22
Apr
The Obama Rally on Independence Mall
Topic: Politics
Tags: Election 2008, Obama, Philadelphia
The Obama rally on Independence Mall, Philadelphia, April 18, 2008. The crowd was estimated at 35,000.
The past few weeks have been the height of silly season in the Democratic race, culminating with the amazingly uninformative debate last week. I think I knew less after watching it than before it started.
I went to the Obama rally last Friday, and I think it’s safe to say it was the largest crowd I’ve ever been a part of (it was estimated at 35,000). It felt just like a big rock concert, especially since will.i.am was there to provide an opening act. I was lucky to get a ticket that put me within about 100 ft of the stage (the tickets were free, but getting my hands on a “blue” ticket, which put me near the stage, called upon ticket hustling skills I haven’t exercised in probably 15 years). I expected people would be excited to see him, but there was a level of excitement during his first few minutes on stage that I’ve only seen before in clips of early Beatles concerts. There were a couple of big guys next to me who were picking up shorter people for a few seconds each, so they could catch a glimpse of him. A little old lady even shuffled her way up to them for a turn. The speech was good, but since I’m such a politics junkie, it was familiar.
The results for the Pennsylvania primary will start coming through in a few minutes. I’m actually glad it’s over. We’ve probably gotten about two dozen campaign calls from the Clinton and Obama folks over the past few days. The polls show Clinton ahead by about 7-10%. I’m probably unduly influenced by my experience at the rally, but I think Obama will hold her to a tighter margin. My prediction: Hillary by 4%.
August 11th, 2008 at 9:07 pm
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