Obamarama

I work in Ipswich, a friendly seaside village in the People's Republic of Taxachusetts. So I'm only an hour or so from southern New Hampshire. On a whim I scouted out the primary night rallies of the different Dem candidates, and realized I could attend Obama's pretty easily.

I got to the rally at about 7pm. The lines into the high school auditorium in Nashua were very long for e-ticket holders like myself. I spent an hour chatting up a couple of young software guys...one game development instructor at a local tech school and a programmer from EMC. The crowd was youngish, although there were a few fellow dinosaurs lumbering around, too.

Standing in line made us suckers for affiliated causes. Two folks dressed in giant pink pig costumes were marching in favor of a "meat tax" to reduce global warming. And I gave a fiver to Habitat for Humanity.

The rally itself was pretty cool. I ended up about 20 feet directly in front of Obama's podium so I got some decent pics.

Obama is simply an electric orator, and the place was packed with voters and media. We watched election coverage alternating between MSNBC (can Matthews suck more than he does?) and CNN (Bill Bennett AND Ralph Reed?!?! - I wanted to vomit with rage) on a big screen projection TV with live updates, while we waited for him to appear.

Obama was gracious in defeat to Hillary. After he spoke briefly, he and his wife walked the line in front of us, shaking hands, and the crowd condensed to the point where I was within 6-8 feet of him. I had a US-Marshal type dude with one hand on my shoulder when the crowd collapsed, so I didn’t try to strain or fight to touch his outstretched hand. But my cellphone pic of him is awesome.

I think the high school held about 1700 folks, and they had to turn a few hundred (maybe a thousand?) away.

Great Democratic turnout throughout NH, so even though he didn’t win last night the crowd was happy and spirited.

I was very happy for Hillary, as she’s been taking it on the chin for a while now, and certainly deserves better. And the polling leading up this primary couldn't have been more wrong.

Still not sure who I’ll support when Rhode Island votes in March. But Barack is impressive.