Last week was hectic at work, and that’s why I’m so late posting my diary about Michelle Obama’s public appearance in Raleigh, NC on Tuesday, April 8.
For details, meet me on the flip side.
The event was at Reynolds Coliseum on the campus of North Carolina State University. I only heard about because I receive regular emails from www.barackobama.com, the campaign’s web site. I was instructed to email back my RSVP in order to get a "ticket." My ticket came back in the form of an email beginning with, "This is your ticket."
Since I live in Raleigh and work downtown, not far from the campus, I jumped at the chance to attend my first campaign rally of the primary season. After work I had supper downtown and then drove over to the campus. The traffic was so thick and slow going into the campus that I u-turned out of there and found public parking in a lot behind a restaurant across the street from the campus entrance closest to the coliseum. Then I walked back to the campus, congratulating myself on burning off a few extra calories and reducing my carbon footprint slightly, not to mention avoiding the stress of looking for a parking space on a campus that is almost totally unfamiliar to me. (I didn’t grow up in Raleigh. I went to college at Davidson over near Charlotte.)
No, there are no pictures, but not because I didn’t try. My smart phone does have a camera, but I couldn't take a shot from my seat in the Coliseum that wasn’t way too blurry. If I’d started sooner, when we were lining up outside and distance wasn’t such an issue, I could have gotten some great shots of the crowd.
All ages were represented, but it was mostly young, as I expected. Many attendees were probably students at State or other nearby colleges. About one-third of them were black. Asians were rare. The rest were white. Young Muslim women in hijabs were could be seen, but they stood out precisely because they weren’t numerous. If you’re a conspiracy theorist, you are welcome to saddle up that data point and ride it through the gates of Hell for all I care. This is America, where people get to worship any way they please.
Young volunteers with clipboards circulated among us and gave us forms to fill out, which address, phone number, and email address. There was also a line for "name of church." I asked about that, and the young man replied, "That’s for their faith-based activities." So I wrote down the name of my synagogue, Kehillah of Chapel Hill, with pride. Take that, all you pundits who say the Jewish vote is for Hillary.
When I finally got inside Coliseum, I passed the voter registration tables (being already registered) and soon found there was no room left on the lower level. We were all directed onto the mezzanine seats. From there, I got a good view of the whole scene --- the crowd on the lower level on the other side, the lucky people (reporters?) sitting in folding chairs on the floor, and the temporary raised platform in one corner of the basketball court. Only half of the seating was available for the rally. I asked a man sitting nearby, middle-aged and wearing a dark suit, what the seating capacity here was. He said, "About five thousand." That leaves about 2,500 seats for the rally. We filled nearly all of them.
It was about 6:45 when I took my seat. Volunteers circulated through the crowd (but only on the lower level) distributing the standard sign, the one you’ve all seen on the news: "Obama, Change We Can Believe In."
There were two introductory speakers, a young white man representing the North Carolina campaign, and a slightly older black woman from Syracuse, New York. For the most part, we listened to music and waited. The kids holding signs practiced standing up together and cheering.
Michelle finally came in about 7:20 PM, and the whole crowd with ballistic for a minute or so. After a few introductory remarks, appreciating "N-C-S-U" for hosting her, she alluded to the charge of unpatriotism directed at Barack and his supporters aren’t patriotic. She said, "There are many things to be proud of in America, but we are not where we need to be."
She recalled her father’s blue-collar municipal government job in Chicago, which paid him enough back in the Sixties and Seventies that he could support her, another sibling, and her stay-at-home mother. One salary for that job wouldn’t be enough today. She talked about the high cost of going to college, and the burden of student loans that so many young graduates face today. She said part of the reason public education is in such bad shape is that young graduates don’t go into teaching because teaching does not pay enough for them to pay their student loans. She recalled that she and Barack were still struggling with their student loans for Harvard Law School until he wrote two best-selling books. "He told me, ‘I’m gonna write these two books, and we’re gonna be fine.’ So I told him, ‘Okay, but this better work.’"
She spoke about the importance of not losing hope. She was discouraged from going to Princeton, but she applied, got in, and graduated with honors. She was discouraged from going to Harvard Law, but she got in, excelled and got her law degree. In every case, when she or Barack jumped over the bar, it got moved up higher. Referring to the many who have struggled like she and Barack have, she said, "We don't mind having to jump over a bar. We just want that bar to keep still."
Then she mentioned Hillary Clinton’s campaign and its recurring denigration of the Obama campaign’s successes to date, but without mentioning the New York Senator’s name. She recalled that Obama wasn’t supposed to be a serious candidate because he was facing the Clinton machine with its massive amount of campaign money and two-decades-old nationwide network of political contacts. Obama raised a lot of money, big laugh line. Then they raised the bar. Obama had to win the Iowa primary, big laugh line. Then they raised the bar again, saying he had to win a primary. He came very close to winning New Hampshire, but got as many delegates as Hillary did. Then he won in South Carolina, big laugh line and scattered cheering from students from the Palmetto state. Then they raised the bar again, saying he was supposed to win in South Carolina because he was the black candidate. She carried on the metaphor of raising the bar a couple more times before she came to the obvious conclusion: Obama has always been the underdog in this race.
She said much more, but I didn’t record the meeting and took no notes, so this is all I can remember.
After the meeting, I had a letter for Senator Obama that I wanted to give to Michelle to hand to him. It concerns an issue that is very important to me. I’ll have to just email his website, though, because dozens of autograph seekers were crowded around her, and not all of us (including me) got a chance to make our connection before the Secret Service men hustled her away.
All in all, it was an inspiring evening, and Barack wasn’t even there. After listening to Michelle, it wasn’t hard to imagine an alternate universe where Obama decides to be a lawyer while Michelle becomes first a State Senator, then a U. S. Senator, and then a Presidential candidate.
To me the most impressive thing about Michelle’s appearance was the absence of any bitterness toward Hillary Clinton. Her derision of the people who "raise the bar" was directed at anonymous individuals on the media, probably various pundits who have spent the last year insisting that it isn’t Obama’s "turn" yet.
There’s going to be another Raleigh event on April 27, nothing less than a debate with Hillary at the RBC Center, our hockey team’s home field. I’m definitely going to be there for that one, and I’ll know enough to arrive sooner. Maybe I’ll leave work an hour early that day.