Moseying around the blogosphere this stormy morning between electrical outages and internet sat service outages, one thing becomes clear: Obama choice of an open-air stadium seating tens of thousand of cheering fans as the site of his acceptance speech, and as the coda to the Democratic convention, is making a lot of Democrats and Progressives quite nervous. Here's Dick Polman's take:
"I wonder whether the Obama camp is making a mistake by putting the candidate in front of 75,000 people for his nomination acceptance speech on Aug. 28. That spectacle will further inspire Obama's current supporters, but the clever Rove alumni in the McCain camp may well use that imagery to refine their caricature of Obama as a pop celebrity and little more - to take his alleged strength as a candidate and spin it as a weakness. Will that work? Just remember, the votes of the credulous count the same as everybody else's."
Not to mention that some of those "credulous" voters are bound to be among James Dobson's prayer group which hopes the heavens will open and prevent Obama from becoming president.
When you look at who is being credentialed for a seat at the event, however, a very practical strategy emerges. That speech according to the Steve Hildebrand at the Obama campaign, quoted in the Washington Post, will be "their largest organizing opportunity to date with credentials going in part to Obama supporters and Democratic activists who pledge to join voter registration and get-out-the-vote drives in the campaign's final weeks."
"The Obama campaign has been demanding a lot of its supporters even from its earliest days, when book signings and low-dollar campaign fundraisers and rallies included a request for contact information. But the organizing planned for the convention will be of a different magnitude. Attendees will have to file through metal detectors and security, meaning doors will be open early. That will give campaign aides time to sign volunteers up and issue marching orders for the fall.
"Hildebrand was unapologetic about those demands.
"'We're going to always push the envelope and get what we can out of people who care about this election,' he said."
A far better guage of Obama's strength will be discerned in the numbers the Secret Service will cage in Denver's "Free Speech Zones".
Posted by: JW | August 12, 2008 at 07:53 PM