Iran blossoms in this campaign season

"Should I say? Should I say?" Ahmadinejad taunted Mousavi, in what has since become a campaign slogan for the president's rivals.

"When Mahmoud comes up short," one chant goes, "he drags the womenfolk into the middle of it."

"When Mousavi comes up short," the opposing chant goes, "he brings in a bunch of sissy boys."

In short, Iran has never been so fun.

A lengthy late-spring rainstorm discourages no one. Throngs of people stand out along Vali Asr Street, some covering themselves with campaign posters, others nonchalantly getting soaked in front of the headquarters of the state broadcasting authority, waiting for Mousavi to emerge.

"Ahmadinejad, listen up! Get out of Iran!" they chant.

I've given up taking cars anywhere, instead just walking and trying to hail taxis or even random strangers. During this political season, Tehran traffic, always horrific, has graduated to apocalyptic, with Mousavi's supporters flooding roadways to counter Ahmadinejad's advantages in the media, and the president's supporters quickly calling out loyal Basij militiamen in response.

The big cities are a seeming lock for Mousavi, as are the northwestern provinces near Azerbaijan, where the country's most influential ethnic minority loves the former prime minister, who is himself Azeri.

But Mousavi supporters acknowledge they'll probably lose the votes of the rural and urban poor who were the beneficiaries of Ahmadinejad's populist economic programs. In the course of four years, he handed out billions of dollars in low- or no-interest housing, agricultural and wedding loans that spurred inflation and real estate speculation but gave a short-term economic fix to the nation's poor and pious.

"They gave out loans to people who could have never built houses otherwise," says Reza Shah-Ragabi, 40, who grows watermelons in the central Iranian village of Gorgab.

"We support Ahmadinejad because he shares the rural worldview."

Still, there are some signs that not everyone in the countryside supports the president. In a field outside the tiny hamlet of Habibabad, 20-year-old Gholam-Reza Ravanbakhsh works amid his father's alfalfa, but dreams of a different life. He got his high school diploma and wants to study engineering, maybe travel abroad.

His entire family will vote for Ahmadinejad, but he confides that he's likely to vote for Mousavi.

"For me the most important thing is the future of the young people," he says, wiping the dust from his eyeglasses.