I just saw John Edwards today, in Flint. It was his first day back on the trail after a few days off.
couple pics here:
http://ideamouth.com/heartandsoul.htmmy write up (posted on the JK forum too, I wasn't going to post it here, but since someone asked about him ... )
Like the other Michigan (Taylor) rally I went to, this was definitely characterized by friendly people all around - which was good, because I was nervous about just going alone and standing around feeling like a wallflower. I talked with a guy who worked in the post office back before they had zip codes, a few people running Pro-Kerry websites, and I chatted with Melissa Robinson, who was right behind me in line. I hadn't met her before, she told me there was an article in the detroit news, and so there is - she is quite the character:
http://www.detnews.com/2004/politics/0406/08/b08-174628.htmWe were busy trading stories back and forth while on line, talking politics, and so on. Once we got let in past the barricades, my group of people ended in the front row. The woman next to me was actually skipping when she realized where we would be.
Nobody there was officially selling gear, but one woman from
http://topplebush.com/ was there, and she had a folder of bumper stickers. The woman next to me had a good set of lungs, so she self-appointed herself marketing director for the topplebush woman, and it was a bit like peanut vendors - but the crowd was so packed, the customers and the bumper sticker lady had no chance of getting anywhere near each other. Pretty soon the whole front of the crowd was helping out as a team, with people around Mrs. Topplebush holding up stickers for her, and when someone somewhere else in the crowd raised their hand for it, everyone in between would pass the sticker down, and eventually money would get passed back through the crowd back to where we were. It was awesome being in a crowd like that where everyone trusted each other sending money back and forth through anyone that happened to be there.
Senator Edward showed up, fresh from a front porch rally, where he got rained on (as did we while we were waiting for him). He started out by talking a little about the smear campaigns. He wasn't very specific about them, other than to say that it was ridiculous to be questioning the service of a man who shed blood for our country, and still carries shrapnel in his body to this day because of it, and he talked about Cheney focusing in on the word "sensitive" also. Basically he was saying that their strategy is to keep something, anything, trivial in the news at all time, because they can't afford for the media to be focusing on the issues themselves. When he put it that way, although he didn't say this directly, it made sense they we aren't spending a lot of effort counter attacking on the AWOL issue, or other obvious targets, because that would work the same way - yet another distraction from the economy, the hostilities against us in Iraq and elsewhere, and so on. Then in the rest of his talk, being in Flint, of course jobs and outsourcing is a huge thing, so he focused a lot on that.
He was very warm, spoke without notes (of course), except for a couple names of people from his front porch meetup that he wanted to talk about - and wanted to make sure he got their names right. At the end, he was shaking hands and signing autographs, and his handlers (or whatever you call them) finally took his pen away and they were telling him he couldn't sign anymore, because he was running behind, he had to just shake hands and go. So he turned over his pen to his bosses, and turned back to us again, and there was a girl who was about 4 years old, wanting his autograph. So he told his people he was taking his pen back. and then he went right down the row the rest of the way, shaking hands and signing things for whoever wanted them. His handwriting is really messy, and his handshake is really firm.
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