June 3rd 2008
The perfect storm occurred in St. Paul on Tuesday. I started to hear rumblings Monday that Obama may win the the Democratic nomination and I saw on MSNBC that he rented the Xcel Center for a rally on Tuesday. This was a surprise to me because the leading up to last weekend all that I heard was that Hillary was doing well, she took Puerto Rico by a two to one margin. I am confused as to why that statistic matters because the residents of Puerto Rico do not get to vote in the general election.
It was a no-brainer to go to the Excel to see Obama's victory speech. I am curious as to why the rally was held at the Xcel, Obama drew about 80,0000 in Oregon, he should be able to draw close to that many in Minneapolis and St Paul. The more logical place for the rally would have been the HHH Metrodome, but I am thinking that Obama wanted to put a Democratic hex on the Excel because the Republicans are holding their national convention there in September, or just show Minnesotans that he cares about us since we may be a swing state this November.
I work and live in Plymouth, a northwest suburb of Minneapolis, so the commute to St Paul could have been a long one but traffic was not bad and it only took about an hour to get to downtown St. Paul. I knew it was going to be a long wait so I stopped at one of my favorite restaurants Cossetta's. It is a great place to go for quick Italian food. I had to have my favorite, a slice of pepperoni pizza and a beer. People were lined up out of the door when I arrived but luckily the line moved fast and I was able to find a seat upstairs. If you are ever in St Paul check out Cossetta's.
I knew that it was going to be a long wait to get into the Xcel and when I left Cossetta's I saw the lines that extended from the Xcel.
I walked past the line ate the Xcel.
I walked past the Fox News truck, go figure.
I walked down several blocks (you can see the line extending across the street and down the block).
I walked,
and walked some more.
Finally after half an hour of chasing the line through downtown St Paul I reached the end. I was born and raised in Minnesota and while I do not claim that Minnesotans corner the market on nice most of us are actually as nice as people say we are. I experienced Minnesota nice while standing in the line. At every street corner people had the perfect chance to cut in line, but I did not see one person do it. Even though it was about a three hour wait in line everyone was in a good mood. I was amazed at the amount of people that passed me to get in line after I was already in line. We finally started moving at about 7:00 pm. The whole process was orderly until until about five minutes to nine. At that point we were about three block from the entrance to the Xcel and I do not know what happened but the line in front of us disappeared and everyone started running, and we ran for several blocks, it was kind of unreal because there was a three hundred pound kid next to me, an older gentleman in his sixties, and a mother pushing a stroller and they all kept up with me! I am somewhat of runner and I expected to blow them away!
About a block away from the Xcel there was a cop car telling everyone that the Xcel was full and to go home. I had nothing to lose at this point so I walked the final block to the Xcel and saw that there was a line and they were letting people in.
There is always one jackass in every crowd and the gentleman below is that person. He and his buddy (who held the sign over his face most of the time) were holding signs that said "Moslems unite vote B. Hussein Obama", "Islam for B.Hussein Obama" and several other right wing idiotic sayings. Again Minnesota nice won out, there were only a few people that gave him crap. I was going to flip him off after I took his picture, but I get the feeling that he was expecting that reaction so I did not. The sad thing is that there were two people from Africa in front of me and they actually asked in earnest if Barack was a Muslim.
I hit the entrance exactly at 9:00 PM just as he Barack started his speech, he was on fire, the crowd was roaring like the wild had just scored a goal. The place was packed so I had to take the escalator to the top level. Once on at the top I was sprinting to find a place to watch the speech. Unfortunately there weren't any spots left, the X was completely full. I finally was able to squeeze in several time so snap some pictures. I was too far up so I any pictures that I got of Barack were a little fuzzy at best. I posted some below.
Mr. Obama is an amazing speaker, the crowd was incredibably loud, luckily the Obama people had the forethought to have close caption on the bottom of the screens.
The whole experience was inspiring, about half of the people in line were collage students. It has probably been since the sixties that this many college aged people have been interested in politics. There were people of all ages and of all races.
I am a Democrat and I am hoping to get the Republicans out of office this time around, they have been terrible for the country and for the world. I believe that baring any swiftboating Barack if the person to lead us out of the mess that we are in. I also think the is an election that will separate the old style politics from the new. Gone will be the days of PACs and corporate donors, replaced by millions of internet donors. Gone will be the days of the Democrats allowing the Republicans to frame them as weak on security or tax and spenders. Obama has already taken the fight to McCain.
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