Perspective

Last night I managed to catch an Obama rally at a local high school. Here's the scene:

As you can see, it was decently crowded when I shot this video, and it became even more so by the time the Senator arrived to speak. The crowd was pretty pumped - or "Fired Up; Ready to Go!" - as the Obama campaign and its supporters like to say.

There was nothing new, at the event, and really it was almost indistinguishable from an Obama rally I attended during the summer in Washington Square Park. The candidate didn't say much of interest and the speech seemed to lack substance for me. It was really just an event to pump up the base, reinforce the campaign's narrative of Hope and Change, and - most interesting to me - to emphasize the role that young Iowans can play in deciding today's caucus. I most definitely did not leave the rally "Fired Up and Ready to Go," but I can certainly appreciate the importance of what Obama was doing and I'm impressed by the way in which he seems to be getting young people invested in political participation and legitimizing that participation among the political class.

That said, I left the event fairly underwhelmed on anything but the most intellectual level. I can appreciate how amazing it is that Obama is drawing such huge crowds compared to the other candidates, and that this is outside the norm in some ways, yet it all seems too familiar and somewhat quotidian. Maybe I'm spoiled by Dean, who drew similar enthusiasm, or maybe I'm getting too cynical (and it's only my second cycle!), but I just can't get fired up by these rallies anymore. I had a much greater emotional investment in Dean's primary campaign than I do in this one, and while I can appreciate the enthusiasm of the supporters of those campaigns, and I'm sure thousands of young voters feel about Barack the way I did about Dean, I just don't feel it.

Thankfully, they do, and hopefully it will pay off tonight.