A Baltimore woman, all set to vote for Sen. Hillary Clinton in Tuesday's Patapsco Drainage Basin Primary - because Clinton is a woman and because she is older and more experienced in government than Barack Obama - switched and voted for Obama because "he's very positive about everything."
And there it is.
And imagine that - the power of positive thinking and speaking, the audacity of hope, delivered with a straight face by a politician over and over again - and no one giggling or mocking the concept, except maybe Rush Limbaugh. The cynics be damned.
There it is, right in front of us - hope, idealism, youth, energy - and the new promise of coalition politics in a nation that has suffered from a steady diet of high-acid partisanship.
Here are white faces and black faces in the same crowd, cheering for the same candidate - and young people getting pumped about politics for the first time in forever (or since their lives were on the line, because of the draft, during the Vietnam War).
We're seeing white male voters, some of them Republicans who likely voted for Ronald Reagan, announcing support for Barack Obama.
Obama now has eight straight primary wins, the result of what appears to be an organic, grass-roots network built on the Internet, Oprah and old-fashioned progressive activism. He's getting bucks in his treasury and boots on the ground.
"Where did this guy come from?" a wise elder from Towson asked on primary day, amazed at the Obama phenomenon but still not convinced that the nation could elect a black man president.
Now we have pundits and pollsters saying the son of a Kenyan man and a Kansas woman is more electable in a national election than Hillary Clinton.
There's hope for this country after all. We're not totally color-blind, but maybe more so than ever.
And there it is.
And imagine that.
In Maryland, Obama took 42 percent of the overall white vote, The Sun reported. He pulled between 40 percent and 50 percent of the vote in Eastern Shore counties. He split Harford County with Clinton. With most of the precincts counted, he had won 57 percent of the Democratic primary vote in Baltimore County.
A political junkie who corresponds with me sees that as social progress: "I was pleased to see Obama win Baltimore County. I think it says a lot about where we are as a state. I have to look at the precinct numbers more closely, but I'd say that Baltimore County is ready and may soon elect its first black county executive."
That sounds a little premature, maybe, but he's saying that, with two or three white candidates at play in the Democratic field next time, a black candidate could slip into the executive's chair through a split in the vote. (That's pretty much what Martin O'Malley did, in reverse, when he ran for mayor in the Baltimore Democratic primary of 1999 against two black candidates, though at the time O'Malley was decidedly the strongest candidate in the field, and his appeal was across racial lines.)
But you know what?
I'm getting sucked into something here I was going to avoid - and that is looking at Obama as a black man and analyzing the racial aspects of the vote. I know his candidacy marks something huge and historic for the country. I know many people are filled with emotion and even cry when they go to vote for him. But it's obvious voters are looking at character and content, and not just skin color, and that's what's cool about being alive right now.
For any American voter, it's almost impossible not to get emotional about a presidential candidate with such promise and vigor after the sordid and depressing run we've had - and I go back to at least the Clinton impeachment, but you could go further.
Obama is not perfect, and he could still lose the nomination to Clinton. (She's doing better than the Orioles have done in recent years; she may not be mathematically eliminated until May.) And, though he's running a mostly positive one, it's not like everyone has sworn off the negative campaign. (See 1st District Republican congressional primary, Maryland.)
But there's something profound going on here, and while it's hard to get a handle on the thing, it goes something like this: A new class of voter is emerging in America - independent and skeptical, more green than blue or red, and not yet jaded by the recent political and culture wars. This voter is tired, not only of the current president - and either did not vote for George Bush or regrets having supported him - but also weary of all the partisan and personal bickering that has gone on for years, in Congress and on talk radio, at the expense of smart, progressive government and healthier citizens and communities.
This voter craves the president who thinks in the ideal and believes - and persuades other to believe - that anything is possible if we work together, like making our education system the best in the world, making health insurance available to everyone, expanding public transportation and making it an integral part of national life, restoring our cities, saving open space, curtailing drug addiction and violent crime, developing new sources of energy and higher levels of fuel efficiency in motor vehicles, finding new and environmentally sound ways to live and keeping the dream within reach of every American.
The majority of the political class, cynical and fatigued, doesn't even think in these terms anymore, and for a long time, it has had citizens in the same mindset. Looks as if we're snapping out of it.
dan.rodricks@baltsun.com