By Tim Wheeler
Columbia, S.C.- Its primary election day here in South
Carolina and the army of volunteers who have flooded
into the state to campaign for Barack Obama have
already left the YMCA and fanned out to polling places
across this city.
It is chilly and threatening rain but the media is
predicting a record voter turnout of people fired up
by Obama's message of hope. I rode down from Baltimore
on a bus with 40 other volunteers. It
was chartered by three members of the Maryland General
Assembly who have kept us working diligently since we
arrrived. Nights we sleep on the gymnasium floor of
the Y, strewn with mostly youthful volunteers from as
far away as California. Early this morning two more
busloads arrived from Washington, D.C.
I have been canvassing with a friend, Rev. Pierre Williams, a United Methodist minister in Baltimore. We got a vivid feel for just how deeply Obama's
message is resonating here going door-to-door in a working
class neighborhood yesterday. Sherman Stewart,
employed as a maintenance worker at the Governor's
Mansion here in the state capital told us, "I've been
listening to all the candidates and I feel that Barack
Obama is the one who can turn this country around.
Everyone is feeling the insecurity from the way the
economy is going. Veterans of the Iraq war are coming
home and finding out their credit is all messed up,
their health care is messed up. We're spending
billions upon billions over there in Iraq, preaching
democracy to the world, and we have millions of
children here who are hungry and without health care.
I'm getting ready to retire and there are so many
people losing their pensions, or can't afford their
medicine."
Richard Edwards came walking by. He is a student at
Midlands Technical College and a U.S. Navy veteran. He
deplored former President Bill Clinton's divisive
statements here in South Carolina such as his dismissive statement that
Obama's message of hope is a "fairy tale," implying
that the Illinois Senator is too young and
inexperienced to be president. "I think Clinton's
statement really affected Black voters," he told me. "It put the Black community in a negative
light. Obama is trying to unite people of all races
and backgrounds, young and old, men and weomen.
Clinton's statement has divided South Carolina. We
don't need that here. I believe Barack is going to win
but by a narrower margin. I hope Barack sticks to his
message, positive change, hope, bringing us together,
Black, white independent, even Republicans."
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