North Carolina Election Day Notebook: Two Sides of the Track

BUTNER, N.C. -- Durham is bleeding so blue for Obama that I finally had to get out of town to get some perspective.

(Even the children at the Kids Voting table were in the tank. Amir, 8, Kavitha, 8, and Jemma, 8-and-a-half, all said they'd vote for Obama.)

In Granville County, about half an hour north of Durham, there seemed to be some more variety. Carl was standing outside a polling place, trying to stay dry under the awning and passing out McCain-Palin door hangers with a Republican slate.

Were people receptive? I asked.

Carl shrugged. "They take 'em," he said.

On the opposite side of the school, an Obama volunteer was passing out her literature, too. Voters filed past, temporarily creating a back-up when a shift at the local federal facility finished.

The election judge could not predict how the precinct would vote in this election, nor could she remember which way it had gone in the past. "I've been doing this since Reagan," she said.

What happened then? I asked.

She shrugged.

The most verbose people I found in the town were four older men hanging out and smoking by the coffee machine in the back of a convenience store.

"May I ask who you're voting for?" I asked sunnily.

"Who are you voting for?" said one. "Osama?"

The conversation, which has left me slightly in shock, reveals how different this election looks across the pockets of this country. In Durham, a cul-de-sac in a poor, African-American neighborhood is having a party tonight, no matter what happens. At the convenience store, the four gentlemen warned me what would happen tonight if Obama didn't win.

"One guy called up Rush Limbaugh--you know Rush Limbaugh?--and said that if the black man didn't win, then what happened in '68 was going to look like a party. They're going to burn cars. Houses."

I forget sometimes how large the country is. It contains multitudes.