Not much new in his speech itself (first time I've seen him in person, though he was literally a sea of people away, a dot in the distance), but the CROWD was AMAZING.
I have no clue how many people they were expecting, but I got there at 4:00pm and even thought the line was constantly slowly moving, I didn't reach the entrance for THREE HOURS (Kerry finally started speaking at around 7:30). I'm told that the Macomb County Community College fieldhouse holds around 5-6,000 people normally, and it was jam-packed standing room-only by the time I got in there, with people still spilling out the doors; my best guess is between 7-8,000 people total.
Kerry was introduced by MI Gov. Jennifer Granholm (who attempted to sing a bit, which she really shouldn't have done--excellent Governor, attractive lady, lousy singer). Granholm was, in turn, introduced by beloved MI Senator Carl Levin (his brother, Sandy Levin, a Mich. congressman, was present as well but didn't speak).
Nicest surprise was that all of them were, in turn, preceded by...Jon Bon Jovi! Yep, he showed up and gave a very nice 3-song mini-concert before turning it over to Sen. Levin.
Kerry's speech itself, as I said, was pretty much the standard stump, with a few more recent additions (he made reference to Bush's 1st-debate "It's hard work!" whining by declaring that if it's such hard work, he (Kerry) is more than ready to relieve Bush of his duties; later on, of course, he blasted Bush for "misplacing" the 380 tons of explosives that were in perfectly safe hands until we mucked things up).
Not much else to say--waiting 3 1/2 hours for a 20 minute speech I've already heard, from about 500 feet away, wasn't a whole lot of fun, but I wanted to at least see the guy in person since I'm going through so much effort to elect him, after all!