On Huffington Post's Off the Bus page, Mayhill Fowler has a post titled, "Obama's Clouded Victory Rally." I was at the Obama rally in downtown Des Moines on Tuesday night (shameless diary plug: see Obama in Des Moines - a view from the bleachers ). While Fowler got the details of the evening's weather spot on:
Last night was glorious in Des Moines--balmy, clear, a moon like a gold doubloon on the low horizon.
I'm not sure Fowler did with her evening once she got done marrying the weather report to a bad simile. Wherever she was, it doesn't sound to me like she was at the same rally I attended. Then again, it's all about perception, isn't it?
Fowler continues her piece with a passage that - "at least to her eye," as she says - sums up the overall tone and mood of the event.
It should have been an occasion of joy and celebration with the Iowans who so early on believed in him, many working their hearts out for him. Instead it was, at least to my eye, a troubling event that inadvertently dramatized the disjunction with reality that characterizes Obama's persona and speech now, as well as the divisions among Americans that the long campaign is laying bare and deepening.
Maybe Ms. Fowler is tired after many months of following the Obama campaign and her exhaustion is seeping into her perception of events. Maybe over-hearing a group of unidentified reporters (she implies they're locals) commenting negatively as they watched Senator Clinton's Kentucky victory speech on a television that was set up in the press area colored the rest of her evening. According to Fowler, she heard them say things like:
"She's still talking?" "Why won't she shut up!" "All her supporters in Kentucky are racists."
Maybe, though, as I fear, she's hell-bent on bringing her narrative to the events she witnesses rather than narrating said events, as any good journalist, even a non-mainstream one, should do.
Barack Obama's speech on Tuesday night was not the best one that Iowans have seen. That honor belongs to either his Jefferson-Jackson Dinner speech from November 10th or his victory speech on the night of the Iowa caucus. But it was a great speech. I, along with precinct captains, caucus team members, and scores of other volunteers, were joined by thousands of Iowans who caucused for Obama, many who didn't but have come to support him since their candidates of choice left the race, and some who were not engaged during caucus season but are now curious to see the presumptive Democratic nominee in person. We were thrilled to see him and his family again.
For many of us who logged volunteer hours just two blocks down the street from the rally site, at Obama's rather dingy campaign HQ, the moment was bittersweet. That was our guy up there, the one we believed in when so many others wouldn't, the winner, and we'd helped to put him there. But as the metal detectors, heavy police presence, and roof-top security on Tuesday evening reminded us, things have changed since the months last summer when we leisurely strolled into a park to listen to the Senator from Illinois give a stump speech on a sunny 4th of July afternoon. We know we can't go back to the cool fall days when getting a handshake or an autograph or even a picture with Barack or Michelle just meant getting to a speech an hour or so early so as to be in the front of the crowd. We're well aware that when we knocked on doors in the New Year's frigid air, we were helping to make history and that history, once made, can never be so new or exciting again.
So maybe we were, as Fowler says, "a subdued crowd that slowly walked away from the corner of Locust and 6th in Des Moines." But if we were, it wasn't because, as she implies throughout the piece, Obama somehow let us down during his speech. He gave the speech he needed to give to a national audience on Tuesday night. We didn't expect him to cater to us. No, if we were subdued, it was because "our Obama" can never truly come back here to Iowa, and we'll miss him. I think it's a simple as that.