Hillary supporters receive middle finger

I'm sure I missed the big showing, and these had to be the leftovers from Hillary Clinton's visit to Church Street this afternoon. But at around 6pm, after receiving a text from a friend advising me to come "check out the pathetic Hillary supporters at the corner of Trade and Tryon," I drove by to see four young women standing glumly behind a blue HRC banner at the aforementioned location.

As I passed slowly by heading west on Trade, blasting Obama Girl on my stereo to see if I could get their attention (I couldn't), a car with two twenty-something guys headed in the opposite direction screeched to a halt at the intersection. The driver blared his horn and began waving his middle finger out the sun roof before speeding off. The looks on the faces of the Hillary supporters said this wasn't the first time they'd been subject to some abuse.

Judging by the number of local volunteers and the level of enthusiasm (by my hasty, likely inaccurate guesstimate), Obama seems to have the most support in center city. Maybe that's not surprising given the high percentage of young professionals here. The fact that there's a hefty generational (and educational) divide in support for the two candidates has already been beaten to death by the media (though you might have to dig a little deeper, and navigate through some careful language, to find the latter).

For what it's worth, I had a nice little spin experience while trying to find volunteer numbers for the respective campaigns to include in a short article I wrote on the subject for the most recent mag. The Obama campaign didn't have exact numbers, but told me they signed up over 700 volunteers at the grand opening of the campaign headquarters in March. The HRC rep, meanwhile, would only say her camp had "hundreds" of volunteers.

Hundreds like 900, or like 200?

"Oh, there are just so many people here every day. Just hundreds."

So you're not going to tell me?

"We're so happy to have all these hundreds of volunteers."

I politely hung up, then called back and asked the rep whether she could at least tell me how many people had signed up at the HQ opening in South Park. No dice there, either.

Should be a good show leading up Tuesday's vote. Be prepared to throw it right back if someone flips you the bird.