*Unfortunately I don't have any pics. I drove down to Eugene from Portland and forgot my car charger and digital camera, so my phone was out of battery and I was without a camera. Hopefully someone else who went to this rally is able to post pics in there own diary or in the comments section. The following is my trip down to Eugene,OR for the Obama rally this evening.
I arrived in Eugene around 3 o'clock, based on stories from my friends, I expected a huge line. When I got to campus there was secret service and news services crawling all over the place. I saw the place where the rally was taking place and the area was relatively calm despite the fact that there was a campus street fair going on and this supposed huge rally. My friends and I looked around for a line (gates supposedly opened around 5:45) and saw no line in front of the staging area, so we decided to just plop down in the grass. There WERE hundreds of Obama volunteers wondering around though, so we knew something must be. Eventually we stopped one of the volunteers and asked him "where's the line? Is this it?". The volunteer just laughed and pointed us East towards the EMU (U of O commons area) and said the line begins there. The real rest of the story beyond the flip.
We arrived at the line which stretched about 6 blocks. Once we got to the end of the line, we where approached by literally one volunteer every 5 minutes (great job guys) asking us whether we had already voted and if we would like to volunteer. The line didn't move for about 30 minutes after we arrived and had already stretched probably another 5 blocks behind us. The line was great, we got into tons of interesting political discussions with the various types of people standing around in line with us.
A Hillary Clinton supporter came up to us and asked us for her support. I told her that she was very brave and complimented her dedication and then told her she would be welcome to join us any time. She seemed almost caught off guard by that statement, but smiled brightly and took the compliment. She then asked a group of us whether she thinks Hillary should drop out. Most gave the status quo answer of "no, as long as she doesn't do any further harm to the party", but I decided to shake things us. I told her that the reason I wanted Hillary out wasn't for selfish reasons. I didn't HAVE to have Obama as our nominee already and that I could wait another month. It wasn't that I was about to put a bullet through my television set, because I could just turn it off. The reason I told her that I believed Hillary Clinton should drop out is a reason I feel pretty strongly about. Follow me on this. Hillary Clinton's major donors with an abundance of wealth who feel strongly about her candidacy have mostly undoubtedly given the limit to her campaign by now. That leaves her other supporters, the infamous "elderly" and "lunchpale democrats" aka democrats living off of social security or making less then $40,000 a year. I told this HIllary supporter, while I thought it was admirable she was staying in, the people funding her admirability where people who felt so strongly about either Hillary Clinton or seeing a woman in office for the first time in there lifetime that they where giving money they didn't have, blinded by there passions. I said that while many of them probably realize it is money being thrown away, others just can't see that and the ramifications is Hillary Clinton directly putting them in harder financial times for no reason other then her own pride. Despite the harshness of the accusation, this Hillary supporter took it in and I believed may have actually got what I was seeing. Later I saw her in the rally.
Now back to the rally. After about a 2 hour wait in line, we where finally allowed into the courtyard. It was a fairly calm. We passed through metal detectors set at the outside of the courtyard and into the courtyard. The weather remained really nice, steadily in the mid-60's. Even though we started 5 blocks down in the line, once we got into the courtyard I settled in a nice spot in front of the stage, probably only about 50 feet away. We waited another hour. Finally someone came out. It was a cute young girl. I forgot her name or her purpose, but I believe she was probably with Students for Obama. She gave a nice little speech, although I would advise that she take some speech classes, because it wasn't very riveting and she kept giggling between sentences like she was about to meet Ashton Kutcher. Another 25 minutes passed and then finally... the event began.
First came out University of Oregon basketball coach Ernie Kent. Ernie Kent is a large black man, who from talking to him a couple times when I lived in Eugene is a really cool guy. He came out and said not as a member of University of Oregon faculty, but as a person he was endorsing Barack Obama for President. He then pulled out a specially made U of O Obama Jersey. The Number was one with Obama on the backside.
Next was David Wu, who I thought made a really good speech. I don't want to write it all, because it was basically the same old stump speech, but he seemed genuine about his desire to see the world shift to alternative fuels and to see Obama become President. Then came last nights midnight endorsement Peter Defazio. Eugene's congressman. Defazio is a really cool guy, who gives a lot of the students in the area opportunity to intern for him and has a lot of really progressive ideas. I'm really glad that he endorsed Barack Obama. And then the big moment came. Ladies and gentleman I introduce to you the next President of the United States.... Barack Obama.
Barack came out looking cool as ever. In a gray sport coat and a white undershirt, Barack was sporting the no tie look. The weather was nice and the crowd was going wild. Barack started out by thanking all those who made this appearance possible. He then launched into what may be (someone correct me if I'm wrong) the first stump speech of the general election. Let me make this clear... Obama did not mention Hillary (at least that I heard) once!.
Some highlights of Barack's speech:
- He started out by using a really good quote. I've heard variations of it before, but I loved the way he phrased it. He started out by saying one good thing about this election is the GWB will not be on the ballot. This brought out a large applause. After the applause he countered, "but although George Bush may not be on the ballot, he will still be running for a third term through John McCain". I thought this was brilliant.
- Another moment is when mentioning the gas tax. Proceeding his usual stump about how dumb the gas tax was, he just mentioned "John McCain first brought up the idea of the gas tax". He didn't follow it with "before my opponent" or "before Hillary Clinton". He just said "John McCain first brought up the idea of the gas tax" and then launched into his critique.
- He played great with the crowd. At one point while talking about the price of gas he threw out the figure of $3.50 a gallon. Before he could continue people we screaming "I wish". He asked $3.60? The crowd answered high. $3.70? Crowd answered higher. Somebody in the crowd then yelled out "$3.80". He then said "$3.80? Wow, I hope you guys are riding your bike's". This brought out what could have been the biggest applause of the night. Another great moment with the crowd came when he was giving out the ingredients to getting America back on track. After the first he layed out the first two ingredients, he paused. He then said "And the third ingredient", he paused again. During this pause somebody yelled "YOU!" and he countered like an expert boxer, "no, actually it you!". This brought out another good applause.
- Obama finished the speech admitting that he had released some negative ad's throughout the campaign season, but that it was when he did that, that he felt the worst. He said "after you get hit over and over again, you gotta through a counterpunch or people may see you as a wimp, but I just hate throwing those punches. I set out to run a different campaign". He mentioned, he knows what the republicans are going to do to him, He says he's ready for the muslim insinuation, the flag pins, and the Rev. Wright stuff, but that he will continue to run a positive campaign because that is what the American people want.
This brought out a huge applause.
He then closed, by what I predict he will do throughout the rest of the campaign, by telling us about him. He said that the republicans will try to distort him, so he wanted to remind us who he is. He then gave us a great story about where he came from and what made both him and Michelle decide that now was the time! Final thoughts are that it was a great rally. While the crowd was not as loud as other rallies (mainly because I believe people where tired and taking pictures) the weather was great and Barack was certainly on his "A" game.
At the beginning he extended his hand out to the Hillary supporters and said that he knows there are divisions as of now, but by November we will see what unites us instead of divides us. He was courteous and presidential and if his speech at this rally is any indication of the type of campaign we will see through the fall, I have no fears that November 5th, 2008 the headlines across the globe will read "Barack Hussein Obama elected President of the United States".