Michelle Obama Draws Massive Crowd
RALEIGH — Michelle Obama is giving a speech right now at N.C. State University before a boisterous crowd of supporters, and Obama aides are describing it as by far the largest crowd to attend a campaign event at which she spoke on her own.
The fire marshal has estimated the crowd to be about 5,500, and a look around N.C. State’s Reynolds Coliseum, where Michelle Obama is speaking, confirms that estimate. The capacity of the coliseum is 12,000, and it is about half full right now. Obama spokesman Dan Leistikow said that before tonight, the largest crowd that Michelle Obama drew on her own was a crowd of about 2,500 at an event at Villanova University. Leistikow added that another previous event featuring Michelle Obama alongside Oprah Winfrey, Maria Shriver and Caroline Kennedy drew 8,000 people.
“This shows you why Barack Obama can win North Carolina in November,” Leistikow said. “This kind of showing really demonstrates how he can change the equation.”
Tonight’s crowd is big — and it is loud. When Michelle Obama said, “The thing we need to understand, North Carolina, is that Barack Obama is ready to lead,” the crowd burst into a defeaning chant of “Yes we can!”.
Michelle Obama is giving the standard stump speech she normally gives on the campaign trail for her husband, talking about how she and her husband rose from humble roots to get where they are. She also spoke earlier today in Winston-Salem, drawing a crowd of about 2,000. Coverage of that speech is here.
The photo above is from her speech in Winston this afternoon.
“NEW” POLITICS? OR OLD BS?
At Mrs. Michelle Obama’s recent event at Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania:
http://www.thetartan.org/2008/4/7/news/obama
From “The Tartan” The School newspaper:
“While the crowd was indeed diverse, some students at the event questioned the practices of Mrs. Obama’s event coordinators, who handpicked the crowd sitting behind Mrs. Obama. The Tartan’s correspondents observed one event coordinator say to another, “Get me more white people, we need more white people.” To an Asian girl sitting in the back row, one coordinator said, “We’re moving you, sorry. It’s going to look so pretty, though.”
“I didn’t know they would say, ‘We need a white person here,’ ” said attendee and senior psychology major Shayna Watson, who sat in the crowd behind Mrs. Obama. “I understood they would want a show of diversity, but to pick up people and to reseat them, I didn’t know it would be so outright.”
African American stuidents who had patiently waited in line were displaced when the Obama organizers gave their seats to white and asian students.
Phillips on 04/10/2008 (6:29 am)