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Between her rally in San Diego yesterday and then the one here in Los Angeles today, Clinton seems to be sending one very distinct message: Southern California is Clinton country. Gotta tell you, it sure felt like it today. As I drove onto the campus of Cal State Los Angeles in East LA, I was followed by what looked like a neverending stream of cars. Once on campus, as I approached the gym where the rally was being held I found a ridiculously long line, again, seemingly neverending (see video below.) I've not seen anything like this at any Clinton event I've been to, these are the kinds of crowds Barack Obama gets, not Hillary Clinton.
The event was pretty long, spanning a few hours and featuring an impressive string of speakers including actors Christine Lahti, Amber Tamblyn, America Ferrera and Bradley Whitford in addition to many elected officials including several members of California's congressional delegation (Maxine Waters, Hilda Solis, Brad Sherman, Diane Watson...) as well as CA Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, State Comptroller John Chung, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums.
Just as I was in Nevada, I was really struck today by the diversity of the crowd both age but especially gender-wise. I suspect the crowd was more female than male but not by much. And the excitement in that room was, as cliche as it sounds, electric. People like to chalk Clinton's popularity in the polls up to her name recognition and her status as the "establishment" candidate but, as I've said before, her opponents underestimate the passion people have for her at their peril. Here's another video that will give you a sense of the crowd's excitement inside the gym today.
Unions were out in force for Hillary today, AFSCME members in their trademark green shirts and signs and United Farm Workers in red, chanting Si Se Puede at various times before and during the event. In fact, all throughout the event the crowd, which was largely hispanic but my no means predominantly so, would continue the chant, alternating between "Si Se Puede," "Yes We Can" and then, and this seemed to spring up spontaneously from the crowd, "Yes She Can!"
Message-wise, the most intriguing thing from my perspective was the concerted effort to distinguish Hillary from Barack. One common thread throughout many of the speeches was that this election "isn't a choice between experience and change, you need the experience to make change happen." Another repeated refrain was "Hillary doesn't just talk about change..." implying, of course, that that's all Obama does.
Another point of distinction was Maxine Waters's repetition of her line in the spin room the other night: "My constituents have trouble keeping their homes and feeding their kids. They wake up every morning with all the hope in the world that things will get better; they don't need anymore hope, what they need is help!" That got a big response and of course used another one of Obama's signature rhetorical flourishes to distinguish between their two models of the presidency: inspirer in chief vs. helper in chief.
On a more substantive level, we now see why it was that the Clinton campaign, as I've heard reported often, wanted Edwards to drop out so it could become a two-person race: so she could be the candidate of universal healthcare. The mere fact that Barack's plan is not a mandate that requires everyone to buy-in allows Clinton to state, as she did today: "My opponent will not commit to universal healthcare." She went on: "I don't think we should elect a Democrat who does not stand up proudly for universal healthcare." She's not only branding herself as the candidate of universal healthcare, she wants to go into the November election branding the Democratic Party as the party of universal healthcare. Her rhetoric on the topic at times also echoed Edwards, such as when she said "health care is not just an issue to me, it's a cause; it's the central passion of my public life."
But Clinton's final argument to California, and I expect she'll be making the same case in all February 5th states and beyond, was encapsulated in the following lines:
We need a doer, we need a fighter and we need a champion once again. [...]I'm not asking you to take a leap of faith, I'm asking you to hire me to do the hardest job in the world.
It was no accident that the song that played over the loudspeaker as Clinton left the stage to shake hands was "Taking Care of Business" by Bachman Turner Overdrive.
Update [2008-2-2 19:11:31 by Todd Beeton]:Just wanted to add that LA County Supervisor Gloria Molina, who was one of today's speakers, estimated the crowd at 10,000 people, not sure if that's been corroborated by an independent source.
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