Here in our twin cities of West Lafayette and Lafayette, Indiana, people are really enjoying all the political bigwigs visiting here - Bill, Chelsea, Hillary, Barack, Madeleine Albright, and Caroline Kennedy have all been in our little town within the last 3 weeks. (The last time we got any national candidate during a presidential race was JFK.) We also had a little Hollywood-style celebrity with Jeremy Spiven come to the Purdue campus stumping for Obama.
Attendance at every event is great, but what I find striking is how little they have translated into any tangible political fervor.
For example, pretty much everyone I stood in line with for an hour to see Caroline Kennedy speak for Obama today planned to attend Hillary Clinton's local speech tonight. And, about 2 weeks ago, all the people around me waiting 2 hours for Obama tickets had done the same to see Bill Clinton. And, in all the political event lines I've stood in the past few weeks, there is almost never any political talk. It's just the most exciting thing going on in town, so that is where everyone is. It feels much more like waiting in line for concert tickets than my past political event experiences. (My frame of reference, however, is more anti-war rallies than political events, so that may be the reason for the difference.)
This complacency seems visually evident throughout the city as well. There are a few Obama yard signs on my street and the occassional Obama bumper sticker seen around town. (It probably doesn't help that the Obama HQ didn't have any signs or bumper stickers as of last week.) I have seen very few Hillary signs, in fact I can only think of one location - a busy corner in front of a vacant CVS that has 3 or 4 Hillary signs in it. Other than that, the only other Hillary signage I see is a group of 3-4 people who occassionally pop up on street corners with "Honk for Hillary" signs. (In the two times I've seen them, no one was honking.)
I'm somewhat new to this region of the country, but I almost have the feeling that it is "unseemly" to wear your politics on your sleeve. Talking politics in a line to see Barack Obama can feel as strained as it would be at a cocktail party filled with strangers. In my campaign phone calls for Obama, I've had some great conversations with both Obama supporters and undecideds, so it isn't that people aren't engaged - they just dont' seem to be engaging one another in public.
In closing, I have added a poll because several of my friends have called me closed-minded for not attending the pro-Hillary rallies (after all, it won't be anytime soon that a former President, first lady and secretary of state comes to my town again.) But I feel like I've made an informed decision, won't be changing my mind before the primary, and would feel like I'm providing implied support by attending. What do you think?