Winchester Still Waiting and Wondering

Outside, with nonvoting Dooley back in the garage, the other mechanic, Steven Kunu, pulled Bageant aside and confessed that he had never voted but that he plans to vote for Obama. He has been wanting to buy a house and said he can't get a mortgage because of the financial crisis.

Like the rest of Virginia, Winchester has been slowly changing as the high-tech boom extends westward along Interstate 66. Shopping centers and what Bageant calls "McMonster" houses have gone up, threatening to turn Winchester, a town still divided by CSX railroad tracks, into yet another exurb of Washington. That demographic change, along with working-class discontent and pragmatic Democratic appeals, have been shifting the political landscape. In 2004, Bush trounced John Kerry by 14 percentage points in Winchester. But in 2005, Democrat Timothy M. Kaine narrowly beat Republican Jerry W. Kilgore for governor.

"I don't think there's any question that we don't have as much headwind as Sen. McCain in that region," said Kevin Griffis, regional communications director for the Obama campaign. "But there's never been a presidential campaign that has invested in the Shenandoah Valley in the way that the Obama campaign has. Even if we don't win that region, there's no question that we'll wring every vote out of the Shenandoah Valley that exists."

One vote they won't be wringing, however, is that of Jim Edmonds, owner of the Stonewall Cafe. Edmonds is a Democrat who supported Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton but is voting for McCain because "Obama just seems like he thinks he's better than everybody else."

Social issues were big over at the Picadilly Grill, where Larry Ludwig, 48, a receiving clerk at a Kohl's distribution center and a Mike Huckabee supporter, said he doesn't worry about the economic crisis because "I just feel that God will take care of me." He's voting for McCain because he "makes sense" and because Palin is an "excellent choice."

And over at the Royal Lunch, the loud talk is all about how the country isn't ready for a black man in the White House, but no one feels much like doing anything about it. None of the Republican-leaning diners planned to vote. "I've got more things on my mind than politics right now," said Bob Naio, a housepainter.

After a few beers with the regulars, Bageant prepared to leave. A woman grabbed him by the arm. "Don't quote me," she said in a low voice. "Don't use my name. But I think Obama will win Virginia. I think he'll win everything. People here are very negative. So his middle name is Hussein. Maybe it gives him a different perspective."

Bageant, chronicler of working-class culture, scratched his head, nonplussed once again, and walked out the door, heading toward the train tracks that once so neatly divided the town.