Last Friday, Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, came to speak in Jackson, Miss. at Tougaloo College. I’m in Jackson for the summer for an internship. Feeling slightly displaced and very much in the political minority, I excitedly went to go see him speak with some co-workers.

Tougaloo College is a small liberal arts school located in the northeast outskirts of Jackson. It is a historically African-American college, and its campus was a hotbed of activity during the 1960s. The house of Medgar Evers’ assassination is located on campus, and Tougaloo maintains it as a museum and memorial library. Driving up Jackson’s State Street, I thought about these things and once again felt the incredible historical significance of Barack Obama’s presidential candidacy.

As my co-workers and I turned onto the street of Tougaloo’s campus, traffic slowed and we saw police officers along the road and a small group of people clustered on the road’s dirt shoulder. Then, we saw the signs they were holding. Under slogans like “Victims of our nation’s Holocaust” were blown up images of aborted fetuses. I certainly wasn’t in Western Massachusetts anymore, nor Palo Alto for that matter. The Jackson Women’s Health Organization is the only medical abortion facility in the entire state of Mississippi. I’m told that the group we saw stands outside of the center every week, holding the same incredibly graphic placards. We passed under the white arch of Tougaloo’s main entrance and the protesters simultaneously waved and glared.

Running a little late, we assumed we would have to struggle to find seats together, but when we entered the gym we saw that there were plenty of empty ones. In fact, organizers were hurriedly taking seats away to make the space look more occupied for the local television crews. After an introduction by Obama’s Jackson campaign manager, and a short speech by Jamie Franks, Chairman of the Mississippi Democratic Party, Howard Dean stepped onto the stage.

Dean explained that his visit to Jackson is part of a 50-state bus tour that he started off in Crawford, Texas. The departure point<\p>--<\p>our lame duck president’s assumed hometown<\p>--<\p>works fairly obviously as a symbol. The idea here is that the Democratic Party and its presumptive presidential nominee are a party and candidate for the whole country. They will represent “deep red” west Texas just as they will represent Westchester County. And they will win in all those places; or at the very least, try in a way they have not before.

In a folksy, locally tailored metaphor Dean used throughout the night, he explained that when Auburn and Ole Miss get on the field to play football, he doesn’t know who will win, but there’s a clear winner if one of the teams fails to arrive. He said that he didn’t know who would win in November, but that it was time for the Democratic Party to at least show up in the South. This got a big cheer. Who knows? Might Mississippi go blue?

Dean told us that the South has changed, that the Democratic Party has changed, that Obama will be a president of the entire country and that “it’s time for us to stop arguing about what we can’t agree on, and start talking about what we can agree on.” He said that the Obama campaign is reaching out to evangelical Christians because they share some of the same priorities: halting genocide, saving the environment and ending poverty. I was with him then, thinking that yes, there are so many things this country can come together on, so many broken things that our generation knows have to be fixed. And then suddenly, I remembered the churning feeling in my guts as we drove by the protesters and saw their unsettling placards. I thought of the wide array of things on which we will never agree.

Then again, who knows what to expect this fall? Both McCain and Obama are unusual candidates at an unusual time in an unusual country (see previous edition of this column). And who knows what to expect from a state like Mississippi, with record-high voter turnout in the primaries, a recently elected Democratic congressman and such diverse and illustrious natives as Faulkner, Oprah and Elvis.

When he’s not busy helping register Mississippians to vote, Dan Hirsch readily responds to emails sent to djhirsch "at" stanford.edu.