Barack Obama came to Maryland the other evening. Speaking in one of the most prosperous minority strongholds in the country and charging between $15-25 for admission (not a whole lot considering the average income), as an outside observer I’d have to classify just 1500 people bothering to turn out as a blow to the Obama campaign, showing the strength of the Clinton machine in Maryland Democrat circles. He may have done better with the high-end donors he spoke to after the outdoor event, but the $30k or $40k he made on the Prince George’s Community College event is pretty much a drop in the campaign bucket.
For their part, Barack’s campaign seemed to spin this as part of their appeal to youth. The problem with approach this is twofold: youth do not vote in nearly the numbers their elders do nor do they have the large amounts of money required to fund a national campaign. The puny turnout also may put a little egg on the face of our state Attorney General, Doug Gansler, who’s serving as a co-chair of Obama’s Maryland campaign.
As for the content, here’s how Sun writer David Nitkin pegged it:
Obama deliver(ed) a stump speech thick with anti-Bush rhetoric.
“People are yearning for justice,” said Obama, who had spent most of the day in New Hampshire. “They are hungry for change.”
In the heart of one of the wealthiest African-American communities in the nation, Obama attracted a diverse crowd that greeted with relish his call for a new energy policy and an end to the Iraq war.
Yes, that would appeal to a college crowd which still succumbs to rumors about reinstating the draft and hears daily the global warming propaganda. For example, here’s an excerpt from Obama’s campaign website on energy policy:
Global warming is real, is happening now and is the result of human activities. The number of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes has almost doubled in the last 30 years… Scientists predict that absent major emission reductions, climate change will worsen famine and drought in some of the poorest places in the world and wreak havoc across the globe. In the U.S., sea-level rise threatens to cause massive economic and ecological damage to our populated coastal areas.
So Barack, even with his carefully crafted populist image and self-positioning as an outsider to Washington politics, went in front of a youthful crowd and delivered a gloom-and-doom, hate-Bush, America is the source of global evil speech. People, especially young people, are indeed hungry for change but they also believe in, at least in some part, the vision of America as a shining city on a hill. If anything, Obama and his party represent a group wishing to jump farther from the ideal than leading us into it. Fortunately, the low turnout at the event (and lack of media attention leading up to it) may also show that people are not buying a negative 2008 campaign.
Speaking to young people? Of course! He’as running for 2012,2016, or 2020. After Hill turns out to be female Jimmah Carter.