Obama: "Shared prosperity"
An obviously exhausted Sen. Barack Obama made a dramatic appearance before a huge crowd last night in front of the state Capitol in Harrisburg, Pa., the final stop on his whistlestop tour across eastern Pennsylvania on a chartered Amtrak train. The New York Times reported yesterday that people were waiting for hours at the planned stops along the Keystone Line. My wife asked me whose idea was the whistlestop tour, and I quipped, "Harry Truman." Whoever thought it up, it was a great campaign event.
We arrived around 6:15 and got right in, and were early enough to get standing positions along the "handshake line" that had been set up. The speaker's rostrum was down on Third Street, but Obama, accompanied by Sen. Bob Casey, came out of the Capitol's front door and down the cattle chute to the platform. The racially diverse crowd greeted him like a rock star, even a deity. He chose to do handshakes only on the other side of the cattle chute, a disappointment to my daughters, but at least they got to see him from close up.
The speech was tough on Hillary Clinton, tougher on John McCain, and really tough on George W. Bush and "my cousin" Dick Cheney, a humorous reference to the fact that some genealogist proved that Obama and Cheney are really distant cousins. Obama said Hillary would be a big improvement on Bush, but that that wasn't saying much because the bar was so low. He said America needed a President that wasn't wed to the past (my paraphrase), and that the lobbyist-dominated government that has occupied Washington for so long has to go.
I liked his comment about the need for "shared prosperity," how the fruits of the American economy should not flow only to a few wealthy people.
We walked home afterward, my younger daughter Lydia carrying the handmade "Pa. for Obama" sign that among a number of such signs (including the unfortunately misspelled, "Wokers for Obama" sign) handed out by the Obama campaign just before his arrival. A car full of young people waved, honked and yelled to her, which left her enormously pleased. We walked on, and a black man sitting on the steps of a church, possibly homeless, asked "Is it over?"
He meant the rally. The campaign will go on.
(Images in this blogpost (c) copyright 2008 by David DeKok)
