Friday, October 29, 2004
Madison Rally Thursday
85K See Kerry in Madison
I remember canvassing to drop literature for Kerry off last December in Iowa to try to coax caucusers out to see Sen. Kerry at a local senior center. We were hoping to have 75 to 100 folks there that night. How times have changed!!!
Contrast that to Thursday in Madison, just unbelievable! College kids hanging out of the windows at the rally, people as far as I can see, thousands of Kerry signs doing the wave, what an experience the rally near the capital was to see.
The national Kerry advance team called us a week before the event to try to pump up turnout from the Chicago area. At the time, they had hoped a showing of 40-50k would make the national news. Instead a whopping 85k turned out...
On Thursday, I got interviewed by Channel 5 (to air on Monday) when I was helping out as people were leaving the Democratic Party of Evanston. Hope I sounded okay...
The ride up I-90 was one IL car with Kerry bumpers stickers after another. We were about forty feet from the stage and had to go through metal detectors to get there. See the pic.
Anyway, when you looked back up State Street to the Capital building, it was an amazing sea of humanity. Awe inspiring to put it mildly.
The thing that kills me about the rally was how the media reported it. Every report keep saying Bruce Springsteen turned out the crowd. What a load of horseshit! The applause for Kerry was thunderous especially when he served up the red meat for the crowd. People were glad to see Springsteen, but hell no one drove from Chicago to see the Boss. Why is it the media refuses to believe that swing state voters could actually like Kerry? Even Salon.com keeps promoting this type of focus.
Enough ranting, the excitement and momentum were in the air. Kerry's best line was, "This President looked you in the eye during the debates and said how hard it was, how hard it was. (Mockingly) Well help take a burden off this President on November 2nd, send me."
I'll be coordinating Illinois for Kerry volunteers coming to Wisconsin in Madison this weekend. The final ground wars have now started!
# posted by AB @ 3:51 PM 
