This comes via an old friend who gave me permission to use his report from last night's Bill Clinton event at UC Davis.
Doug Paul Davis, the pseudonymous influential Davis activist, reports from behind the scenes at last night's last minute event.
Last night Bill Clinton came to the ARC Pavillion [...] It was a last minute event, that turned out to be highly successful. According to some of the organizers, the Hillary for President campaign had called and asked if they could get 1,000 people to show up at an event with the Former President as the speaker.
Instead, as early at 7 pm, two full hours before the event a crowd wrapped around the entire recreation field waiting to get in. An estimate 7,000 people showed up inside the ARC and another perhaps 2,000 were eventually turned away. Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the crowd was that perhaps 90 percent of it was students.
(bolds mine)
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This took me by surprise. The broad narrative is that the Bay Area and UC are hotbeds of Obama support, but the response to this quickly arranged event says things are even better for Hillary than we hear.
The former President showed up his customary 20 minutes late and spoke for upwards of 45 minutes. He himself seemed surprised by how many people showed up. He said he called up Hillary after the debate, and said,
"Hillary there is a line outside this stadium that is four or five football fields long."
DPD* notes,
Anyone wondering of the strength of the Hillary candidacy amid the enthusiastic throng that got into the ARC needs to reevaluate. If all of these students and young people come out and vote in a few weeks, Hillary Clinton will be in very strong position. If all of these students and many more like them across the nation come out and vote in November, we will see yet another wage of support and a new Democratic President.
The campaign weather report aside, DPD highlights a very interesting part of the Clinton campaign message, that it's important to be able to handle failure:
He then went on to talk about health care and how important it was that hard working people have access to universal health care. He talked about one of the key failures of his administration, the failure to get universal health care. Pointing out that he was hardly to the first to do so. And that this failure was a failure of Hillary Clinton.
The key he said was not whether you fail, but how you respond to that failure and he listed off a litany of programs that he passed after health care went down that helped out working people in this country. And he made the point that you cannot be afraid to fail. Everyone who attempts to do something will fail at some of their endeavors. You cannot be afraid of failure to the point where you never try to succeed.
As a businessman, I often note that few people are self-confident enough to admit or discuss failure, and that many actual failures (cough, GWB, cough) refuse to admit mistakes. It is a real sign of confidence and strength to not fear failure, and to focus on ultimately succeeding in the face of adversity.
In an accompanying post, DPD tells the very touching story about Bill formally announcing support for Davis food service workers who are trying to unionize and win benefits.
Upon a special arrangement, the Sodexho Workers representatives were given the opportunity to meet and briefly speak with Former President Bill Clinton following the event. I was allowed to join them and report on their conversation.
The President spoke briefly with the workers and then posed for pictures. During the course of their conversation, he came out in favor of their efforts to become full university employees earning equal pay and equal benefits.
After the meeting, I spoke with three of the workers.
Kevin Cole who works at Tercero:
"We just met the [former] President of the United States. He said that he is going to help us to win this struggle that we're going through. We are so grateful that we met him and got his support in our struggle."
Joe Moreno who works at Segundo:
"We're so glad to be here, just be here to shake his hand. I'm very happy to know that he's going to support us in our campaign. More power to us."
Esther Jaurez who works at Segundo spoke to me in Spanish:
"I feel very happy to have greeted the former President. I just wanted to ask that you help us and all of our families and friends. I also want to be able to ask for help because I have to go to the doctor, now I have a bill of $45,000 and I don't know how I'm going to be able to pay it. I don't have health insurance and I don't know how to do it. The health insurance is very expensive that they give us."
One of the initiatives that the Former President pushed was universal health care. As we see, this is not a novel problem. This lady now has a debt that she will likely never be able to repay because the health care offered by Sodexho was not affordable at over one-quarter of her already meager income per month. Had she been a university employee, she would have been fully covered by the university's health care plan.
The President has been a strong support of labor and worker's rights and social justice. The Sodexho workers also received strong support from Mayor of West Sacramento Christopher Cabaldon, Lt. Governor John Garamendi, Davis City Councilmember Lamar Heystek, Assemblywoman Lois Wolk, and Speaker of the Assembly Fabian Nunez.
The opportunity to participate in this and hear the reaction from the Sodexho workers themselves was one of the more moving and inspiring events I have had the fortune of covering during my time working on this blog.
Something is going on here in CA. We started mailing in our ballots a few days ago, and it looks like the Clinton buzz underlying her huge lead here in polls, is being under-reported.
* The initials DPD are a wry shot at the Davis Police Department that the blog has, with extreme success, been a watchdog over.