Two Campaign Events

I've now been to two campaign events here in Nevada. On Thursday I went to a Hillary Clinton "roundtable" discussion on the mortgage crisis. Last night I went to an Obama Town Hall meeting. While it's not completely fair to contrast the two events as they were completely dissimiliar affairs, here's what I saw:

Hillary's event was at a Mexican restaurant near the Strip. There was a crowd of maybe 100 or so, mostly older Hispanic women. The Hillary staff and volunteers were all very young. One of the staffers took a small group of attendees to a corner of the parking lot for "training." He proceeded to teach them how to wave their signs and chant.

If I had to guess, I'd say most of the people there were Party activists. From listening to them talk that's the way it sounded. And their talk was laced with two things: Hillary's talking points "ready on day one" and a visceral hatred of George W. Bush. One Hispanic lady standing behind me went on a 20 minute diatribe in Spanish cursing him. Uh, somebody might tell these people that he won't be on the ballot in November.

The Hillary people struck me as committed and they were all enthusiastic when a beaming Clinton and daughter Chelsea finally showed up (more than two hours late, no explanation given). Prior to the arrival, sporadic chants of "Hill-ar-ee" broke out from the crowd when a passing motorist would honk in support or frustration and the traffic backup we were causing. One older woman like to chant a flat mechanical "Hill-ar-ee" by herself as if in a zombie trance.

One other thing I'll mention about the event -- in Nevada, one of the most powerful unions is the Culinary Worker's Union, who has endorsed Obama. At Clinton's event, there were pre-printed signs saying "Culinary Workers for Clinton." They were passing these out and a Clinton staffer yelled to the crowd, "are there any REAL culinary workers to hold these signs?" I'm not sure he had any takers.

OK, Obama: Obama had a town hall at a large high school gymnasium near the airport. The parking lot was about the size of two football fields. I arrived around 4 pm for the event which was scheduled to start at 6:30. The line was already from the front door of the gym and circling three-fourths around the parking lot. Before it was done the line would circle around the parking lot and down the street. 2,000 people ended up getting in the gym; the campaign said they had to turn nearly that many away.

The crowd was very diverse. I couldn't categorize it as more black than white, more young than old. It was everything. Standing with me in line was a middle age black man who had never participated in a political event before.

People were very enthusiastic but the wait in the cold was long. By the time I got into the gym my back was killing me from standing on hard pavement in hard shoes. But the pre-speech planning was good (after the truly awful high school jazz band stopped playing). They had almost the entire crowd singing and dancing and waving Obama signs to the Temptation's "Shout" and other R&B and rock and roll hits. It felt like a street party. I had to keep reminding myself this was a primary event. It had the size and girth of presidential events I've attended.

We were delayed because Obama stopped outside and made some remarks to the people who couldn't get in. When he came in, the place went nuts.

He was as you've seen; captivating, smooth and even a little cocky. But never condescending and he came off genuine and passionate, and was good about weaving big themes back into specific responses to policy questions. At one point during his stump speech I heard a heavy muffled sound behind me, and I turned around to see large powerfully built black man holding back tears. My new friend who had never been to one of these events was beaming.

Health care and immigration were the most frequent topics of the questioning. Obama offered detailed responses to policy questions; almost surprising given the criticism that he's long on hope and short on details. My aching back begs to differ. He wasn't short on anything.