September 08
So we ventured down to the Steel City on Monday for the Obama rally. It was so great for us. Here is our story:
The interstate was pretty much empty on our way down, and we mused that maybe it would just be us and Obama, some 1-on-3 hot hope action. But alas, we arrived about half an hour before the gates were to open to see this line snaking out of the rodeo grandstands:
But hey, we were lucky to have gotten there as early as we did, because that line turned, in the course of an hour or so, into this one:
Then March Fourth showed up and we were like, “Woo! March Fourth!” and everyone around us looked at us like we were crazy. We’d been standing in the sun for quite some time. Some guy behind us ordered a pizza.
I’d expected a couple thousand young people, but the crowd was hugely diverse: all ages, all races, veterans and trans folks and thugs and cranky old lesbians. It seemed like a nice little cross-section of America, and made me like Pueblo a whole lot. Er, some.
Then I saw the youngest Secret Service agent ever:
And then my camera ran out of battery.
We waited in line for a long time but finally got to the SS checkpoints, where they divided the one huge line into five smaller lines. We stupidly got into the left-most line, which turned out to be both the ADA line and the one that got continually held up because they kept letting VIPs and folks on walkers ahead of us. We were stuck directly behind a 1,000-year-old rancher who refused to give up his pocket knife. “Sir,” the SS guy said. “This is non-negotiable. You cannot bring a knife into the event.” “But it’s my dangnabbed knife!” said Methuselah. “I understand that, sir, but you’ll need to either leave it with us or return it to your vehicle.” “But it’s my knife!” And so on. By the time I got to the checkpoint, the SS person rolled his eyes and even joked with me about whether I was bringing in a machete. (I was not.)
Soooo. Into the grandstand and a MASSIVE sea of people. (They estimate about 15,000 people.) There were mariachis performing, then some folksy dancing or something that made my wife go “Oooh! How cute!” because she’s from New Mexico.
Then, the speakers started. A bunch of conspicuously Latino people were trotted out to speak, to scattered clappage. Then Bill Ritter and Ken Salazar came out and talked a whole lot about jobs and the green economy but not anything about gays or ‘bortion. This is unsurprising to anybody who’s read this New Yorker article. Big applause. People did the wave while waiting for the main event.
Then Obama came out. Big, big applause. People fucking love this guy. He held up his hands and grinned that meltingly charismatic grin and then talked for about 40 minutes. It was a speech very similar to the one he gave at the DNC—some parts were line-for-line—but he also did some new riffage: “This election is not about lipstick. It’s not about pigs. It’s not about Paris Hilton and madrassas.” Good line. Like Ritter and Salazar, his speech was all about the economy and the creation of jobs. He had a good parallel between his own experience in Chicago, which consisted of outreach to people left unemployed by steel plant closures, and Pueblo, which had pretty much the same thing. Then everybody clapped a lot and I wished I’d been smart enough to charge my camera battery, since all I ended up with to prove that I’d been only a few yards from Obama is a coffee-colored blur on my cell phone, which I’d be happy to show you.
Then we left and got stuck in the parking lot for six hours, since no one had thought to actually have someone directing traffic. It was the best day ever. I totally got a frothy faceful of hope.
Posted by: Aaron Retka in COSsip, Election '08 | Permalink
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5 Responses to “A belated post about going to Pueblo.”
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Economy, economy, economy. McBush, McBush, McBush. = Win, win, win.
At least in places like Pueblo.
At least he got more of a crowd than McSame did here.
Quoth the late Wesley Willis from beyond the grave:
Barak Obama played in Pueblo the other night. The crowd roared like a lion. He really whooped a lion’s ass. TCBY, the country’s best yogurt. Baraaak obaaama, baraaaak obaaaama.
^
rock over london, rock on chicago
diet pepsi, uh-huh