Obama Comes Calling

His second day after clinching the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, Barack Obama will be making two campaign stops in Virginia. The first will be a town-hall style meeting today in Bristol in far Southwest — Hillary country in the Virginia Democratic primary that Obama won.

He’ll need his vanquished rival’s supporters in order to prevail in the general election. That he is wooing them in Virginia, though, is noteworthy: Old, reliable red-state Virginia is in play.

That could make Virginia voters key players in the outcome of this November’s historic presidential election. They’ll need to be savvy to get past campaign spin machines and black-ops smears to the substance of each candidate’s ideas.

Of course, Obama’s early appearances in the Old Dominion could be seen as simple courtesies: Gov. Tim Kaine endorsed him way back in February 2007, when Sen. Hillary Clinton looked like the party’s inevitable nominee. And Rep. Rick Boucher, a superdelegate to the national party convention in August, held to his pledge to support Obama even after Clinton won the congressman’s rural, heavily white Ninth District in February’s state primary.

But the Obama campaign’s choice of stops seems too calculated to write them off as courtesy calls. He’s scheduled to be at a Northern Virginia rally this evening in Prince William County, notable for strong local measures against illegal immigrants that have chased away legal immigrants, too.

If he is to realize his campaign rhetoric about uniting a country too easily divided by appeals to race or ethnicity, Obama will have to win over voters across the country who have a lot in common with those he’ll be pursuing today.

If, indeed, Virginia is up for grabs, Obama and John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, are likely to lavish more attention on the commonwealth than it’s used to getting in national campaigns. And the candidates will get the kind of high-volume news coverage that piques public interest.

To make an informed choice, though, voters will need to know more about Obama and McCain than can be gleaned from warmed over stump speeches seasoned by the latest spicy rumors heating up the blogosphere. People will need to study up.

This year, the country will see a historic race: a black man running for president on a major-party ticket. His skin color should not be the determining factor, though, in how people cast their votes.

The candidates’ vision, experience and the promises they’ve made should guide voters in November. This year, neither party can take Virginia’s electorate for granted.

Virginia’s voters shouldn’t take the opportunity that offers for granted, either.blogs.roanoke.com/roundtable/

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