I was there when McCain came to my town. It is the first time that a presidential candidate came to our little town in northwest Ohio. I did not plan to go since I am not a McCain supporter but my friend had extra tickets. She had acquired them for her children, but they were going to attend the rally anyways with their classmates, so she had extras. I promised her that I would be good and not boo McCain too loudly. I wanted to see for myself what other people in my town are thinking.
It was a gorgeous autumn day with that gorgeous blue sky that only comes in October with the drifting leaves littering the ground. It was also very cold. When we put the boys on their school transportation van, it was only 29 degrees out. My husband insisted that I wear my heaviest winter coat and I thought, oh, it will warm up. It never did. I left my house at 7:45 a.m. to get across town to meet my friend and I will admit that I was excited to go. It isn't often that Defiance gets a big wig coming to town (even though I had to miss seeing Governor Strickland, Senator Brown the other night ... they came to the college to solicit votes for Obama ... because they came during the kids' dinner hour and bedtime).
We arrived at ten till nine. I was a little bit apprehensive about security. I made sure that I had my ticket ready and filled out. I had my driver's license there. I have a cochlear implant and I told my friends that if the secret service people would not cooperate with me (I cannot walk through the metal detectors), I would just walk onto down the street and have my husband come and pick me up. The security people moved quickly and it went very smoothly. They were also a lot nicer than the security for the Kerry-Edwards rally back in 2004.
We took our spots, which was pretty close to the front steps of our auditorium. There were a ton of school-age kids from kindergarten up to high school and their teachers there. The sun was shining but it was cold. As more and more people arrived, my friend and I were separated from her husband and it started to feel like a big crowd was crushing us. We stood there for an hour and fifteen minutes waiting for McCain to arrive, tolerating the other speakers who were just warming up and since I cannot see anything, I started watching people as they listened to the speakers. There was a person wearing a button on his hat that said, "Obama, are you kidding me?" There were a gaggle of sixth graders standing in front of me fiddling with their cell phones and their cameras. One girl's camera battery died so I gave her one. Another kid had his shoes untied. Their teacher was standing there holding all those "Country First" signs, which she eventually left on the ground. Every time the speaker bashed Obama, one kid in front of me would shake his head no. There was not a lot of cheering going on. My friend suspected that it was because they were just too cold to do anything. I did not get that feeling.
I got the feeling that while people were excited to be there because someone famous was going to speak; more of them were just undecided. These are Republicans who have voted Republican since they were first able to vote. These are your ordinary every day Americans who are facing some of the toughest economic times ever. Where we were standing, we were right there with the children and their teachers. My friend could not take the shoving and the pushing anymore, so we decided to head over to the big screen TVs and watch McCain speak on the screen. On the way there, I ran into my next-door neighbor who attended because it is a big deal to see someone like McCain there. He also admitted to me that McCain was not his first choice. My friend's husband had told me earlier that McCain was not his first choice, but he felt that he was a better choice than Obama because Obama was going to raise taxes so much. My neighbor agreed with him. I then ran into the woman who told my sons to vote for her person and she had told me that McCain was not her first choice either.
Before McCain took the stage, I bumped into some friends and we listened to the speech but after awhile, we started talking about different things. I had my friend's husband pegged as a Republican and he surprised me because he was questioning McCain's plans. My friends did not applaud every time McCain said something, they just stood there. I found out that they did not even have tickets. They just walked up to the security and asked if it was ok to come in. They wanted to hear for themselves what McCain had to say.
When McCain walked on the steps, there was cheering but not a roar like the one I would expect from a Republican community. Even when McCain made his typical comments bashing Obama's program, the cheers were rather muted, even from where I was standing. The local GOP party had given away over 10,000 tickets and I can bet there were only 3-4,000 people there including the people with the Obama/Biden signs standing outside the security gates. There were more students and their teachers, senior citizens than there were young families that attended the rally. Our local newspaper had a headline saying that McCain energetized the crowd, but I did not get that impression at all. It was just a muted reaction considering how much more energetic the crowd was four years ago when I attended the Kerry-Edwards campaign rally in Ohio.
Everyone I've talked to today about politics were animated about their beliefs but they didn't attack my beliefs or called me dirty names like my relatives or their friends did during the email exchange this week. They knew that I was supporting Obama but they talked to me like a regular person who has different thoughts and opinions than they do. It was respectful. It was surprising.
The crowd's reaction was not what I expected. I expected more cheers considering that this is a Republican county. I expected more Obama bashing. I expected more and I was surprised to walk away from the rally feeling confused. I am not confused about my choices, but I am bewildered about the mood I felt today. It was not a jubilant mood that I was expecting. It was a mood where people are actually worried and not all that convinced that McCain is the right person.
I walked away from the McCain rally convinced that I made the right choice in my voting decision. I also walked away from the rally thinking that if we ordinary Americans can run the country like the way we talked today; we would not be in the quagmire that we are currently in. This is what I envisioned America to be a country where people talk to one another, with our differences of opinions, but sharing a deep love for our country and its people. We just do not always agree on how to solve the problems, but we are convinced that we can make it work. It sounds naïve but really, it is not.
I think that is what Obama is envisioning also for this country.