Obama in Fayetteville

Obama paid a visit to my fair state on Sunday, holding a rally in Fayetteville. It was a mixed bag. He was well received by his supporters, filling the center to well beyond capacity at 10,000 strong. Outside the rally, the picture wasn't so tranquil and the local bigotry manifested in 30 cars with slashed tires and one woman who rudely shouted "socialist get out" at some barbecue joint in town. You can get all the coverage, good and bad, from the sidebar at the link, including video of the speech and a photo gallery of the event.

Meanwhile, early voting has started here and the town of Fayetteville opened up a couple of additional voting locations. A small group of McCain supporters found this offensive and heckled the voters -- for voting. One good ole boy claimed it was because they shouldn't open the polls on a Sunday and he was pissed off that they did it "just for Obama." He was proclaiming Sunday was for church going as he drank a can of soda he probably bought at a store where someone was working instead of going to church. He also apparently failed to notice that Sunday voting was going on all over the state.

The protesters are mostly white. The voters are mostly black. Obama is poised to win this state. The latest local polling shows Obama leading by 51-44. More significantly, "McCain leads 55-39 among white voters, while Obama leads 92-6 among black voters." Watch the videos at the link and draw your own conclusions about the root motive behind the protest.

I mean these fine Christians could be driving McCain voters to the polls. They are allowed to vote as well. Maybe they couldn't find any.

Obama had an estimated 100,000 people come out to see him at the St. Louis Arch on Saturday. In suburban St. Louis today, McCain had a crowd of about 2,000.

Now, it's a heck of a lot easier to draw a crowd on a weekend than a Monday morning.

But stumping in the metro D.C. area on Saturday afternoon -- a much larger population center than St. Louis -- McCain had somewhere between 4,000-6,000 people.

I'm detecting a lack of enthusiam here. Makes me wonder anew where McCain's poll numbers are coming from.

[graphic barackobama.com]

[More posts daily at The Newshoggers and The Detroit News.]