Ohio Diary: Day 4

I got an extra hour of coveted sleep thanks to the end of daylight savings time. The Calendar says 'November 4' but it's been more springlike than anything else.

I decided to stay local today, signing up for one of the neighborhood canvasses via BarackObama.com.

The Canvass was being run out of a field office in Cincinnati's 'Uptown' in a building that had just been opened a day or two earlier. When I got there, one of the Campaign Workers, Scott, was trying to get a few winks of much needed sleep on the porch of the place.

People are wildly enthusiastic but physically a bit tired. In any case, he quickly revived himself and put together a packet for me.

On the way out, I ran into a couple from Roger's Park. It's a small world.

The Canvass was a second pass so I only tried to contact people who had been away or otherwise unavailable on the earlier occasion. Most of the addresses were limited to a certain number of streets so I finished the thing within a matter of hours.

The good news when I got back to the Field Office was that they had run out of packets for people to do. If people wanted to help -- and there were more coming in all the time -- the Campaign people were referring them to other neighborhoods.

Participation like this wasn't uniform. The further out the area was, the more urgent the need for volunteers.

In any case, I was through for the day. I only had a few hours before the big Obama Rally at the University of Cincinnati. I used the time to do a little sightseeing of the University.

I got a carry-out then joined the people waiting in line at the Stadium where Obama was to appear. It was still early, 5pm or, in other words, an hour before the official start of the event. Even at this point the line was huge.

Not only was it huge but it was continuing to grow. By the time the doors officially opened at 6pm, the line which began at the Stadium wound around through the entire campus. There must have been 20 thousand -- even 30 thousand people waiting there.

Unfortunately it didn't seem like they had enough offices to scan people for security. Even after an hour, the line didn't seem to move. By 8pm, we still weren't inside -- and there were many behind us.

Finally, seeing that the Rally was about to begin, they began to just wave everyone in -- which for a Rally like this is rather unusual.

Gov. Strickland spoke as well as Democratic Congressional Candidates, Driehaus and Wulsin. Obama was a little late. In fact, the first sign of his arrival were members of the press steaming in plus a sighting of Obama Advisor, David Axelrod talking on his phone.

They had these huge letters that spelled out 'OHIO4OBAMA' hanging from one of the balconies. At first Obama didn't notice them but when he did he said he hoped the people holding them up had a firm grasp and didn't let them drop.

It had been a long day for the Obama team. They had been to Columbus in the morning and Cleveland in the afternoon.

Still Obama gave a good version of his stump speech. Many parts of it -- particularly the good ones -- I had heard elsewhere but that didn't diminish their effect.

There is no city or town that is more pro-America than anywhere else – we are one nation, all of us proud, all of us patriots.

...

[Hope is] ... what kept some of our parents and grandparents going when times were tough. What led them to say, "Maybe I can’t go to college, but if I save a little bit each week, my child can. Maybe I can't have my own business but if I work really hard my child can open up one of her own. It’s what led those who could not vote to say "if I march and organize, maybe my child or grandchild can run for President someday."

Waiting for the bus after the event, one of the women talked about voting 4 years ago. She was living in Columbus at the time -- the state capital -- and had to wait 4 hours to vote.

Rachel Madow on MSNBC talks about these incredible wait times as being a form of "Poll Tax" -- preventing people who don't have half a day to wait from voting. She has a point. Hopefully Ohio will do better this time round.

We'll all know by next Tuesday.

• Go to: Ohio Diary: Day 5...