As she heads for the convention, she'll be in uniform, wearing one of her 15 Obama T-shirts. The shirts and the array of buttons she's collected are ice breakers. During her long ride to Denver in July, she waited for opportunities to make her Obama pitch. Rather than "talking at" people, she found herself engaged by workaday Americans at places such as the Waffle House, where she was invited into conversations about health insurance, unemployment and the war.
She said she has become a link in a multigenerational chain of support for her candidate. Her mother, Bette McLeod of Bowie, and her mother's friends depend on her reports, having allowed themselves to believe in something that seemed unimaginable: a black president.
"She always wished it was possible, but she just never thought it was," Ms. McLeod said of her 75-year-old mother.
