A Really Big Rally

A thunderous Obama rally today at Key Arena here in Seattle far outdrew the Clinton rally - there were 5000 people or so at the Clinton rally yesterday at the Pier. About that many sat outside the Key Arena listening to the speech, unable to get in because it was completely over capacity. When I got there about 11:15, when virtually all the seats were filled, there was a solid stream of people about a third of a mile long still moving toward the building.

It was simply the most amazing scene in American politics I've seen in person. The building was jammed with people under 25, JAMMED. Desperate for seats, dozens climbed up into the luxury boxes (a foreshadowing I think - watch out.) A dance-off broke out while we waited, one girl shaking it like Rose McGowan in Grindhouse, her long brown hair twirling a spell across the crowd.

The crowd: everyone. An impressive cross-section. It looked like America as it is, except that the Seniors had gone to the casino.

The Governor, Christine Gregoire, had just announced her endorsement. About 12:30, Barack Obama walked on. Rock star roar.

It was an impressive speech. I'm not easily moved by political speech...this was not straight-up Shakespearian thunder. It started light-hearted and conversational, remarkably relaxed and open.

One of his skills is to create a sincere rapport before the storm builds, and build it does, and it rolls through the applause with confidence and authority. In clips his lines can sometimes feel a little bombastic, but over the course of the actual speech he earns it with a personability and an openness of spirit. It's this later quality - the connecting of soaring rhetoric and easy bearing that makes Barack Obama a master of something that long seemed impossible: making perfectly reasonable American liberalism compelling, moving and driving.

"My only inheritance was love, education, and hope."

His commitment to the Constitution was in force as well - he got a roar at restoring Habeus Corpus (!) Let me say that again - he got a huge roar from the crowd over Habeus Corpus. I have no serious doubts that Barack Obama is a remarkable, transformational politician- a re-energizer of a wounded democracy.

I will be supporting him tomorrow at the Washington State Caucuses. (1PM - don't be late!)

Right now John McCain is in Seattle, speaking in the Westin Hotel in a largish room where they had to drape a cloth halfway so the room wouldn't look nearly so empty, to a crowd of maybe a thousand people so old, white and wrinkled you could mistake them for a pile of recycled newspaper.