Kerry to voters in Ohio, this morning: “Today is decision day”

A dizzying final dash across the Midwest and points south capped a campaign that found the contenders, President Bush and Sen. John Kerry, deadlocked at every vital turn and stirred expectations that Americans, for once, were highly motivated to vote.

“Today is decision day,” Kerry told cheering supporters at an airport hanger in Toledo, Ohio, early Tuesday morning. “You have an opportunity now, this day, to make fundamental change in America, and the hopes of our country are on the line.”

At one polling place in a Virginia suburb of Washington — where there was no hotly contested local race to spur interest — nearly 100 people were in line when the polls opened at 6 a.m., in a turnout that one voter was the largest she had seen in 20 years of voting at the location.

Kerry held brief, punchy rallies in Florida and Wisconsin before heading to Michigan and Ohio. In Milwaukee, he cracked jokes and bounded off the stage to high-five a boy pressed at the front of the crowd under a cold, steady rain. “A little rain like this is nothing compared to what old George Bush has been doing for the last four years, so we can do it,” Kerry said. Then he led the crowd in a chant: “One more day! One more day!”

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6363692/

"and bounded off the stage to high-five a boy pressed at the front of the crowd under a cold, steady rain."

Go Senator Kerry. We love ya.