Howard - your hair is looking better now that you are lletting it gray somnewhat.
Judy - Fort Worth, Texas
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He said all the right things for the crowd—expressing his support for universal health care, for better public schools funding, for a defense of the nation based on diplomacy as well as military might. His biggest applause line came when he reminded the crowd that George Bush would not be on the ballot in 2008.
The pictures were great—there will be ads on the air soon from this event (the Obama staff had three cameras working it). But the candidate went on—and on—and toward the end seemed to leave the crowd less pumped up than Oprah had made it.
If Obama is to be the Democratic nominee, let alone president, he needs to stoke the emotions of the black community. In the crowd here were many African-Americans, unlike Andrea Perry, teetering between gratitude and loyalty to the Clintons and the gathering hope that one of their own might make it to the White House.
Obama needs to convert hope into votes here in the South Carolina primary on January 26. If past is prologue, half of the voters will be African-Americans, and Obama needs a strong vote among them if he expects to win.
A new poll in Columbia's The State newspaper, out today, shows Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton clinging to a slim 28 percent to 25 percent over Obama in South Carolina, with former Sen. John Edwards still in the running with 18 percent. Hillary leads among women, 34-21 percent; Obama leads among blacks, 37-21. He has to expand that margin if he hopes to win.
Some African-Americans came here wanting to get a sense of whether the Obama campaign was as big-time as advertised. The sense was: if we invest out hopes in this guy, we want to make sure it is the real deal. "We want this thing to go, so we want to see if it's done right," said Damon Wilder, a car salesman who drove three hours with his girlfriend from Georgia. "I can't quite get over the Clintons, but I'm here to see if I should."
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