So, you’re going to walk into that voting booth on Tuesday, look at the touch screen with great determination and vote decisively, right?

Or maybe you’re gonna be like most of us and stare at the screen and wonder: Who the hell are these guys?

Some choice — Creigh Deeds or Bob McDonnell: A Democrat not ready for prime time versus a right-winger who wants to drag Virginia kicking and screaming back into the 19th century (or maybe even the 18th).

To borrow a quote from the late Kermit Salyer, once publisher of the Franklin News-Post, neither of these guys would make decent wash room janitors, much less governor of the Old Dominion.

Deeds has all the charisma of a wet mop and the leadership qualities of Elmer Fudd. If there was a mistake to be made in this campaign, he grabbed it.

For example, reports the web site Politico:

When Karl Rove set out to get George W. Bush reelected in 2004, he targeted the Expedition-driving, megachurch-attending, Panera-eating, McMansion-living voters in places like Loudoun County, Va. Bush won Loudoun with 56 percent on his way to a comfortable victory statewide.

On Tuesday, Republican Bob McDonnell will also win Loudoun on the backs of similar voters. These are fairly affluent voters who are new to the state and, most important, don’t have any strong party affiliation. They want efficient government but otherwise don’t have much time for or interest in politics.

McDonnell’s victory in Loudoun and in neighboring Prince William County will come as a surprise to many armchair pundits, who thought that all of Northern Virginia had became solidly blue. Many die-hard Democrats will blame Creigh Deeds’s lifeless campaign and the political environment.

But the truth is that Northern Virginia is often taken for granted as a powerful Democratic bloc. To be sure, Fairfax County has become solidly blue, but Loudoun and Prince William counties are more accurately full of independents who just happen to be supporting Democrats recently.

McDonnell is the Professor Harold Hill of politics. He sells himself as a moderate. He’s not. His right-wing extremism, bolstered by the GOP candidates for Lt. Governor and Attorney General, will haunt Virginians for the next four years.

Reminds me of an old bumper sticker that reads: “Don’t vote: It only encourages the bastards.”