Thank you to all the commentators on the South, especially Doraville, GA. I have lived in Georgia most of my life, I was born here. I must say that it is frustrating to travel the U.S. and get such irritating comments regarding how "red" the South is and how "behind the times" we are, etc. There are many of us here that can't fathom the policies of the Bush admin. and desperately want change, however, one must understand that the South is very old with a plethera of immigrants and cultures. The South is going through its own transition. Hopefully soon, the South will find the voice of dissent, but it has to find a voice of unity first.

Only a tiny sliver of Americans were engaged in elections that had anything at all to do with Iraq. For the vast majority we were re electing Congresspersons, and deciding local elections for everything from sheriff to state supreme court judge and local bond issues.

Unlike the author, who spelled it right, several of those commenting on the article misspelled "bellwether" as "bellweather." It's not the best term to use for the phenomenon the author discerns anyway. My dictionary defines "bellwether" as "1. a male sheep wearing a bell, usually the leader of the flock. 2. leader, especially of a foolish, sheeplike crowd." Let's hope that Virginia's role in politics is not "to lead a foolish, sheeplike crowd." We've done enough of that already in religion.

This is nitpicking an otherwise well-imagined essay, but using Doraville as an example of a proto-Southern locale shows that you haven't been to Doraville in awhile. It hasn't been a working-class, native-Southerner enclave for a good 10 years; it's mainly known now for the largest concentration of Asian restaurants and groceries in metro Atlanta.

Maybe you were thinking of Dawsonville, but that's heavily Hispanic now. I'd have gone with Albany.

were thrown out by conservatives not because of the war, but because they are becoming socialists. The acted too much like democrats, and if it's one thing that conservatives cannot stomach, even less than a self proclaimed socialist/democrat, is a republican that lies about being a socialist/democrat. The democrat voters had less to do with the outcome of this election that the conservative voters did.

If you think that George Allen was bad, wait till you get a load of Webb. Wooo Hoo! Every bit as "conservative" and ten times the chauvinist.

Poco

...Lyndon Johnson, after signing the Civil Rights Act, told a colleague, "We have just given the South to the Republicans for a generation." In retrospect, LBJ's assessment seems somewhat optimistic.

As I sit in my office in Northern Virginia, having commuted here from Maryland, I am still giddy that Webb won over Allen. How great is it that the Dems won the Senate on the self administered injury of George Allen; calling someone "Macaca"? Allen is the perfect poster boy for the Republicans, and I think it is appropriate that he be revealed as the shallow racist he is, and dismissed from politics because of it.

When he and his good old boy supporters must surely realize is that the bright, educated young gentleman of Indian descent is the future of this state. They are the past. His future is bright and unlimited, theirs is dependent upon the crop subsidies that their Senator can slip into the farm bill (while hating 'big guvment'). No wonder they hate him.

Interestingly enough, the rest of the state of Virginia views northern Virginia as a combination of Sodom & Gamorrah and an ATM. Much as the blue states view the red states. I hope that the first thing that the new Congress does is stop the flow of our tax dollars from hard working Blue states to the Red 'welfare states', including those bigoted farmers who loved George Allen so much. They can find out how life is without the big government they hate so much.

It can not be emphasized enough how militaristic Virginia is, and how much the state is benefitting economically from the wars in southwest Asia and Homeland security. The Old Dominion is home to the Pentagon, Arlington National Cemetery, Quantico (home of the new Marine Corps Museum), the world's largest naval base, and primary naval shipyards, among many other DoD bases and facilities. Gun shows are as common as bingo, and the state has some of the laxest concealed carry laws in the country. Yes, there are a lot of Rust Belt Refugees and pointy headed e-economy types in NoVa, but there are also many active duty and retired military personel (many of them double dipping with defense contractors). Webb was a jar-head that actually got shot at by commies, and Allen was not. The fact that proposition #1, a stone red state constitutional amendment that bans gay marriage, passed resoundingly on the same ballot as Webb shows that his military service had more to do with his victory than any "transformation" or "shift" in national politics. And I am sure that Sen. Webb will keep the military pork flowing into VA just as his predessessors have done.

Webb's victory was the result of a perfect storm of dissatisfaction with Republicans as a whole, Allen's repeated gaffes (which, to be fair, revealed who he really is as a person), and the changing demographics of northern VA. The poor Walmartvilles along the North Carolina border are as red as can be, but the VA suburbs of Washington, DC have been growing and expanding at an incredible pace, turning cow towns into commuter towns as highly educated and generally liberal individuals move in to work in the booming DC-area economy. It's just a bit ironic that the arrival of northern VA as the blue-voting powerhouse that helped Jim Webb squeak by with about 7,000 votes to spare came at least somewhat as a result of Bush's massive increase in government spending that drew so many of these liberal voters to the area in the first place.

Forget Doraville... drive about 7 miles up Peachtree (heh) Industrial into Duluth, GA. Duluth is as red as can be.