My daughter and I arrived at the Civic Center twenty minutes after the doors opened, but all the seats were long gone. We found a spot to where we could barely see the stage. Michelle Obama gave a heartfelt and inspiring speech -- 100% positive. If you didn't know who Obama was running against when you walked in, you wouldn't know when you walked out. She did not mention McCain or the Republicans or whats-her-name once.
Crowd estimate: The Civic center holds up to 10,000 people for "non-hockey events", but they had about 1/3 of the seats curtained off (grr). With so many people standing in the area between the upper and lower seating area, I'd say there were between 6 and 8 thousand people there. They were definitely packed to the rafters in the open seating sections.
I've got a short video below the fold. Sorry for the shaky picture... please close your eyes and listen to Mrs. Obama talk to a big crowd of military families, students and retirees:
Update: WEAR ABC Channel 3 is doing some nice coverage of the event. This story is from their news at 11, while people were lining up to get in. They had another good story at 6:00 which isn't up on their site yet. Michelle asked the crowd to "march" over to vote today, and a lot of people did just that, at least figuratively. The news team popped over to the supervisor of elections office where several hundred people were happily lined up to vote -- most in full Obama regalia.
My daughter and I missed that bit, as we already voted for Obama bright and early Monday morning -- the very first day of Florida's early voting.
Update: WEAR ABC Channel 3's 6 pm story part 1 and part 2.