Obama's Chillicothe Rally

[5711-Marine]

Obama's Chillicothe Rally
Posted by commontator, Today, 01:38 PM

This morning at 10:00Am Obama appeared on the court house steps at Paint and Main streets in Chillicothe Ohio. They only needed one block of a 4 lane city street to hold all those that came to see him. The Block is about 600 feet long and 4 lanes and two sidewalks wide.

Back in 1960 I covered LBJ as VP when he visited Chillicothe and spoke from the same site. It is worth noting that in 1960 LBJ filled the intersection of Paint and Main streets with people as well as half a block of South Main street and the first block of North Paint street. This time only one block of North Paint was used. I would say Obama drew less than half the crowd that LBJ as VP candidate did in 1960. This was not a good draw for Obama.

In 2004 the five or six thousand people that Main and Paint streets could hold was not enough for the 14,500 five hundred people that wanted to see Bush. So his rally was held at the Ross County Fair grounds. Tickets were required and they were all gone 2 days before the rally. We were emailing people in 2004 telling them there would be NO tickets available at the gates so please don't come if you don't have tickets.

The Obama campaign was emailing people as late as Thursday evening (the night before) saying please come.. there will be no tickets required and it is a first come first served rally.

I drove around the blocked off area and was amazed that about 20 percent of the audience space was reserved for the traveling media. They even had tents set up for the media in case of bad weather.

I looked for parking spots. There were tons of empty parking spaces during the Obama speech within 2 city blocks of where he was speaking. I drove the closest open streets all around the rally location. I was never more than one block from his audience. There were empty parking places east, north, and south of the site. The west side was nearly full of cars. That is in the direction the more affluent people live. That is very telling. I could have parked and paid my city utility bill at city hall which is less than a block south of where Obama was speaking, but I did not bring the bill and my check book because I thought there would be no place to park. South and east are where the working class people mostly live. Tons of empty parking places on those streets scream trouble among the working class for Obamay. Some of the Democrats were saying 4,000 people but I would bet a ton of money it was less than 3,000.

Consider that in 2004 Bush drew 14,500 people. Bush in 2004 came close 2/3 as many Democrats as Obama drew today. There were 1,400 Registered Democrats at the bush Rally I think there were maybe 2,500 to 3,000 total people at the Obama RALLY.

I watched as the crowd left. There was a line of cars going out north Bridge street ... toward Columbus and points North. So perhaps as many as 1,000 of his perhaps 3000 were not even from Chillicothe. I had signed up on the Obama web site for Obama news and last evening I was still getting invitations to the Obama rally. In 2004 we were sending out the word that there were no more tickets for the Bush rally and there would be NO tickets at the door.. So if you didn't have a ticket to the Bush rally please don't come you will not get in was what we had in both emails and on the web.

I went on the Chillicothe News Paper blog site where the local editor was taking blog questions. About 10 percent were from McCain supporters complaining about the pro Obama media and he was getting about one comment every 3 or 4 minutes. That is a very slow blog site.

All in all, if one takes out all the media and there were a ton of media here with all the networks and cable channels with satellite uploads going on, this was not much of a rally For Obama.

Obama, in his speech, blamed Bush for the bad local job situation.. as did our Democratic Governor.. Not remembering that voters gave us a Democratic governor to fix the job situation 2 years ago and he has not accomplished diddly. I think the people that voted for Strickland for Governor remember why they did it.. and "its all Bush's fault is not going to hack it.

My estimation is that the local Democratic party is not all that Obama Gung Ho. I noted that Obama had an out of work factory worker who has been laid off at Mead Paper mill and then twice by the Kenworth truck factory introduce him. Normally the mayo, the city council president and county commissioners would have been fighting over which one got to introduce the candidate. The most prominent local Democrat at the event was a Black Preacher and activist Democrat. He lead cheers of O B A M A OBAMA... before the event.

Our Democrat Mayor and the Democrat county commissioners and city council members were there but kept in the background. That speaks volumes to me.

Hillary defeated Obama in Ross County by 12,000 plus votes to 3,000 plus votes. I think the local mayor and his fellow elected Democrats must have read the primary election returns.

One other factor. Of those that visited the Chillicothe Gazette web site and took the poll, 25 percent said they attended the rally, 61 percent said they could have but would not attend an Obama rally and 14 percent said they would have attended if they could have.

I could not find an estimate of the crowd in the media and no pictures of the crowd on line. The only reference was in the local paper and they said the area "around the podium" was nearly full of people who were given Obama signs to wave.

If Chillicothe is still the bellwether city for the state of Ohio... Obama is not going to do all that well in Ohio.

[ALS]

I keep hearing these stories and now wondering if people are lying to pollsters. The MSM that are covering Obama events are not showing the crowd in their shots. Only the White people they seated behind Barack.
Yet McCain and Palin events are sold out with over flow crowds.
Hmmmmm Wonder if that is why he is spending close to a million dollars for a 30 minute commercial on CBS Oct 29th.
14,500 showed up for Bush in 04. Wasn't he one of the most hated men on the planet at the time? And now the most loved man in America can barely pull 3,000 attendees.

[Siobhra]

Where I work there are a lot of Blacks from Philly. When we are asked who we plan to vote for a lot of whites say Obama out of fear. One time when one of the Blacks said she was not sure she was accused of "going white". She quickly covered herself by claiming she just moved and was not sure she would be able to vote in her new area and her old area was too far to go back to. Later she told us she is scared of Obama and his followers but she has to live among them.