Barack Obama's Trip to Eugene

My roommate Jake and I went to the Obama rally at Mac Court last night, and man was it awesome. That man knows how to speak, that's for sure. There really wasn't anything he said that I hadn't heard before. If you have heard his other speeches, you pretty much heard the one last night. That doesn't mean it wasn't awesome though, because it absolutely was. Say what you want about him, but he's the only politician to inspire me to the point of smiling. I got chills. I saw Howard Dean and John Edwards speak on campus freshman year, and this speech by Obama, even just his presence, was 100x better than theirs.

When we got there, the line was around the block all the way to Hayward Field, and apparently even circled the track. Wow. If you know that area, you know how big that line was. Must have been over 3,000 people. Jake and I decided to check the other side of the building to see if there was a shorter line over there. What we found was an open door with about 10 people in line in front of it. We looked at each other and wondered if this really could be happening. Then we got in line. I felt bad, because we showed up and were two of the first people in, before a lot of the people who were standing in line all day got in. Some actually didn't get in, and were addressed on the turf fields before he came inside. But I got over it.

Some highlights of the speech and other extraneous things that happened can be read in Jake's post over on the Oregon Commentator blog. He posted about it earlier today, and he's a better writer than me.

UPDATE: You can view the whole speech here (thanks to JASON for the heads up)

I would also like to add to this post something I read today from Time Magazine about Hilary Clinton. It's a post on their political blog that gives 14 reasons why she should drop out, and I like it because it unintentionally hypes Obama. It also makes good points. You can read it here, but I've also posted the 14 reasons below.

1. She can’t win the nomination without overturning the will of the elected delegates, which will alienate many Democrats.

2. She can’t win the nomination without a bloody convention battle — after which, even if she won, history and many Democrats would cast her as a villain.

3. Catching up in the popular vote is not out of the question — but without re-votes in Florida and Michigan it will be almost as impossible as catching up in elected delegates.

4. Nancy Pelosi and other leading members of Congress don’t think she can win and want her to give up. Same with superdelegate-to-the-stars Donna Brazile.

5. Obama’s skilled, close-knit staff can do things like silently kill re-votes in Florida and Michigan and not pay a political price.

6. Many of her supporters — and even some of her staffers — would be relieved (and even delighted) if she quit the race; none of his supporters or staff feel that way. Some think she just might throw in the towel in June if it appears efforts to fight on would hurt Obama’s general election chances.

7. The Rev. Wright story notwithstanding, the media still wants Obama to be the nominee — and that has an impact every day.

8. Obama might not be able to talk that well about the new global economy, but she (and McCain) can’t either.

9. Many of the remaining prominent superdelegates want to be for Obama and she (and Harold Ickes) are just barely keeping them from making public commitments to him.

10. She can’t publicly say more than 2% of all the things she would like to say about race, electability, beating McCain and experience.

11. If she somehow found a way to win the nomination, she would have to offer Obama the veep slot, and she doesn’t want to do that.

12. This is a change election, and Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton can never truly be change.

13. Obama is having fun most days, and she isn’t.

14. Even though her campaign staff is having more fun than it has for a long time, there’s hardly anyone there who, given half a chance, wouldn’t slit Mark Penn’s throat — and such internal dissension won’t help her in the home stretch.