Loebsack makes first appearance
(Photo by Koni Steele)
Barack Obama postponed events in Davenport and Coralville today, but the rally in Washington, Iowa went on as planned. The event featured Congressman Dave Loebsack's first appearance with Obama since announcing his Obama endorsement Monday.
4:19 and the slightly tricky wifi is working. The Washington Junior High Gym is filling up but not to sardine capacity yet. (never gets there either) Looks like 300 to 400, not counting about 30 in the press corps.
The sound is remarkably better than the last time I caught Obama, two weeks ago on campus.
State Rep. Elesha Gayman is here; she's part of Team Obama. Says they had 580 signed in at the Davenport event, but the plane was fogged in at Chicago. The campaign adapted and drove to Iowa, but the first two events bit the dust. As for her own race, she says the GOP has recruited "the biggest hog farmer in Scott County, Rants came down personally to recruit him,: but the fellow is already making "unusual statements."
Obama has a warmup act: Dave Loebsack, making one of his first appearances since the endorsement. "I could have taken the easy way out and stayed neutral. But after analyzing pros and cons, talking to the candidates, and to a lot of folks in this room... in a field of extremely strong candidates, Barack Obama is clearly the strongest."
"Remember the kind of race I ran" Loebsack says, recalling the big upset of the year. "My opponent and I disagreed, but weren't disagreeable. At least two or three times a week, I do my best to physically walk across the aisle and introduce myself."
"But that partisan divide is deep and wide." He moves into how Obama can do that. "He cut his teeth in Chicago politics without becoming a Chicago politician."
"At the end of the day we have to get along and compromise, and Barack Obama is uniquely qualified to do that."
Obama takes the stage to Aretha Franklin .singing "Think." Or at least I think he does; hard to tell behind a standing crowd and a dozen TV cameras. Offers a "Fired Up!" but the crowd doesn't pick up the "ready to go" on cue. "Loebsack and I are both happy to be in Washington Iowa instead of Washington DC."
BHO offers props to the precinct captains. Familiar lines in the biographical story: "all they could afford to hire was me," etc. Does the pledge card drill. Most folks do that at the end, so... is that supposed to look confident?
WE CAN BELIEVE IN
signs have been passed about to most of the crowd. Looks to be a young and old mix.
Obama offers a Bush bash with a twist: "George Bush may have made our problems worse, but our problems were festering way before George Bush took office." That launches many examples. "We were talking about energy independence back when Jimmy Carter was in office."
"Poll testing everything just because we're worried about what our opponents will say just won't do." He's changed that from "worried about what Mitt or Rudy or Mike will say." Do folks like filling in the names themselves? We're IOWANS, we know who you're talking about and we like feeling smart for knowing it, too.
"Government shouldn't be able to solve every problem but government should be able to help. And right now Washington isn't listening, and that's why I'm running for president."
"(Lobbyists) have not funded my campaign, they will not set my agenda, and they will not drown out the voices of the American people when I am president. We need a president who will not represent Wall Street but Main Street." Turning up the populism a notch from the "sit down across the table together" theme, with stuff like pledging to index minimum wage to inflation. "Workers need to be the top priority, not an afterthought," he says as he talks about pension protection.
Health care beins with the story of his mother's cancer death at 53 and her insurance battles. "There won't be exclusions for pre-existing conditions" like she faced. Pledges plan by end of first term. No mention here of rivals and differences on plans...
"Tired of politicians who think the only way to look tough on nat'l security is to talk and walk and vote like George Bush." Talks about military training, equipment, vets benefits. "But it also means using our military wisely, because it's such a precious resource." Pledges to bring troops home within 16 months" gets longest applause yet. So far this week I've heard Richardson say "a year" and Hillary say "as soon as reasonably possible."
"I will talk not only to our friends but also to our enemies. I had an argument with Senator Clinton about this," he says in the first named reference, "she thought I was naive." He rejects the premise.
"I'm not running to fulfill some long-set plans, I know people are going through my kindergarten papers" which gets a laugh "or because I feel it's owed to me, or it's my turn." Elliptical criticism again, letting us fill in the blanks. Uses the familiar "fierce urgency or now" line.
Speech proper wraps at 5:21. We have Q and A, "I figure we drove all this way."
Foreign policy: "You'll hear a lot from some of my opponents about experience... I sit on the foreign relations committee, so even by the standards of Washington I have more experience than Bill Clinton did." Turns it from experience to judgment "and my record stands up very well." "On Iran, I had a difference with Sen. Clinton on direct diplomacy, and on the Kyl-Lieberman amendment." "Iran responds to both carrots and sticks and we should have direct talks."
"I'm not relying on the conventional wisdom, I'm relying on a lifetime of service. More foreign policy experts from the Clinton Administration are supporting me than are supporting Sen. Clinton. They apparently believe that my vision of foreign policy is better suited to the 21st Century."
Questioner says "corporate system based on profits, not social conscience," ties it to nuclear power. Obama: "Nuclear power is not working for us right now" because of waste disposal. "I have not ruled out nuclear power ever, what I have said is we should not invest in nuclear power if we have storage and security problems." "Nuclear power does not emit greenhouse gases... but we are not there (yet)."
School funding equity between rich and poor districts. Obama: notes he's largely passed over education. "Change No Child Left Behind" draws long applause -- I think that's obligatory at every event by every Democratic candidate as an automatic applause line. (It's louder when you say "end" it.) "I proposed 18 billion a year in additional education funding." But feds will still only account for 11-13% "The lion's share will still be the states. I can use the bully pulpit to tell the states to provide fair funding." Need to change mentality: "We think of them as Those Kids and not Our Kids."
Cabinet criteria: who do you trust to help choose a cabinet, please name a name. "A number of people who aren't household names..." and then names Tom Daschle. "People think I'm out here on my own, unlike some of my colleagues where you think just add water and they'll have an administration."
"There's time for one more, I'll take two more."
Questioner says he's choosing between Obama, Clinton and Biden. "I don't think the Republicans will roll over -- there's a certain unreality to that. I'd like someone who knows Washington DC better than Washington IA."
BHO: "There are two component to that great question: governance and electability." Electability: 1) "Chicago politics aren't beanbag." 2) "I'm the only candidate who beats every single Republican -- and part of that is because I reach out to Republicans and independents. If we use some different words, we can win those people. Just like Ronald Reagan was able to get some Reagan Democrats, I want some Obama Republicans." I need to bring more Democrats in with me. "We can't anything done in the Senate, and it's not because Harry Reid is a wallflower. We don't have the votes."
Also says he's been the most active candidate on lobby reform. "I know how to stand my ground and how to reach out. You don't start out by making enemies, you start out by looking for allies."
Offers health care as an example "where I've had some differences with John Edwards." Outlines the plan (buy-in with subsidies) "I'll be honest: My plan is not all that different than John Edwards and Hillary Clinton's. The question is how do you get it." Says Bill & Hill did it all wrong in `93 doing it behind closed doors while the lobbyists mobilized. "The Clinton plan was dead on arrival" because they didn't include the American people. "My plan does it better than anyone else -- because I welcome ideas from everyone." "This is all going to be on C-SPAN." He gets the biggest chair at the table, though. Decent joke on drug ads: "People are running around looking happy, you don't know what the drug is for (pause) except for that ONE drug."
More of the by-name critique of other candidates is in the Q and A than in the speech body.
Note's "I've called on a lot of guys" and makes sure to call on a woman who asks about "small town America drying up." Obama: we had 55 rural meetings in Iowa, "it's a way of life we have to preserve. But young people right now feel like they can't make a living staying. That has to be reversed." Cap subsidies to big agribusiness. High speed internet, hospitals, other infrastructure, and new energy economy. "Some of those jobs can't be shipped out."
Looks like the national press corps has heard enough, as the woman in front of me plays Solitaire on her laptop.
Wrapping up with Praise Of The Caucuses, as the Iowans applaud themselves, and the oft-told Origins Of Fired Up Ready To Go story. One photographer smiles and says "church lady" right on cue just before Obama says "and she was dressed like she was going to church."
The handshake scrum was less intense than it usually is at big city events; most folks who really tried got to shake the man's hand, or at least get in a few words with Loebsack, who was working behind Obama batting cleanup.
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