This is the final post from a friend in North Carolina who has been monitoring the buildup to tomorrow’s presidential primary and giving us a Wilmington-eye view on the campaign. Thanks Mike!

With just a few days to go before the North Carolina primary, it’s not surprising that almost everybody here in Wilmington is talking politics. We hear a lot about Democrats bickering, but my guess is a lot of Republicans are bickering too. And it’s not just about McCain being too liberal (though my Republican friends here do view him as such).

As one example, I stopped by an old friend’s house this week. Larry works at the local Goodyear tires. Teresa, his wife, is unemployed, but not looking for a job any more since she has become a grandmother and is busy with the grandkid. She’s bolting the Grand Old Party (literally, this year) to vote for Hillary. Her husband is seething about this: “She [Hillary] talks disrespectfully of President Bush. He’s our president and presidents deserve respect.” He looks at her with intensity when saying this.

But their kid is in the military (in Iraq last year, stationed in Hawaii now), Teresa doesn’t want any chance of him going back to Iraq. Plus, there’s that gender issue: “It’s time we had a woman in charge,” she says.

Larry spits back: “Mrs. Bill Clinton will not be in charge. It’s Bill Clinton’s third presidency!”

“Oh,” I interject innocently, “you’d rather have Obama?”

My son is with me, so Larry tones down his terminology when he replies that “America is not ready to vote for a black man.” He does not use the “N word,” though in other company he would perhaps do so.

The next day I had lunch with Ron, a home repair guy who pretty much says the same thing about Americans never voting for a black man. Maybe blue-collar folk are the true elitists in our country.

Anyhow, as for the campaign itself, I kind of see what Larry means about Mrs. Bill Clinton, just because Mr. Hillary Clinton is so much in evidence, doing a spectacular job of campaigning at the local level. On one day alone he made 12 stops in Carolina towns, with highlights of his address airing on newscasts throughout the state.

His stump speech is about 25 minutes; he takes no questions from the audience or press, but revels in speaking to the common people. They applaud and he moves onto the next town. The crowds are large and enthusiastic — proud that an ex-president has come to their small town.

To me, Bill Clinton conjures images of that old populist William Jennings Bryan, at least as he was portrayed by Fredric March in “Inherit The Wind.” Sounding much like Bryan railing against banks, railroads and Adlai Stevenson (an elitist from Illinois), Bill Clinton criticizes oil companies and elitists (though not mentioning Obama by name).

Following his failed runs for president, Bryan took to going from Southern town to Southern town with lucrative speaking engagements, raising the hopes of people by trashing Darwinism, hailing the of glory of America’s past and praising the common sense of small-town people.

For his part, Bill Clinton essentially calls for a return to the glory days of the ’90s, praising the wisdom of the people in the crowd and emphasizing Hillary’s common sense. “She got that by spending 14 years with the people in Arkansas,” he says with a kind of weird, ingratiating smile. “There’s not much difference between the good people of Arkansas and the good people of Carolina.” Wisely, no mention of Scranton or New York people this time around.

Anyhow, that’s my final Carolina primary update. Packing my bags and heading to Chicago for the summer, so you’ll have to rely on the professionals from now on.

Before leaving, I participated in early voting, expecting long lines, but finding none, just me, some black men (two bringing their kids) and old white women (taking a very long time to vote). I found the low turnout a little surprising because there are only two early voting places in Wilmington: one at the senior center, one at the government center. The latter is conveniently located near both the university and a strip club, so you’d think there’d be greater voter interest. However, as of Thursday morning at 11 a.m., neither of those demographics appeared to see any need to vote early, despite Senator Obama’s exhortations to do so during his rally in the Port City.