Obama visits Lancaster!

So, my co-workers talked me into seeing Obama's speech in Lancaster Thursday. It was a spur of the moment thing for me, so I didn't have a camera or my copy of "The Audacity of Hope" in the unlikely event of me getting an autograph.

So, I drive from my job to the other side of town about six blocks from the park where he was speaking. We get to the park, and the line is wrapped around the block, through a college campus and snaking in and out of the park. Apparently the Obama people and the city were expecting 5-7,ooo people, and more than 15,000 showed up. I guess they forgot that Lancaster County was Obama country, and one of the few counties in Pa. where Obama beat the evil ice queen in the Democratic primary. 

Anyway, we were in line for about two hours before we finally got through the security checkpoint. Obama waited about 20 minutes to start his speech, because he knew that people were moving slowly through the understaffed checkpoint. He began speaking about 5 minutes before we made it through. 

So, I saw him speak for about 30 minutes. Did it change my life? No. But I can say that he is a very impressive speaker, and he talked very specifically about the economy, the budget, and what he wanted to do to fix it. I didn't quite agree with everything, and I want to know more about his health care plan, in which he says he "will work with existing providers." Also, I naturally cheered loudly when he advocated for higher teacher salaries. The person standing next to me was even nice enough to say "you guys deserve it." Overall, I think he has a good grasp on the big picture and a definite plan on how he wants to improve this country. I was impressed about how diverse the crowd was. There were people of all races and all ages. Quite a difference from the RNC where there were two kinds of people in the crowd... white and bread. There were only 36 black delegates out of 2,380.

The volunteers, and there were a lot of them, were working hard at this event. Many of them were passing out voter registration forms, and were sure to remind the college students in attendance that their absentee ballots must be postmarked a month before the election. Also, they were nice enough to pass out cases of water to people standing in line on what turned out to be a hot afternoon.

As for the Republican Convention, I thought Palin was a good speaker. She was set up as the attack dog like most veep candidates, but came across as smart and somewhat down-to-earth. The one remark I really took offense to was her cut on Obama's tenure as a community organizer. She said something like her job as mayor of whatever town in Alaska was like that of a community organizer, except she had actual responsibilities. Having met several community organizers, I believe this statement was truly ignorant, because they are hardworking people who often volunteer their time to fight what is often a losing battle to improve the communities that they are proud to live in.

McCain's speech wasn't that impressive. He made bold statements, and said he was going to change things (where did he get that idea from?) but gave few specifics. I am looking forward to the debates, where I can hopefully learn about more of the nuts and bolts of his plans.