Friends in Obama

Madeline Lewis, 62, works on employment discrimination cases for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Stephanie Brunotts, 53, is a stay-at-home mom. The two became friends working for the Obama campaign.

They were part of the ground game in Ashburn that pushed Obama over the top. They registered voters, knocked on doors, drove people to the polls. Anything to get their man in for another four years.

At Brunotts' townhouse, Lewis, a diehard Redskins fan -- she has season tickets -- rattles off all the things that will matter to her in Obama's second term. Women's rights. Gun control. Access to education.

"I'm concerned about our inner cities," says Lewis, who grew up in Newark, New Jersey. "I want everyone to be educated, get a job. That way, they are not breaking into my house."

The two talk about the Newtown tragedy. Lewis, who is divorced, bought a handgun for personal protection but she doesn't know why anyone would need to own an assault weapon.

She wants to tell Obama to bring back some manufacturing to America. Everything seems to be made somewhere else now. She wants the president to give incentives for companies to stay here. She almost sounds like her Republican neighbors.

"The clothes they make in China are garbage," she says, picking her ginger ale off Brunotts' coffee table, which prominently displays the Time magazine cover of Obama's win in 2008.

Brunotts says Obama did all he could in his first term with his hands tied. She points to Obamacare. "Who knew people would have this level of health care?"

The two women wonder why the country had become so polarized. "Romney's father was a moderate Republican," Lewis says. "People worked together then."

Maybe Washington has reached rock bottom, Brunotts says.

"Maybe it had to break for it to start fresh, to fix it."

Things get worse before they get better

Back at the Giant supermarket complex, Oberschneider, the psychologist, thinks it will take a while for Ashburn -- and the nation -- to heal.

But sometimes, he says in true form to his profession, things need to get worse before they get better. Like an alcoholic in a terrible car accident. That's how he views the ideological divide.

He says he respects Obama. "He's still my president." And that he, like everyone else in America, needs to be able to believe in him.

"I would love to do a group therapy session with all of them -- the president, Congress," he says.

Then he leans back in his oversized chair, in his darkened office in the middle of Ashburn, Virginia, and says: "I think it would take more than one session."