I drove to Sunapee Harbor from Keene to hear Barack Obama this evening. Random thoughts below.
It was pouring. Tent-tops provided shelter for some (including lucky me). Nonetheless, there was a crowd of about 500 (separate SWAGs of a friend and me). Impressive - Sunapee isn't close to a population center. From Keene it was the canonical one hour drive to get there.
From license plates it wasn't a crowd of summer folks - but they were there too. It was as diverse in terms of age, ethnicity, and economic strata as any other New Hampshire campaign gathering I've seen.
Yes: Obama and Clinton both have 'rock star' status, for better or worse. The only other time I've seen this since I started following the primary closely in 1968 - except for incumbent Presidents - was Reagan in 1980, and now we have two at once.
The stump speech was almost entirely aimed at differences between the broad Democratic vision and the Bush Administration, rather than highlighting differences among the primary candidates. The one exception I noticed: at least twice he mentioned 'the Iraq War - which should never have been authorized.' That's staking out a position of differentiation versus Clinton and Edwards (and Biden and Dodd, for that matter).
The two front runners have stump speeches that focus on the generic Dem and Republican visions, while everyone else highlights differences among the primary candidates. (Well, DUH - but Blue Hampshire wants to be open to political newbies.)
He delivered the stump speech extremely well. He had the crowd with him throughout. The humor worked ("People who know my wife think she should be the candidate, but she's smart enough to prefer telling the President what to do"), the historical analogies worked.
He made a point of telling the crowd that real change historically has been bottom-up, not top-down: from the Revolution, to Abolition, to Suffrage, to Civil Rights. Obama has a background as a community organizer in Chicago - Saul Alinsky's turf, IIRC. (Hillary did a thesis on Alinsky.) I believe he is absolutely correct - I'm not sure how that affects things, or whether he has a vision to somehow institutionalize community action.
On Mike's survey thread I defended Obama's Blue Hampshire statement on healthcare, which talked about full and universal coverage, but didn't quite say 'everyone will be covered.' In the stump speech he does say "we can provide health care to everyone," and someone near me quietly complained that his plan doesn't do that.
Big summary point - oops, I forget to mention how beautiful the Sunapee area is, and how clear and refreshing the lake is. Tomorrow's the loon census - are we making sure to footnote that Tom Tancredo, Duncan Hunter and Ron Paul are not indigenous?
