"I am fired up!" Barack Obama shouts from the stage in Alexandria. "I need some help in the Senate." And Jim Webb's help, Obama says, is just the kind he wants. "I've had enough of politicians who act tough on TV," he declares. "I want somebody who really is tough." Together, Obama promises, he and Webb will work toward the kind of "practical, nonideological, honest and trustworthy government the American people deserve."

Under the pure blue sky of this late-summer afternoon, with a big, diverse crowd wearing Webb stickers and cheering lustily, the messy crosscurrents of the year's strangest Senate race seem far away. Even Webb, who breaks into more than one smile during the proceedings and hugs Obama happily when it's over, seems momentarily carried away by the giddiness of a campaign that is, out of the blue, looking like a winner. A little more than a month before, Webb had been a forgotten candidate, trailing by double digits in the polls and facing an ominous 15-to-1 fundraising deficit. The prominent national Democrats whose endorsements had put him over the top in the primary were nowhere in sight. Democratic campaign committees, busy pouring millions into "key" non-Southern states, had coughed up a grand total of less than $40,000 for Virginia as of July--not only shutting out a compelling antiwar candidate but ignoring the fact that the Old Dominion has become so competitive in recent elections that pollster John Zogby has dubbed it "the new Ohio."

Now that Webb is neck-and-neck with Allen in the polls, the money's coming in--however belatedly. So are the rock star Democrats: John Edwards and Hillary Clinton, among others, would soon follow Obama's lead. The Illinois Senator's appearance was calculated, of course, to ratchet up enthusiasm for Webb among black voters. But his unqualified embrace of Webb will also help here in northern Virginia. With its booming population of left-leaning nonnatives, northern Virginia is the main reason Virginia has become, in pundit Sabato's terms, a "purple state." To beat Allen, Webb will need an overwhelming margin of victory here to offset the votes of "moral conservatives" elsewhere--especially since the Republican still has at least one ace in the hole.

Named for its Christian-right co-sponsors, the Marshall-Newman amendment is expected to draw droves of evangelical Virginians to the polls. Allen, meanwhile, is expected to spend a sizable portion of his campaign war chest on ads portraying Webb's opposition to the measure as proof that he's just another amoral, elitist liberal. But it might not be the silver-bullet wedge issue Allen is looking for. That's partly because Virginians don't like to mess with their Constitution, whose declaration of rights is the world's oldest such document. It's mostly because the amendment--vaguely worded and sure to prompt a spate of lawsuits if it passes--has the broadest reach of any yet proposed.

"What's really amazing, as compared to your garden variety gay-bashing, is the breadth of its application to opposite-sex couples," says Michael Schewel, former Virginia secretary of commerce, who's been speaking against the amendment to business groups. "The only thing it doesn't affect is gay couples," because state law already prohibits them from marrying or enjoying spousal benefits. After an initial paragraph defining marriage, the rest of the amendment prohibits all "unmarried individuals" from exercising any "rights, benefits, obligations, qualities or effects of marriage."

"This is nothing but a divisive wedge issue to get their people to the polls," says Charley Conrad, president of Virginia Partisans Gay and Lesbian Democratic Club. But where other states' amendments have merely been summarized on their ballots, the full text of Marshall-Newman will be there for Virginia voters to read--thanks to the efforts of amendment opponents like Governor Tim Kaine, who pressed for a state law requiring the full amendment to appear. "Our slogan ought to be, Read the whole thing," Schewel jokes. Polls show that most Virginians who do read the amendment are confused--and opposed.

If gay marriage is supposed to be Allen's ace--along with the millions his campaign has to spend on attack ads--Webb might yet trump him with his unblemished record of opposing the Iraq War. In Virginia, like everywhere else, disgust with the war cuts across partisan, racial and cultural divides. "Black people know the war is not making life better," says Ray Boone. "It's diverting resources abroad. It's killing our people."

Bush's war is no more popular in predominantly white southwest Virginia--at least not on a recent Saturday in Castlewood, where hundreds gathered for the annual fish fry and political rally of the United Mine Workers' local. "We think it's useless," says Jimmy Taylor, a young truck driver. "Why send more people in to get killed?" Taylor's girlfriend, Brittany Brading, agrees. "Bush is sending all this money to Iraq when people are homeless and hungry here. It's disgusting."

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