I spent most of my time walking down both lines of folks waiting to get in, asking people to sign a declaration of support for Obama’s three principles. In this non-selective sample of the admittedly selected group of people who decided to attend, I got at least 50-60% to sign. If you throw in people who only didn’t sign because they had already signed elsewhere, or didn’t sign because they’re to the left of Obama (”I’m not signing for three vague principles. I’m for single payer!”. This is the People’s Republic of Reston , after all.), it was easily 2:1, and more like 3:1 for our side. This activity also allowed me to see where these folks were from, since a street address is part of the declaration, and most of them (well, the ones who signed, I can’t say about those who didn’t sign) were from the 8th District, as I am. Of course we had a number of people from outside the district who very understandably wanted to hear Dean speak.

Without claiming that there are no crazies in the 8th District, I suspect that the people who were there acting out, as opposed to those waiting in line to get in, were almost all imported crazies, and wherever they happen to take their little psychodramas, it reflects not at all on the locals. As above, the ones I bothered to confront, when I had free time because the lines were small and slow-growing, didn’t even pretend to be locals. And after the doors were closed, a group of about 20 of them got on a group chant by the east entrance, “No health reform!”. Well, I waited for the right moment, in the lull between one repetition and the next, and shouted, “Go back to Idaho!”. The double take I got from about a half dozen of the closest of them told me that I had guessed right and hit the mark. Not that there were probably actually any of them from Idaho, but there are parts of Loudoun that are more than half way to Idaho.

there are some crazy people in this world. and this is a D +16 district.

I wasn’t inside (too busy getting declarations from the people waiting in line, not all of whom got inside), but my sister was, and she said Randall Terry created a disturbance towards the end of the event, wouldn’t quiet down after being offered the first question by Moran, and was escorted out by the police. Sadly, I had already left, so I wasn’t around to demonstrate some of my appreciation for the ejectee as he bounced off his can.

Before the event, while the line gathered outside, these anti-choice folks had some street theater prepared for us. They had a fake doctor murdering doll babies, but their really special feature was two guys in black face with whips flogging a taxpayer and an elderly patient. Stay classy, guys. They called me rude for continuously placing myself center stage. I told them that “rude” didn’t even begin to cover staging a little drama in which the white man was being oppressed by Black Supremacy. This was just satire they said, and didn’t I have a sense of humor? Yeah, I said, but in normal people, the sense of humor is overruled by the sense of decency. The conversation got pretty unedifying after that.

It would be nice to see one offered by semi-intelligent folks for a change. :})