As Barack Obama Fires Up N.Y., Michelle Obama Talks Iowa Strategy
When Senator Barack Obama ran through the arch and strode onto stage tonight in Washington Square Park, he paused and sized up the crowd standing before him, many of whom were waving blue signs into the air emblazoned with his last name.
“Look at this crowd!” Mr. Obama said. “It is good to be back in New York. Some of you know, I used to live in New York City. I used to hang out in Washington Square Park. I know a little something about Greenwich Village.”
He added: “I was going to say I know some of the bars around here, but I think my communications director was trying to cut that off.”
While there was no indication that Mr. Obama had been drinking tonight – he is, in fact, a light drinker, who two years ago declined a shot of vodka with a group of government officials in Russia – he did seem as though he had taken an energy boost from his appearance at a debate Wednesday evening in New Hampshire.
Throughout the course of a 41-minute speech, Mr. Obama essentially asked voters to take a leap of faith on his candidacy. “There are easier choices to make in this election,” he said.
Bathed in the glow of floodlights, Mr. Obama addressed thousands of people who stood shoulder-to-shoulder, stretching from one side of the park to the other.
“There are those in this race for the presidency who are touting their experience working the system, but the problem is that the system isn’t working for us,” Mr. Obama said. “There are those who are saying you should be looking for someone who can play the game better, but the problem is that the game has been rigged. The time is too serious the stakes are too high to play the same game over and over again.”
In February, Mr. Obama drew 20,000 people to the Town Lake in Austin, Texas. In March, 10,000 people crowded into a plaza outside City Hall in Oakland, Calif. In April, he attracted 20,000 at an outdoor rally at Yellow Jacket Park in Atlanta.
And tonight, he drew what the campaign said was 24,000 people to Washington Square Park. That number was impossible to verify – unlike the other locales, where police provided a crowd count – but the audience clearly was one of the largest of the year.
So why did Mr. Obama spent the evening in New York, rather than addressing a group of early-state voters in Des Moines or Manchester? The New York primary on Feb. 5 – one of 21 states scheduled to cast votes that day – could offer a delegate boost.
While New York’s Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is expected to carry the state, Democrats split their delegates proportionally. So if Mrs. Clinton wins New York by 65 percent, for example, she would get 65 percent of the delegates. In a drawn-out fight for the nomination, Mr. Obama believes he can pick up enough delegates in New York and other states to make a difference.
“We heart New York,” said Steve Hildebrand, a senior adviser to the Obama campaign, who oversees the strategy in the early states. “Delegates are proportioned by congressional district – not winner take all. We firmly believe we can come out of New York with a sizeable delegate piece for Barack.”
We’ll find out on Feb.
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