In Denver this morning, something took place that seemed a lot like a time-warp flash-forward to the Democratic National Convention, which isn’t supposed to be coming here until the end of August. This morning the Obama campaign held a rally at the University of Denver that caused traffic jams that made the highways look like a mini-version of the nightmare Los Angeles 405! In the end, I parked in someone’s driveway. Others were just parking on lawns around the city campus. Preliminary reports were putting the crowd at something like 10,000 people. Lines started before 7 am and snaked all around the campus, literally around whole city blocks. It was clear by 8:30 am when they opened the doors to Magness Arena that we weren’t all going to get a seat. So they shuttled us into overflow sections. Half the overflow crowd— thousands of us—filed into the Arena gym and the rest were seated in the lacrosse field outside, snow piles from last week still rimming the edges of the grass.
Waiting for the doors to open, I started asking people why they came out, whether it was their first time to a political rally, etc. The response was always pretty much the same: “Are you kidding me, fool? Look around you?” People talking to one another in the crowd were all saying things like: “Can you believe this?” and “This is insane!”
And it was. This thing was no political rally, not like any of the political rallies I’ve ever been to in my life. This was no Dukakis rally. This was no Clinton rally, whatever they say. It was different. This damn thing was a rock show. The crowd was buzzing for two hours out there in the Colorado briskness and when Caroline Kennedy got up and said that there was something about all this she recognized from conversations she had been having her whole life with people about the way her father energized Americans, the crowd went mad, even in the overflow gym, where we were watching her on a JumboTron and she couldn’t hear any bit of the clapping or hooting that was bouncing off the rafters.
Obama took a while to get on stage because he was making a tour of the rally, speaking first in the open air to the lacrosse field crowd, then stopping in and giving us gym dwellers some love and then heading to the main stage to rock the house.
He gave an early nod to John Edwards for making his campaign about the people. He said the Democratic field this year has been exemplary, etc, that they all want to “turn the page on the disastrous policies of the Bush/Cheney years,” for which he got much applause. “In November, one thing we know for sure: the name George W Bush will not be on the ballot,” he said, and the crowd roared. But then: “The thing, though, is it’s easy to be against something. We have to look ahead and also turn the page on the politics that made the Bush/Cheney policies possible. From now till November, we will be deciding what kind of party we want to make: a divisive party that continues the toxic politics of the past or one that uplifts and provides hope… We will win not by choosing a candidate who will unite the opposition party against us. We need one who will unite all of the people in our country who are yearning for change. On the first day in office… I don’t want to come in with 47 percent for, 47 percent against, and 5 percent undecided, all of whom apparently live in Ohio and Florida. No. We need a candidate who brings more than that…”
And so on. Generally, given the much-remarked-upon similarities in their platforms, Obama today was articulating as strongly as ever, with newly powerful fully endorsed references to JFK, what’s at stake in the choice between Obama and Clinton. To that end, even in articulating policy initiatives, he sounded a lot like Kennedy.
“Some people, they’re looking back, Clinton versus Bush… they want to build a bridge back to the 20th century. They think we need someone practiced in power. But John Kennedy, when he was considering running for the presidency, he was counseled by Harry Truman to wait, to build more political experience. But Kennedy said ‘No, I can’t wait, the time is now, a new generation is ready.’ This is our moment. The old politics won’t do. This election is not about us versus them, not about rich versus poor… certainly not about black versus white. It’s about the past versus the future. If I’m the nominee, they can’t make this election about the past because you will have already chosen the future.”
And:
“Young people graduating from college with thirty, forty, fifty thousand dollars in debt is not my idea of America… I propose $4000 tuition credits per year for every college student in the country. We will expand Americorp around the country… But this is a call to service for young people. You see, we’ll invest in you and you will invest in us and we will carry the country together into the future.”
And:
“When I’m president, we won’t wait any longer to do something about the environment. Kennedy’s generation went to the moon. This is our challenge. We have to act before our planet passes a threshold. There isn’t anyone else…”
Behind Obama on the stage sat clapping what looked like a significant cast of Colorado Democrats, including former Denver mayor Frederico Pena, current mayor John Hickenlooper, state senators and so on. Elder statesman Gary Hart sat right behind the podium, looking himself like a Kennedy, all jaw and outsize mane of white hair. In a telling moment—either a “this is the next generation” moment or an “I don’t care if I look like a groupie” moment or both, Hart pulled out his own digital camera and held it high to get a good shot of Obama and then took a snap.
Note: During the speech, I was scrawling in a notebook that I dropped in the four inches of snow that fell while I was driving home. So the official transcript from Denver may look a little different from the paragraphs above.
Tags: caroline kennedy, denver, rally
Sounds like fun! My mom always says most of the people at the anti-Vietnam protests were there because their crush was there. If you make it a party, who doesn’t want to go? Obama has certainly figured that out.
Was it a party? Yeah, I guess, in an outscale sorta way. The defining thing for me was the mass-ness of it, which of course is the point of a rally, I guess. The people there were hungry for it, really just the same as at a rock show, where people go because they’re all into the band and the music is loud so each person kind of disappears. For that two hours: no more trees, just forest! There’s a blissed out feeling. This is overstating it, but what the hell: My impression was that the kind of people who were there were people who were relieved to be able to feel that way about a candidate——and to feel that way together. I don’t know how else to put it.
Yeah, I was one of the DU students who waited in line at 7.45 am. Totally worth it though; it’s an honor to hear Obama speak “in-person.” His story is similar to mine, and it’s very inspiring to see an intelligent man who worked his way up through hard work, not to be jaded and pompous. The fact that I agree with many of his policies doesn’t hurt either!
I admit that I don’t know much about politics, but Obama speaks as if he really cares, as if he’s really listening. That I actually matter in the millions of Americans out there. He’s given me hope, and I won’t hesitate to entrust my future to him.