The Daily Background

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[More photos from this event can be found in this post]

LEBANON, NH– The crowd was significantly larger than either the Obama campaign or the event’s hosts, the Lebanon Opera House– an old Town Hall, had expected or could accommodate. As a result, about 400 people were left in an overflow area outside listening to speakers which transmitted Obama’s speech inside (the Opera House has a seating capacity of 1,200 800 people and they packed it to the brim). As luck would have it, I was one of those 400 people stuck outside.

Lebanon’s population is only about 13,000 people, many of whom had taken time off of work and school on the eve of the primary to attend the event. (Check out how long the line was as seen in this YouTube video uploaded by the campaign.)

Obama came out before the event and admitted “You guys caught us a little bit by surprise! What an unbelievable turnout!” He proceeded then to give short pep rally (YouTube video) and shook a bunch of hands which lasted for about ten minutes. See the tail end of that here:

It really is impressive to see him with a crowd of people, because he is treated, as the oft-repeated analogy goes, like a rockstar. Everybody wants to shake his hand, or, barring that, at least brush their fingertips against his coat.

Just before Obama came out to talk to the overflow crowd outside, a man with a John Edwards sign apparently broke through the police line and was arrested for making a disturbance. The crowd clapped as he was handcuffed and carried up the steps into the Opera House by Secret Service agents.

Spotted in the crowd: Obama’s media consultant David Axelrod was on hand talking with the NYT’s chief political reporter Adam Nagourney. Axelrod was later seen chatting with ABC’s Chief Washington Correspondent George Stephanopoulos, who really is as short as people say he is in person. Brian Williams of NBC Nightly News was also apparently there and I talked to somebody who saw him and Obama talking on camera (I was not in a position to see him at that point). I also saw another ABC News correspondent whom I recognized but couldn’t identify, sneaking a cigarette with his cameraman during Obama’s speech.

In his actual speech, Obama joked to rapturous laughter that he “must be campaigning a lot cause the other day I said ‘the time for come has change!’”

Obama got hearty applause when he took aim at Clinton and Washington insiders, saying “We don’t want somebody who plays the game better, we want an end to the game playing.”

Obama’s speech included many of the ideas in his stump speech, but had a distinctly up to date flavor. The Illinois Senator noted that his win in Iowa had surprised pundits and also called out other candidates who he said have now suddenly begun embracing a generalized message of change. “Everybody’s talking about change now” he said, perhaps in a veiled swipe at Republican contenders like Mitt Romney who have starting using the word “change” in their speeches.

Obama also offered an impassioned defense of hope, a theme that some have criticized as being too vague.

Perhaps his biggest applause line was when he took another veiled shot at Hillary Clinton, who in Saturday’s ABC/Facebook debate accused Obama of spreading false hope. “We don’t need to be raising the false hopes of our country about what can be delivered,” she said.

“False hope?” Obama asked, later suggesting that President Kennedy didn’t worry about false hope when he said that the United States was committed to sending astronauts to the moon.

“We don’t need a president to tell us what we can’t do, we need a president to tell us what we can do.”

“This is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a president,” one onlooker said excitedly.

Update: The Obama campaign’s blog has more from Lebanon.

[More photos from this event can be found in this post]

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