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Pictures to follow.

By Moe Lane Posted in 2008 | DNC | Hillary Clinton | The Best Democratic Primary EVER — Comments (16) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

I have just gotten back - it's probably still going on, but once the rain hit in earnest around 2 PM I figured that I had done my bit for the day - so this post will be highly amended and altered as I upload the photos and determine whether any of the audio is really usable. But before I get started, let me give the executive summary.

If the people at this rally are representative of Clinton supporters generally, the Democratic Party is going to be in serious trouble, for two reasons:

1). They aren't particularly interested in backing down on this issue;

and

2). It may have sounded like a typical Democratic rally, but it looked and smelled like one of ours. Which is to say: lots of American flags, almost no reek of patchouli.

More will be after the fold.

I got to Woodley Park about 9 AM or so and popped into the local
McDonald's for something approaching breakfast. First sign that this was going to be an interesting day: I was matter-of-factly joined by protesters.

"No, we don't feel like driving a tractor through the front window. We feel like having an Egg McMuffin."

This next picture:

...really highlights an interesting nature of the event. The guy on the far right was what you, me, and Zombietime are used to when it comes to non-GOP protesters: a little freaky, very sad, and not entirely present on Planet Earth. And there were a couple of those people present; this guy, and the Obligatory Che T-Shirt Wearer:

...but they were well outnumbered by people like these

...these...

...and these.

This last group were, by the way, Obama supporters. I would also like to note, by the way, that the eighty degree, sunny-hot day quickly established that Clinton supporters (and the Obama supporters who showed up to this) are apparently not only aware of, but even actually approve of, the use of both soap and deodorant. I told you: this wasn't a Zombietime Special.

But let me show you a couple of case studies (by the way, I wasn't hassled at all during this demonstration, despite the fact that I made it clear that I was blogging for a Republican weblog).

Meet Keith and April (they readily gave permission for me to use their first names). They're locals, who take the position that the delegations from both states need to be seated, in full, out of elementary fairness. They actually managed to snag tickets for this thing - which took some luck - and are currently working on signs with news organization names on them to show the crowd, in order to find out from them what said crowd thinks were showing the most fair coverage. Then they planned to tell the committee, and never mind the committee's request for sitting there quietly and not talking. As April matter-of-factly noted, she's got this thing called "freedom of speech" that she plans to use. If this situation isn't resolved, Keith will "probably" still vote for the Democratic nominee; April will have to think about it, if it's Obama. Neither is particularly alarmed at the notion of McCain becoming President, instead.

And this is Len and Hernan. They're here because it's important to make a stand; they're also local, and they heard of this through email/Facebook. They also want 100% representation of the delegations, although when pressed Len conceded that half a vote was better than nothing. Interestingly, they wouldn't commit to supporting Obama - and I deliberately made it as easy as possible to let them say that they would.

This was pretty much a model for the rest of the day. I'm certain that there were people quite prepared to vote for Obama if he's the candidate: it's just that I didn't meet any, and they probably would have been hard to hear over the following chanted slogans:

"No Florida, no White House! No Michigan, no White House!"
"Are you a Democrat, Howard Dean?"
"Nancy Pelosi, Shame on you!" (Also starring Howard Dean & Harry Reid)

...yeah. Weird, huh?

Not as weird as seeing some of these signs.

Note that American flags were not exactly thin on the ground:

-------

Conclusions?

The Obama campaign had best hope that this crowd (I am not certain how big it was, and any guess would be pretty much random) is not representative of Clinton's supporters. They are not happy, they are not interested in the DNC's counter-arguments, they are definitely Clinton partisans, and they are currently ticked at the Democratic Party. How much of that is selection bias is an interesting question, but not as much as how much of that is putting up a game face for the cameras.

To be honest, I was expecting more childish street theater, and less real anger. There was also a much wider age range than you might expect from the current media narrative. And I wasn't expecting that the BDS would have been damped down to a bare minimum; aside from an unfortunate tendency to dwell on the nonsense story of How The 2000 Florida Election Was Stolen, they didn't seem to care much about the GOP at all for this one. This could be kind of confusing, actually: I kept expecting somebody to bust out screaming about Dick Cheney.

But then, imagine this guy's head space:

From what I saw, he spent the day not getting hassled, either. In an event dominated by Clinton supporters. Truly, we have gone beyond the Fields We Know.

Moe Lane

PS:

This has nothing to do with the protest: it was merely left over in my camera's memory. But that is one damn cute kid, if I do say so myself.