Drove down from Concord to attend the Kerry rally in Manchester. Great crowd waiting to get in. The Hibernian bagpipe band was marching around behind the crowd lined up to get into the rally area. Don't think I've ever seen this many TV vans and trailers.
Some good speeches by Maine Senator Mitchell and Theo Epstein (Sox General Manager) to introduce President Kerry to the crowd. Kerry gave a great speech which I'm just now seeing again on Cspan. He's going to take on that hard work Bush has been talking bout. Said someone in Iowa back in the primaries said Kerry would only win the White House when the Red Sox won the world series. Well, they did and now he will (grin).
I'm still hoarse from all the yelling at the rally and feeling very excited about this election. Kerry is going to win.
Paul
Gates were supposed to open at noon but didn't seem to be moving until about 1pm. We did a lot of standing around. They had the tent with the metal detectors set up sideways so everyone in the street had to move around to the left into a parking lot to line up to get into the rally. No one got the word until some volunteers came out and yelled at the crowd to move up to the left of the tent.
No one with signs was allowed to take them into the rally area. One women with a hat of evergreen and a sticker of 'More Trees, Less Bush' had to take that sticker off before she could go in with her hat.
Most people I talked to in the crowd were enthusiastic. One women was a bit worried about Florida as she had a friend there. She got him his polling location from the democratic party web site and he had a different polling location. Have they been moving the polling locations around a lot in Florida?
I'm a bit taller (6'7") than others and was able to look over the crowd to the security tent. I finally saw where the line was moving in from the front left. We (me and a gaggle of women who decided I knew what I was doing) moved over to that area and finally got into the rally area about 2:30pm.
The crowd was good sized by the time I got in. A volunteer in the tent said Kerry would be speaking about 3:00pm. When I got in Bruce Hornsby was playing on a piano on a side stage. The area for media was to my left and their bleachers were packed solid with cameras of various sizes and shapes. The podium where Kerry would be speaking was to my right. I got forward and had a fair view of the stage.
Finally you could see a crowd of reporters go into the media tent over to the left. Most of them had suitcases and many were using open laptops while they were walking. They were the media traveling with Kerry so we knew he had arrived.