For happier reading, here is my Diary from when I saw Obama in June. Here
So yesterday, I found out that there was going to be a McCain/Palin rally about 20 minutes from my house. Seeing another opportunity to see politics in action, I decided to take the day off and go see the rally, and take a bunch of photos. 7.5 Hours, 1901 pictures, and an estimated 20,000 people later, I am back home reflecting on my day.
To be brutally honest, I was not going to vote for McCain anyway. I knew I was not going to be swayed by anyone, or anything today. However, I simply wanted to listen and learn why people support John McCain. Similar to when I saw John Edwards and Mitt Romney in New Hampshire last year, I kept my mouth closed and my ears open. In June, I saw Barack Obama, and there I asked more questions, and was more open. But today, I was going to be careful. I wanted my pictures, and I wanted to get a feel of the movement behind the McCain/Palin ticket.
Here's a Funny picture to keep your spirits up:
I was out the door at 6:30 this morning. Fate seemed to shine upon me (though the skies were overcast) and I managed to hit multiple green lights (in Rush Hour) on my way to the location. The venue was a small part in Fairfax, Virginia. The location was a small amphitheater. I got there shortly after 7am, and parked two blocks away and made my way to the venue. Doors were supposed to open at 7, but then changed to 8am. This means, I had to contend with "the line." This time the line was very VERY different than t he Obama line in June. First, the vast majority of the line were Caucasian. Even in Northern Virginia, we have a lot of diversity, however, this line was not it. In front of me where a group of older couples, lamenting the days of Regan and how the Democrats "got us into this mess." They derided Obama, called him a lunatic and were excited about Palin. The women in the group were especially taken with her. One woman exclaimed "I told my feminist friends that the GOP was pro-woman, and now I showed them!"
The woman directly behind me was much quieter. She was a retiree, whose husband was working in the Pentagon on 9/11. "He called me saying that he was ok, but he was being evacuated t o an undisclosed location." She recalled to me. It is a stark reminder that to many people, 9/11 is very personal and still front and center in their minds. She was excited to be there, excited to see Palin, and kept worrying about not seeing any of her friends, "Maybe I have more Democratic friends than I thought." She mumbled to herself. I told her the line was long, and we are towards the front, so we could have just missed them. Her friend went to park the car, so she was searching for her as well.
There was a large group behind us, from a small town in Woodstock, VA. They were in their 30’s, and again, very negative towards Obama, very positive towards Palin. One very loud woman said proudly, "My sister is a liberal, and I told her to leave the country, because we don’t need liberals here anymore."
Joy
Several GOP candidates for congress came through the line. As well as a Phone Bank Bomb. What happens is that everyone (not me though) received a paper with two names on it. During the rally, they were supposed to call these people and get them to support McCain.
Then, it got interesting. A group of 20-30 Obama supporters came by and started chanting. The line was livid. They were spat at, called cowards, and chants of USA, USA, USA kept blaring over and over. One amusing line they had was "Have a Brain, Vote McCain." The friend of the woman behind me showed up and started screaming at them. Yelling, "Obama wants to abort 40 million babies in his first term." She wailed over and over on this. When the ruckus died down, I said to her, "I don’t think he wants to abort babies." The woman was kinda shocked I said that, "He wants to abort as many Republicans as possible to keep a Liberal Majority. He would abort Bristol’s baby if he could. He will force abortions on every Republican woman in this nation if he is president!"
I didn’t argue, I knew it would be hopeless. The quiet woman apologized to me later, "She can be a little extreme, but we need her to vote, so I am ok with it."
I considered leaving... but, I stayed.
The line moved, went through security (though their security was more lax than Obama’s in June) and I made my way to the stage. By some miracle, I got to about 20 feet from the stage. No small feat.
The next 90 minutes was an exercise in endurance. "Obama will destroy our country", "Obama is what is wrong with Washington.""McCain will clean up the corruption!" "Joe Biden has been in the Senate for 24 years, and what has he done?"
My legs also started hurting.
Interspersed with this was the claim that Obama hated women, and how sexist he was, and how horrible he is towards women. I heard a rather redneck fella say in one breath, "Obama hates women" followed by, "Damn, I would FUCK Sarah Palin silly!"
I found the disconnect very apparent. VPILF craze was rampant with the men in their 20’s-50’s. The open lust for her, calling her a hot piece, and commenting on how good "her mooserack" was (Don’t ask, I didn’t get it either) was juxtaposed with their claims of sexism in the Democratic party. "Obama said, put lipstick on a Pig, and it is still a Pig, How DARE he say that! How sexist!"
Another thing I noticed was this was a Palin crowd. This was not a McCain crowd. People came to see her, not for John McCain. Rumors started going around that she wasn’t coming, and people started to get pissed. I was surprised. You are supposed to like Number One more than Number Two, right?
The Rally finally got started, and they had Tom Davis MC the event, followed by a Latino business owner supporting McCain for the Tax breaks (her family business is filtering out cooking oil from fast food places and reselling it, and making biofuel.).This was followed by a feminist Hillary Supporter who is now for McCain. She claimed, "There has never been a woman on paper money! (True) or on a coin for legal tender for that matter! (False: Susan B. Anthony, and Sacajawea)." I mumbled to myself, "I guess Susan B. Anthony doesn’t count anymore." And a couple of people laughed around me.
One of the people who laughed spoke to me for a bit. He seemed quiet and down to earth. I asked him if Palin was the what McCain needed. He said, "She will get him votes, but I don’t like her too much." I asked why? He said, "Being a good soldier means agreeing with the end result, and not how you got there." He looked square at me, and I nodded. What could I say? In the middle of a GOP love fest?
"You know, it doesn’t have to be this way though." I responded.
"For now, it does." He replied.
Then came Tom Wolf who spoke very briefly, to make way for the triumphant entrance of surprise guest Fred Thompson. I say triumphant because the inspiring song from Forrest Gump came up. Fred gave his attack dog speech. (I won’t go into details because little of it was new) and the crowd loved it.
The main event was predictable. Entering with the song "Eye of the Tiger" (after an encore of the Forrest Gump song) Sarah Palin and John McCain used the same speech they have given for the last week. Also in attendance was Cindi McCain and Todd Palin. I mainly took pictures during this time. I am not really going to go over their speech since it was basically the GOP convention speech pared down. She gave that famously awful untruthful line, "On that Bridge to Nowhere, I told Congress, Thanks but no thanks! If we want the bridge, we would do it ourselves."
She touted the Alaksan budget surplus, to my inner monologue replying, "Yeah, because you still get enough earmarks from the Federal Government to pay for darn near everything, I guess it is pretty easy to run a surplus then."
The only other thing I will say is that it still feels like McCain is babysitting Palin. She should be out on her own by now, why is she still with McCain? His interactions with her are still awkward, and seeing it in person makes it even harder to watch. Of course the crowd was too busy cheering. But their chemistry is lacking.
Afterwards, I made the slow walk out of there.
I felt alone, in a sea of an estimated 20,000 people, I felt alone. I didn’t feel apart of a larger movement. Maybe it is because I don’t support McCain to begin with, so I didn’t feel the camaraderie, but I can’t imagine an undecided walking away with a positive feeling after the things I heard today from McCain/Palin supporters.
The hate I heard was not lost on me. When I saw Obama, the mood was different. They didn’t speak about McCain, they spoke about our future, and about what we need to do. I remember the pride of Obama winning. I don’t recall the viciousness of what I heard today. I didn’t hear specifics, I heard "Lets clean up Washington!" "Let’s reform Washington." But I never got a real plan on how (Other than McCain Vetoing the first bill that comes across his desk.) For all the flack Obama got for not talking specifics, it is the GOP I found employing broad generalities.
I have a ton of photos, but I doubt you all would like to see them (and I am not sure it is appropriate)
Aaron
UPDATE: here is a picture (by Popular Demand) and a link to the photostream that I will be using.
I found this an awkward look.
FlickrStream
Update II: Thank you for Rec'ing me. I am putting more pictures up as I speak, check out the flickr stream link I provided.
A good moment early on:
What does a VP do again? I forget :-(