blackascoal
The Force is With Me
February 5, 2008
Facing Far Bigger Crowds, Obama Strikes a New Note
By JEFF ZELENY
HARTFORD — These days, Senator Barack Obama leads his own applause.
When he strides onto center stage, as he did here on Monday on the eve of the biggest day in the presidential nominating fight, Mr. Obama gazes around the arena at the cheering crowd before him. He puts his hands together — clapping, clapping, clapping — until the music track ends and it is time to begin the show.
Yes, a show.
Since Mr. Obama’s victory in the Iowa caucuses, the size of his audiences has often swelled beyond capacity. Over the weekend, he spoke to about 75,000 people at four stops, a headcount that dwarfs the population of several of the cities he breezed through only a month ago in Iowa and New Hampshire.
As the crowds have grown, it seems, the sales pitch has softened.
Gone are the days when Mr. Obama articulated a litany of specific differences he holds with his lone remaining Democratic rival, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York. In the final hours of the quest for votes on Tuesday, Mr. Obama was looking forward, devoting as much time to talking about Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona.
“We have a real choice to make,” he said Monday. “It is a choice not between black and white, not between genders and regions or religions, but a choice between the past and the future. And if I’m running against John McCain, I want to be making the argument for the future, not for the past. I want to be going forwards, not backwards.”
It was one year ago that Mr. Obama stood before the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Ill., presenting himself as an agent of generational change. He asked voters to come along with him, saying, “It’s time to turn the page.”
As his candidacy has evolved, those six words have remained at the core of the message offered to the voters who have turned out to campaign rallies and forums across the country. The cerebral, soft-spoken speeches that sustained him for months — shaped to prove Mr. Obama’s seriousness — have given way to energetic words of motivation that are typically interrupted every few sentences by applause.
Since winning the South Carolina primary nine days ago, Mr. Obama has traveled through 15 states, sweeping through the South and the Plains, the Mountain States and the West before arriving in the Northeast for three final stops on Monday. In the eyes of his supporters, his success has been measured by the estimated size of his audiences.
Boise, Idaho? 15,000. Minneapolis? 20,000. St. Louis? 20,000.
On a recent morning in Denver, the designated overflow room spilled onto a lacrosse field, so Mr. Obama delivered three separate speeches before leaving the city.
Crowds, of course, can be deceiving.
Are the stadium seats filled with voters or curiosity seekers? Does a crowded basketball arena in Phoenix translate into an Arizona victory? Or does a sparsely attended event on Monday at the Meadowlands, at least by his recent standards, translate into a New Jersey defeat?
Here in Hartford, a crowd of more than 15,000 people in the XL Center rose to their feet again and again Monday evening. As they did, Mr. Obama’s voice boomed, speaking over their applause as he issued a call to stop torture, end the war in Iraq and restore civil liberties.
(It was a stark contrast from the performance only a few hours earlier, when only a third of the seats were filled at the cavernous Izod Center in East Rutherford, N.J.)
More than most, Mr. Obama is a presidential candidate who feeds off his crowds.
“This is what is possible, if you believe,” Mr. Obama said.
“We believe,” the crowd replied.
“There are a lot of people who tell you not to believe,” he added. “There are a lot of naysayers. A lot of doubting Thomases.”
“We believe,” the crowd replied again. “We believe!”
If Mr. Obama’s rise to political prominence began with a keynote speech nearly four years ago at the Democratic National Convention, it is his speeches that many people cite as the reason they are drawn to at least consider his presidential candidacy. (His rivals do not deny that his rhetoric is soaring, but they suggest he is a “talker not a doer,” and even some admirers leave his events saying they crave more details of his plans.)
“The strength behind the words is felt when you’re in person,” said Natishia Aromire, 37, who saw Mr. Obama speak for the first time on Monday and said she intended to vote for him on Tuesday. “On TV, you only get a glimpse of what he’s really like. I just believe in his words. I believe in his character. I believe he’s sincere about what he says.”
With that, Ms. Aromire rushed toward Mr. Obama. With her 6-month old daughter, Lolade, in her arms, she wanted a photograph.
“It’s history in the making,” she said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/05/us/politics/05obama.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Facing Far Bigger Crowds, Obama Strikes a New Note
By JEFF ZELENY
HARTFORD — These days, Senator Barack Obama leads his own applause.
When he strides onto center stage, as he did here on Monday on the eve of the biggest day in the presidential nominating fight, Mr. Obama gazes around the arena at the cheering crowd before him. He puts his hands together — clapping, clapping, clapping — until the music track ends and it is time to begin the show.
Yes, a show.
Since Mr. Obama’s victory in the Iowa caucuses, the size of his audiences has often swelled beyond capacity. Over the weekend, he spoke to about 75,000 people at four stops, a headcount that dwarfs the population of several of the cities he breezed through only a month ago in Iowa and New Hampshire.
As the crowds have grown, it seems, the sales pitch has softened.
Gone are the days when Mr. Obama articulated a litany of specific differences he holds with his lone remaining Democratic rival, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York. In the final hours of the quest for votes on Tuesday, Mr. Obama was looking forward, devoting as much time to talking about Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona.
“We have a real choice to make,” he said Monday. “It is a choice not between black and white, not between genders and regions or religions, but a choice between the past and the future. And if I’m running against John McCain, I want to be making the argument for the future, not for the past. I want to be going forwards, not backwards.”
It was one year ago that Mr. Obama stood before the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Ill., presenting himself as an agent of generational change. He asked voters to come along with him, saying, “It’s time to turn the page.”
As his candidacy has evolved, those six words have remained at the core of the message offered to the voters who have turned out to campaign rallies and forums across the country. The cerebral, soft-spoken speeches that sustained him for months — shaped to prove Mr. Obama’s seriousness — have given way to energetic words of motivation that are typically interrupted every few sentences by applause.
Since winning the South Carolina primary nine days ago, Mr. Obama has traveled through 15 states, sweeping through the South and the Plains, the Mountain States and the West before arriving in the Northeast for three final stops on Monday. In the eyes of his supporters, his success has been measured by the estimated size of his audiences.
Boise, Idaho? 15,000. Minneapolis? 20,000. St. Louis? 20,000.
On a recent morning in Denver, the designated overflow room spilled onto a lacrosse field, so Mr. Obama delivered three separate speeches before leaving the city.
Crowds, of course, can be deceiving.
Are the stadium seats filled with voters or curiosity seekers? Does a crowded basketball arena in Phoenix translate into an Arizona victory? Or does a sparsely attended event on Monday at the Meadowlands, at least by his recent standards, translate into a New Jersey defeat?
Here in Hartford, a crowd of more than 15,000 people in the XL Center rose to their feet again and again Monday evening. As they did, Mr. Obama’s voice boomed, speaking over their applause as he issued a call to stop torture, end the war in Iraq and restore civil liberties.
(It was a stark contrast from the performance only a few hours earlier, when only a third of the seats were filled at the cavernous Izod Center in East Rutherford, N.J.)
More than most, Mr. Obama is a presidential candidate who feeds off his crowds.
“This is what is possible, if you believe,” Mr. Obama said.
“We believe,” the crowd replied.
“There are a lot of people who tell you not to believe,” he added. “There are a lot of naysayers. A lot of doubting Thomases.”
“We believe,” the crowd replied again. “We believe!”
If Mr. Obama’s rise to political prominence began with a keynote speech nearly four years ago at the Democratic National Convention, it is his speeches that many people cite as the reason they are drawn to at least consider his presidential candidacy. (His rivals do not deny that his rhetoric is soaring, but they suggest he is a “talker not a doer,” and even some admirers leave his events saying they crave more details of his plans.)
“The strength behind the words is felt when you’re in person,” said Natishia Aromire, 37, who saw Mr. Obama speak for the first time on Monday and said she intended to vote for him on Tuesday. “On TV, you only get a glimpse of what he’s really like. I just believe in his words. I believe in his character. I believe he’s sincere about what he says.”
With that, Ms. Aromire rushed toward Mr. Obama. With her 6-month old daughter, Lolade, in her arms, she wanted a photograph.
“It’s history in the making,” she said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/05/us/politics/05obama.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
