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Obama Draws Huge Crowd, Hillary Doesn't Dave Eberhart, NewsMax
The Iowa caucuses won't take place until January 2008, but if the crowds that came out over the weekend for the leading Democratic presidential rivals are any indication, Sen. Barack Obama is outshining Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in star power. Clinton, D-N.Y., and Obama, D-Ill., held dueling media events in two different state capitals on Saturday, and the numbers may reveal where the momentum in the race may be moving.
The Obama campaign released a crowd figure of between 15,000 and 17,000 people — as estimated by the Springfield, Ill., police — who braved frigid temperatures to hear their candidate make his official presidential announcement.
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Fresh from an appearance at the rural borough of Berlin, N.H., the Clinton handlers announced that their candidate had attracted some 3,000 folks to what was touted as a "town hall meeting" in Concord, the capital.
There is some element of "apples and oranges" operating in the crowd comparison, but the numbers don't add up for Clinton — even when figuring in the varying demographics.
Springfield, the state capital and county seat of Sangamon County, as of the latest official estimate in 2005, had a city population of around 115,000 — not counting unincorporated and suburban areas.
By comparison, Concord, the state capital and the county seat of Merrimack County, had an estimated population in 2005 of 42,221.
For sure, the pool of potential enthusiasts was smaller for Clinton than for Obama — Springfield having more than twice the population density of Concord — but two times 3,000 still only equals 6,000.
Another interesting revelation about the Obama candidacy crowd is that he is not the "African-American" candidate in the race. The crowd was overwhelmingly white.
If another measure of star power can be said to be warmth of reception, Obama might prevail in that category as well.
That restless gathering in Concord featured a number of unsolicited questions from the throng about Iraq.
Although roundly cheered when repeating her pledge to end the war in the first month of her presidency, there were reportedly several worthy citizens on hand to remind the junior senator from New York that she voted to authorize the original invasion.
When asked if she would call her vote a "mistake," Clinton deftly avoided answering, noting that President Bush was the one who had made a "mistake."
For his part, Obama — who has steadfastly opposed the war from the beginning — was interrupted with rousing chants of "Obama! Obama! Obama!"
Clinton found herself repeating her refrain: "Knowing what we know now, I would never have voted for it."
Obama, standing comfortably in the land of the great emancipator, Abraham Lincoln, was never on the defensive, able to maintain the high ground with such vignettes of rhetoric as:
"What's stopped us is the failure of leadership, the smallness of our politics — the ease with which we're distracted by the petty and trivial, our chronic avoidance of tough decisions, our preference for scoring cheap political points instead of rolling up our sleeves and building a working consensus to tackle big problems."
Obama, the only African-American in the Senate, has been perceived as a rising star in his party since the keynote speech he gave at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.
The trips to Berlin and Concord were Clinton's first visit to New Hampshire since 1996, when she campaigned for her husband.
In 1992, Bill Clinton placed second in New Hampshire's primary, calling himself "the comeback kid."
Whereas her husband faced nettlesome questions in that key primary state about his marital infidelities and failure to serve in the Vietnam era, Hillary Clinton confronts the specter of the unpopular Iraq war and her vote to sustain it -- which can't be taken back. © NewsMax 2007. All rights reserved.
Editor's note:
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