and how that might connect to real people. I know racism isn't the only source of such deep anger, but it sure seemed to be the most likely.
Now, I'm not saying these pictures are evidence against some individual, because you can't really make out his face. Unless this person happens to be known and active in local Republican politics, I doubt anyone is going to have any clue who he is. The point of all this is that even when caught red-handed ripping up signs, this guy wouldn't stop. In the past, this kind of ugliness has happened at 4am, when no one was around to catch them at it, and they took every precaution against ever being seen "at it". Now, though, they are smelling defeat, and like caged animals, they don't care if they have to chew their own foot off to escape it.
Be prepared people. It's going to get ugly. I suspect I'm not going to be the last person to get punched in the face by a McCain supporter before election day.