Campaign Rallies

Obama was at some campaign rally over the weekend. It was some outdoor location next to some river, and the camera shot of the event was a wide angle view from a great distance in the air.

The numbers of people there was pretty shocking. The CNN reporters said it was an estimated 78,000 people. The campaign is essentially over, and he has almost zero chance of not getting the nomination. Yet, he is drawing crowds of a size that has almost no precedent in United States Presidential Election Primaries. Kennedy drew some big crowds. McGovern drew some big crowds. FDR drew some in his second campaign. T. Roosevelt drew some as a Bull Moose. But in general no one drew such large crowds, so often, and so consistently as Obama- especially after the nomination was a foregone conclusion.

Heard Boortz briefly on the radio today talking about Obama. And one of the things he said was that many people are flocking to his campaign appearances as if he were a messianic figure. He could not find any previous equivalency between Obama and other candidates, and took a few calls from listeners to his radio show to see what Obama's supporters saw in him and why they kept attending these mass events.

One comment that kept coming up was that his supporters kept calling Obama the "next President" and that they were going to see him still because they just wanted to see him up close and be close to him before he takes office.

Boortz made the comment that this is pretty unusual for any candidate, postulating that maybe these people really are to some extent reacting to Obama as if he is a political messiah.

The only equivalent behavior of an electorate that I could come up with was a certain series of events held in one of the very first modern media rich political campaigns. Where routinely, people showed up in mass events often numbering over 50,000 people and sometimes closing in on 100,000 people. They too often stated that they just wanted to see the candidate up close and hear him in person before he became Chancellor.

Of course that was in 1932 under the auspices of the N.S.D.A.P.