Obama Rally in Houston

Today, Obama began stumping deep in the heart of Texas, where he drew 19,000 suporters to a rally in downtown Houston. I imagine it would have been more, but they ran out of tickets quite quickly, and still had lots of people on standby, hoping for a chance to get in.

An hour before the doors opened, the line looked like this:

People were wrapped all the way around the Toyota center!

Here are some quick first impressions about the rally:

• This was probably the most diverse crowd I’ve been in since coming to Houston. Young and old, black and white, asian and latino - they were all there. I’d estimate about 60% of the crowd was African-american, and there seemed to be a relative scarcity of latinos.
• When Obama made his entrance shortly after 8:00 pm, the place went absolutely NUTS. I’d wager that crowds at most Rockets games don’t get nearly that fired up. This guy is a rock star. It took him almost 3 minutes to get the crowd quiet enough to start his speech.
• The crowd had a very southern-church feel at times, with people yelling things like “oh, yeah!” and “preach it” back at Obama throughout his speech. Obama plays off of this dynamic well, and the crowd ate it up.
• It was interesting to see the media machine up-close. The dozens of television cameras were jockeying for position, and one large section was reserved for journalists who sat pecking away at their laptops prior to the speech. (Interesting sidenote - an overwhelming majority of the press corps were using Macs)
• Obama gave a strong version of his usual stump speech. On the Obama scale, it was only average, which is exceptional by any other politician’s standard. It’s clear why people are so moved by his rhetoric.
• Shortly before his entrance, they played the will.i.am video on the big screens. It was clear that most of the crowd was familiar with it and many were singing along. That a viral internet video has achieved such penetrance makes evident the power of the internet as a tool for building a movement. Make no mistake - this isn’t just a campaign. With his record numbers of small donors and capacity crowds waiting hours to see him in every city, Obama has clearly set off an avalanche of support, and has built a bona-fide movement.

Better quality pictures and video coming in the next day or so. It’s likely that some of us will also be at the Bill Clinton rally for Hillary tomorrow, so it should be an interesting opportunity to contrast their styles.

Update

More pictures here