They traveled here from New York, Pennsylvania and Indiana last week to stand in the rain on a rural street corner, at a four-way intersection of winding mountain roads. The 10 volunteers, linked by a resolve to keep Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign alive by helping her win Tuesday's West Virginia primary, met to wave campaign signs patched together with duct tape. They cheered as the first car, a beat-up white Volvo, rolled toward the intersection, and a young man in aviator sunglasses leaned out his driver's-side window."Hey," he said. "Don't you think you're wasting your time?"
Clinton's most loyal supporters -- the ones still standing on street corners -- have adopted their candidate's motto, even as she trails Sen. Barack Obama by an insurmountable margin in pledged delegates: to fight like hell, despite dim odds and denigration, until someone officially wins the Democratic nomination.
But on this day, the intersection of Highway 480 and German Street, where they stood, divided Shepherdstown into two factions. College kids from Shepherd University approached from the north, angry that Clinton has remained in a race she appears destined to lose. Truck drivers and farmers approached from the south, their support for Clinton fortified by her perseverance. The two groups met at the intersection in a cacophony of honking horns and shouting that echoed across this town of about 1,000 near the Maryland border.
After two hours, Luanne Smith had heard enough. "It's become so personal, just one insult after another," Smith said. "These sides are starting to feel some hate for each other. Everybody is angry, but I'm going to keep at this as long as I can. I never want to look myself in the mirror and say, 'You quit. You didn't do your part.' "
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Smith traveled from her home in Burke, Va., and checked into the Super 8 Motel because she'd grown tired of hearing her friends insist it was time to give up. "She's going to win so big," Smith said, "that it will force people to see all of the possibilities."