It’s pretty amazing that Obama can fill NBA arenas and have over 3,000 people shut out. Rather than link to just one article, I’ll send you over to the Northwest Progressives’ site where you can get a flavor for the excitement. Something kind of weird is going on.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
Last night, Hillary Clinton appeared before a mere 5000 people in Seattle. 18,000 in the Key Arena is beyond phenomenal.
I hope this is indicative of the vote this weekend. Obama needs to not only win, but win by HUGE delegate margins in each win, to knock Hillary out of this once and for all.
Just checked weather predictions. They look great. A “warm” 49 degrees is predicted for tomorrow. Around 50 degrees, the hardcore people start putting on shorts. 😉
The capacity of the arena is 18,000 but they somehow got 21,000 in there, per Obama’s website. I saw part of this event on CNN’s web stream of it. These people were just wild, even before Obama got there.
This is not unusual for Obama’s events though. He seems to fill whatever venue he books.
I read this today. It’s good. This columnist is ashamed of his man-crush on Obama.
No – 3000 heard from outside. They sat and listened to speakers. Only 18000 inside.
Makes sense.
I didn’t even click…I saw ‘latimes’ and I just know it’s Joel Stein. Damn. Read that article this morning and he had me rethinking my choice. I fucking hate Joel Stein. I want to do everything the opposite of him–well, except for the breathing, eating, living stuff.
I had no idea who the guy was when I read that. I thought it was funny and it didn’t make me question my choices one bit.
I’ve been trying for 3 years to get the Times to drop his column. It’s just that he’s so shallow and as it’s been noted here before, it seems like he peruses the blogosphere and just steals entires posts or comments.
If you can prove those allegations by showing an editor his column side-by-side with something from the blogosphere proving that he plagiarized someone else’s work, that should do the trick. Editors hate hard work, but they hate plagiarism even more.
The last time I did was back in October. Someone here mentioned that Stein’s recent article mimicked someone else. Two of Stein’s articles earlier that same month mimicked posts I had done. They told me it was circumstantial.
joel stein is awful. I don’t like either his opinions or his writing.
Probably by putting chairs on the floor. I think 18,000 is its capacity when it’s set up for basketball.
I think its simply that “the people” want someone without bloodlust as the president. maybe that is kind of weird.
Question: According to NPR H.Clinton has used some mysterious kung-fu to become the underdog and place Obama in the frontrunner seat.
Can he just take the thing and run all the way to the convention, or are more reversals of fortune necessary or desirable?
…I’m just sayin’. VP?
for Obama in Washington state, and Key Arena or no Key Arena this caucus really worries me. I think it’s going to be a nightmare because of widespread voter misinformation about the voting. Here’s the pertinent part of the diary I just posted at Docudharma.
I have a second concern, just to continue to challenge BooMan’s optimism. The GOP contest is pretty much over. It should not take too long for the Republicans to figure out that, in open primaries and caucuses (like Washington’s), they can vote in the Democratic contest and pick the worse candidate, a la the DKos “Mitt in Michigan” escapade. If they want to run against Hillary Clinton, then thanks to Romney’s cave-in they are in a position to arrange it. The only saving grace is that, unlike Democrats looking at Republican candidates, they aren’t ambivalent between Obama and Clinton. They’d rather run against Clinton, but that raises the prospect that she might win, and they would rather be governed by Obama.
I don’t know if we’ll have GOP voters coming out for Dem races, but be on the lookout for it from here on out.
Danby, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t be concerned, but it should be beyond obvious that thousands more independents will now vote for Obama because there is no point in voting for McCain. The subset of people that will vote for Hillary to screw Obama is much smaller and nothing to worry about.
I don’t think it’s obvious that that’s so, but we’ll have a better idea soon enough, or at least we’ll have some better data to work with. (I see crossover voting to torpedo Obama as being a serious problem in Texas, by the way. You may not think it makes sense now, but what about when he becomes the apparent frontrunner after Wisconsin?)
I may just have been randomly assigned a very bad list of voters, but the non-Black women I talk to are almost uniformly pro-Hillary. I can believe that Obama will be able to win, but that’s not what I’m running into over the phone. Perhaps that is what has put me in a bad mood. And now back to the phones.
Obama has been drawing large crowds at several events. I don’t believe that correlates directly into primary votes and delegates and would take that metric with a grain of salt. He drew huge crowds in NH. The WA caucus is a good example of how screwy the process is and unless you are a political junkie and throughly research the issue because you are determined to vote its highly unlikely you know that delegates are apportioned on the basis of a caucus as opposed to the primary.
Obama’s strength is he is running a 50 state strategy competing everywhere. Note he didn’t just give up on CA and NY. He competed hard to reduce the delegate advantage. Clinton on the other hand has gone with the triangulation strategy and just gave up on many of the caucuses without even contesting them. Now she is forced on the defensive and has to compete in every race and pull out the remaining biggies – TX,OH & PA.
IMO, this race is evenly matched from a demographics perspective. Obama’s got the youth, African-Americans and the more educated and affluent liberals. Clinton’s got the over 60 crowd, blue collar working class, Hispanics & Asians and a serious number of women. So now it boils down to demographics of the territory and who gets their demographic to turn out.
No matter who wins the nomination 50% of the Democratic base is going to be unhappy. Not very different than what’s happening on the Republican side. No one is building a majority coalition.
What I don’t get is why Obama is not taking Edwards economic populism and going after the blue collar vote in a more direct and aggressive manner. And second why does he not use his own multicultural heritage to rally the Hispanics and Asians. These demographics should be his natural turf – so there’s got be more than meets the eye here. But…that’s why this is a dead heat and a large percentage are going to very unhappy at the end of the process!
I used to live in WA, and granted, I’m more politically aware than many, but nearly everyone I knew understood that the caucus was where our delegates were decided, and that primary was simply a beauty contest.
Now, I’ll also point out, most people didn’t bother to go to the caucuses! I hope that favors Obama. I think his supporters are more likely to show up than the older Clinton voters, but we’ll see.
I am trying to convince my wife and daughter to come along. My wife does not like Clinton, and I tried to explain to her that this was her chance to do something immediate and direct to keep Clinton from getting the nomination, but I don’t know if she’ll actually do it.
As for me, Hilary is not at the top of my list of desirable candidates, but I’m going to go caucus for Obama because, frankly, it’ll be nice to have someone to vote for this time around rather than having to vote against.
ot, but l just noticed your new sig line and got a good chuckle out of it…well done omir. it’s good to see you around again.
lTMF’sA
It’s funny because it’s true!!!
Nice to see you too Dada. How are things?
I’ve had several Black voters on the phone who did not know. The word isn’t out enough. Elderly voters would be more likely to show up, I’d think — no child care concerns (as some of those I’ve called have had), no soccer games to attend, no skiing trip this weekend, etc.
The system for looking up where the caucuses are has also been awful; a DKos diary by N in Seattle had the best information. That’s not where someone making calls should have to look.