Obama Rallies Austin, Again
February 23rd, 2008 at 9:31 am
Barack Obama bid farewell to Texas Friday night with another of his conspicuously large outdoor Austin rallies that have become a kind of tradition here.
Before an audience of thousands tightly packed along Congress and 11th at the foot of the Capitol, Obama began his stump speech by recalling his rally a year ago at Auditorium Shores, which drew upwards of 20,000 people just after Obama announced his candidacy.
“Something about me and Austin, I don’t know. We just get along,” he told the crowd Friday. Official counts so far waver all the way from 8,000 to 15,000, according to the Dallas Morning News.
As close as the Obama-Clinton match-up has been, and as well as Clinton fared in the debate Thursday night (pointed references to office machinery notwithstanding), there’s no doubt about who puts on the bigger show. Two days after a South Texas Clinton rally failed to fill a 6,800-seat arena in Hidalgo, Clinton drew just 1,000 to her Friday rally in Dallas. The death of a Dallas Police officer, Victor Lozada, who crashed his motorcycle while accompanying Clinton’s motorcade, cast a far greater pall over Clinton’s last day in the state. She canceled a rally in Fort Worth after hearing the news.
Here in Austin, Obama began his speech with a moment of silence for Lozada as he did at other stops during the day. From there, he covered familiar ground—the country is still in crisis, the planet still in peril—but seemd to loosen up with the crowd a little past the halfway point in his speech. What’s striking about Obama’s stump is that he doesn’t just ask listeners for their vote, he asks them to join a movement. As Clinton has learned it’s very hard to run against a movement. It also may be shocking to the pundit class but it turns out that people actually want to be active actors in their own future, not just consumers or passive recipients of received wisdom.
In the shadow of the Capitol that incubated George W. Bush until 2000, he had a teasing tone in his voice as he mentioned where the president will be this time next year. “He’s coming back to Texas. Yes he is, he’s coming back to Texas.”
He finished his hour-long with a list of counter-arguments to the usual criticisms he hears. To the notion that he lacks substance, he extended an uninspiring invitation for audience members to put themselves to sleep reading the ten-point plans on his website. On charges that he can’t take the heat he’d face as president, “Listen,” he said, “I am a black guy named Barack Obama, running for president. You can’t tell me I’m not tough.”
Obama and Clinton head to Ohio next, leaving the state simmering with a big jump in early voting and a week and a half until the primary.
February 23rd, 2008 at 1:12 pm
the RADIO difference…
‘Tis 10 days before the TX primary. The airwaves are full of candidate’s ads. And for the first time during this campaign season, which for me has been over a year now, I’ve noticed something new.
To hear an ad for Barack Obama on the radio, I’ve noticed that:
He is no longer TOO BLACK.
He is no longer TOO YOUNG.
He is no longer TOO INEXPERIENCED.
He is just a MAN, saying the right things in the right way. Asking for a chance to LEAD rather than RULE. Such WORDS to me, MATTER. I am beginning to HOPE that he is given a CHANCE.
Just his election would be transcendentally significant, but to END THE WAR, and reverse the mentality that engendered it, would be a gift to generations.
And for a cynic like me, it is almost painful to imagine that such is possible.
February 24th, 2008 at 12:33 am
Nice photo and post, my man. I think you nail it when you point to the “movement” aspect of Obama’s campaign. It’s that kind of call to action that resonates with all of his young supporters, not lame “gotcha” lines about copying machines.
February 24th, 2008 at 6:07 am
What does everyone think about Obama’s chances of winning in the Fall when he is now being accused of being un-Patriotic? Remember how that stifled Kerry’s campaign in 2004?
February 24th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
Is there any Democratic candidate the Republicans AREN’T going to accuse of being un-patriotic?
February 24th, 2008 at 3:26 pm
A movement by who, apathetic Americans that have let Bush/Cheney ruin America? It’s never going to happen, especially when the Republicans get hold of Obama. Everyone needs to realize Obama has never been challenged. If Hillary says something against him she gets booed. How convenient, considering I distinctly remember some very radical statements by Obama early on in his campaign. He’s since been censored. He said he would bomb Pakistan. Obama said he would divert troops from Iraq to Afghanistan/Pakistan. That’s not bringing troops home. Obama advocated a single payer health care system, then later claimed he never said that until ABC news ran footage of him saying it. Obama lied to Iowan’s during that primary that he was proud of legislation he passed relative to the nuclear industry. His legislation never passed when the Republicans and nuclear industry got hold of it. It got so watered down it died. Shortly after, Obama voted for the 2005 Energy bill full of pork barrel spending, tax cuts to big oil, and 5.7 billion to the nuclear industry hmmm?
Hillary didn’t vote for it. And lets talk about the campaign of change. In order to change things in government one has to be present to vote for or against bills as a responsible senator, something Obama fails miserably. He has a very poor voting record compared to his peers missing 185 votes out of 1098 in his short 2 years in office. Hillary has only missed 152 votes out of 2406 in 6 years. So much for his opinion about the war. He probably wouldn’t have showed up to vote against it. Why so much absenteeism?
Finally, lets address the idea that words make a difference. Obama is quick to quote Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream,” or “we hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal.” Since when? Those are still only words because they’ve never been followed up by continuing action. Did we not see nooses hanging around the country just last year? Try asking Latinos, Native Americans, or women about empty words speaking of equality. It’s just not reality. Lately Obama is hitting Hillary over NAFTA. NAFTA as Bill Clinton proposed it was a fair and equitable trade agreement. What happened is the Bush/Cheney Administration failed to incorporate fair and equitable wages and environmental parameters in any of their NAFTA dealings to help their big corporate buddies. Obama claims he has a program that will bring around 5 million new jobs in the green sector. With or without Obama that will happen anyway if we can get away from corporate rule. Obama makes statements he’s going to hit corporations hard. Is that a wise move? It’s like telling the enemy you’re coming for them. Obama will be crushed because corporations are already running the entire country. Government agencies have disappeared and their duties contracted out to private corporations. Do you know your taxes are not processed by the government? Some private corp. does that. They know your SS numbers, your income, how many children you have, everything about you on that form. Do you know who they are though? Obama is naive to think he’s going to accomplish all he’s stated. He’s too green and will be manipulated just as the nuclear industry manipulated him. He never got his nuclear legislation passed and ended up in their camp. If I remember all of Obama’s bloopers so far, I can only imagine what the Republicans will do to him. I watched him fumble badly on ABC. Too bad the media doesn’t run that footage over and over. It was pretty. He stuttered and stammered and appeared to get angry because he was caught. Obama will end up with egg in his face going up against the Republicans, and we’ll be looking at President McCain. Oh goody.
February 26th, 2008 at 12:24 am
I feel like people don’t really know Obama’s story correctly. It is actually one of a lot of privilege compared with most Americans.
Obama went to the ritzy prep school–The Punahou School in Hawaii (feel free to look it up), grades 5-12. It is where the rich kids go. Yes, he is the product of a broken home, but his mom had a doctorate in anthropology, his dad abandoned the family to go to grad school at Harvard (Obama senior received a master’s there in 1965). Obama’s grandma, who he lived with for much of his childhood, was the VP of a bank.
Even when Obama’s mom returned to Indonesia, she worked at an embassy and wrote to him often about lofty ideas and goals. Not the typical type of poverty and low social mobility that people usually confront. Sure there is a hard luck element to the story, but poverty is not a fair description of it. Certainly Obama was blessed with very high social mobility.
I don’t mean to sound cold, but I am tired of the hard luck story that isn’t. If feeling sorry for yourself qualifies you for having made it on your own, then yes, Obama is a self made person. I personally think that he had a lot of opportunities. With classmates like Kelly Preston, Steve Case (founder of AOL), and the Hawaiian Royal Family, he wasn’t exactly qualifying for “free lunch” as many of his supporters imply.
February 26th, 2008 at 8:39 pm
I wish someone would question Obama’s economic platform:
Excerpt from the Cato Institute website, an article published by Michael Tanner on November 28, 2007:
Currently, only the first $97,500 of annual wages is subject to the payroll tax. Sen. Obama wants to remove that cap and tax all wages. This would be the largest tax increase in U.S. history, more than $1.3 trillion in new taxes over the first ten years alone, with significant consequences for taxpayers and the American economy. As bad as that would be in the aggregate, it would be even worse for individual workers. Some 9.2 million Americans would see their taxes increased.Obama’s tax increase would saddle the United States with the highest marginal tax rate in the world — higher even than countries like Sweden. Studies based on the WEFA macroeconomic model, a metric developed by economists at the Wharton School of Business and employed widely by Fortune 500 companies, suggest that they would cost the United States as much as $136 billion in lost economic growth over the next 10 years, and as many as 1.1 million lost jobs.
Obama’s tax increase would saddle the United States with the highest marginal tax rate in the world…
In exchange for this economic catastrophe, we would gain surprisingly little in terms of Social Security’s finances. Even completely eliminating the cap, without allowing any additional credit toward benefits, would result in only eight additional years of cash-flow solvency. Rather than beginning to run a deficit in 2017, Social Security would continue to run a surplus until 2025. That’s very little gain for so much pain.
February 27th, 2008 at 10:02 am
Terrific picture.
March 3rd, 2008 at 7:05 am
ATTENTION TEXAS VOTERS
A VOTE FOR HILLARY IS A VOTE FOR MCCAIN.SHE WILL NOT WIN IN NOVEMBER,OBAMA WILL
March 3rd, 2008 at 7:10 am
ATTENTION LATINO VOTERS
ITS TIME FOR A CHANGE IN GOVERNMENT.WE HAD ENOUGH OF THE CLINTONS AND BUSH’S.HILLARY IS PROBABLY A GOOD WOMEN BUT SHE IS NOT YOUR FRIEND,SHE IS JUST A POLITICIAN SO VOTE FOR A CHANGE//VOTE OBAMA///
October 9th, 2008 at 10:57 pm
[…] My friend and former Observer colleague Patrick Michels has a real nice post and photo up on the Observer blog that captures Obama’s connection with […]