Monday, November 03, 2008

Obama Blog

Barack Obama held a rally in Cincinnati tonight at the UC football stadium. The news said 30,000 people showed up. Earlier in the day I was definitely interested in going. I knew the rally was supposed to start at 9pm and doors opened at 6pm. I also had heard people started lining up at 2pm!

When Gloria (an Obama organizer) told me I could get reserved tickets to the rally by working for the campaign again today, I had to do it. So my friend Jake and I canvassed for Obama. We were able to get 2 extra tickets for Meghan and Molly and Gloria even gave me a ticket for my friend Nils since he took me out canvassing the week before so it worked out great!

We had "blue tickets" to the rally. When we got to UC the line to get in wrapped all over campus and it looked like a show stopper. When we found the line for people with tickets we were still discouraged. We then figured out the people in line with us had "yellow tickets" so we scouted out for the blue ticket gate. Once we found it we basically walked in without a wait and were right up front on the field! Hooray for the blue tickets!

It was great to see Obama in person - though the stump speech was pretty similar to the one he had been using all week it was nice to see it in person and be part of the crowd.



We had a great time at the rally, it was a fun and enthusiastic crowd!



If I get the energy I will have to blog about canvassing for Obama sometime. His organization is so impressive you wonder how McCain could even have a chance! Canvassing takes about 3 hours to knock on 100 doors of undecided voters, and while you probably only influence a handful on the fence who wouldn't have otherwise voted for Obama - it is nice to know your efforts are being multiplied by all the other canvassers times all the other days they go out. Most people were receptive to talking with us - I think this election has just about everyone's interest - and I think the personal touch of talking to them for Obama means as much as what we say. So I figure at least on Tuesday night I can watch the election returns and know I did more than my part for the person I support - Barack Obama.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

that is so cool that you got to go!

Katharine said...

"His organization is so impressive you wonder how McCain could even have a chance!"


McCain's chance is probably a direct result of the candidates' stances on the issues! What's even more impressive(surprising?) is that the Democrats *best* candidate doesn't have this in the bag yet (close, but not yet). Given all the blame on Republicans the last few years, I am more surprised that the Democratic candidate is not ahead by 20 points in the polls. I do believe it would have been a sure thing if Hilary had the nomination with Obama primed for the future with the selection as VP. That would have been an unstoppable pair.

Tom said...

'eh my comment in quotes above was an exclaimation of his ground organization more that a prediction of the election. I think we all know we could have stuck any 2 idiots up there for president and the country would be split somewhere in the 45-50% per side. No matter how bad things got under Bush that obviously isn't going to push many traditional Republicans to vote for a Democrat, it's more amazing just how close the support is for both sides. In my opinion a 5% margin of victory for either side would be HUGE considering the rift in the US.