US Elections

The President comes to Seattle

By Jonathan Bradley in Seattle, WA

30 October 2010

Seattle in fall is a swirl of grey, particularly in the mornings. I walked last week through the University of Washington campus, pink brick buildings and red foliage drifting in and out of mist, to the Hec-Edmundson Pavilion, the 10 000 seat arena where the college basketball team plays its home games. But something possibly even greater than a Husky victory was scheduled for today: a rally for Senator Patty Murray, who hopes that next Tuesday voters will add another six years to her eighteen year stretch in D.C. Special guest: President Barack Obama.

I showed up early because there was no telling how quickly an event like this would fill up, and I was wise to do so. By the time the President took the stage, around midday, the arena was full, and laggard Seattleites were filling the football stadium next door, where they could watch his speech on the big screen. But even at nine o'clock, when the arena's doors opened to the public, the street outside was packed with people. Supporters of Murray's opponent Dino Rossi waved placards outside, and Secret Service agents instructed visitors to throw out their water bottles before coming through the metal detectors. A UW student volunteering at the event told me people had spent the night outside the pavilion to ensure they'd find a spot inside.  

Once inside the arena and out of the chill, I opted for a place on the arena floor rather than in the stands, ignoring a Murray volunteer's warning that "it's standing room only." Striding over the blue carpet laid down over the court, I gazed at the dazzling lights illuminating the dais from which the rally's guests would speak. Already, a palpable excitement was spreading through the room: college students in Obama '08 gear talked excitedly to firefighters wearing vests emblazoned with the name of their union on the back, while parents herded children, taken out of school for the day, up into the bleachers. A young South Asian man with a big badge reading "Friends Don't Let Friends Vote Republican" booms loudly at a short, excited white woman sharing a banana with nearby Murray supporters. I was three quarters of the way toward the back of the arena, and happy enough with my position, but I quickly spotted an opportunity: a volunteer overseeing the barrier dividing the front portion of the arena from the back who seemed uncertain as to how zealously she should guard the divide. In her hesitation, I and a few other opportunistic folk made the decision for her. We dodged through the barrier and took up a spot about five metres away from the main stage. Of all the good fortune!

If the Democratic base is as depressed as the media reports, it showed no sign of it that morning. And the speeches were not measured, centrist placations for nervous undecideds. This was a rally for the true believers. After a vocal group delivered a cappella performances of standards like "Amazing Grace" and "God Bless America" and a Marine had lead the Pledge of Allegiance (an act of groupthink I still find a touch creepy), the university's student body president introduced the King County executive who introduced Suzan DelBene, the Democrat challenging for a seat in Seattle's eastern suburbs. DelBene, to great cheers, proclaimed that she was a Husky (that is, a UW alumna), and explained that she was interested in "moving forward" for "working families" — this Australian thought for a moment that our Prime Minister Julia Gillard had entered the arena and was recycling talking points from her most recent campaign.

DelBene was followed by politicians of successively greater importance, all delivering speeches about how great they thought Patty Murray was, and how proud they were to be Huskies. Norm Dicks, a ruddy-faced Congressman representing the Olympic Peninsula seemed as interested in talking about the double-overtime win the university's football team had the previous weekend as anything political, and no one really seemed to mind. But after the sports talk had wrapped up and Washington Governor Christine Gregoire had delivered a speech filled with jabs at Dino Rossi, the man she had beaten in her previous two gubernatorial elections, it was time for the President to take the stage.

Or, rather it was time for another interminable wait, and then time for the President to take the stage.

Photo by the Seattle Times

Obama strode out with Senator Murray to deafening cheers from the crowd, a roar bordering on the hysterical. Supporters waved bright red signs supporting the senator, and shouted "I love you" to the President, who replied "I love you too!" And then... he stood and watched Murray give a speech.

We watched courteously, and to be fair, Murray is an adept politician who delivered a fine speech. "Pork" was not the dirty word it usually is in politics here; Murray boasted of the federal projects and associated jobs she had brought home to the state, and the crowd cheered appreciatively when she talked of supporting workers for hometown industries like Boeing and Microsoft. When she brought up legislation supposed to be unpopular in the rest of the nation, like the health care bill and the Wall Street reform, she was greeted with wild applause.

But Murray knew whom everyone had really came out to see, and she kept her remarks brief. As she handed over to Obama, the massive roar filled the pavillion once again, and the President was forced to stand patiently at the lectern waiting for cheers that seemed as if they might never subside. When they did, however, he spoke with the full force of the engagement and passion for which he's famed. It seemed almost inevitable that he would astonish, but a small part of me worried he would be unable to live up to the high expectations his reputation had built up.

But he was exactly as good as you have heard. This was not the dry, professorial Obama; it was the soaring and impassioned orator that propelled himself from first term senator to President in the space of four years. He led the crowd in chants of "Yes we can," and had fun delivering jabs at the Republican Party's economic management. He delivered his favoured campaign parable of America being a car driven into a ditch under GOP watch, and deftly inserted new twists. Patty Murray, in this take, was helping him push the stricken vehicle — "She's small, but she's tough," he said. We all surely knew the punchline by heart, but he piled it on anyway, because, of course, we wanted to hear it: "When you want the car to go forward, you put in D; when you want it to go backwards, you put in R!" His audience enjoyed it so much they didn't need to listen, and they nearly drowned out his words in response.

When it was all over, he and Murray climbed down from the stage and worked their way along the barrier shaking hands and exchanging smiles. Supporters surged toward the stage, but Obama reached out to grasp as many outstretched hands as he could, progressing at snail's pace.

Outside the arena and after the president had stepped on to Air Force One to make his way to the next rally in support of the next embattled Democratic politician, the scene is quite different. The Democrats will lose a swathe of seats. There's a better than average chance they'll lose one house of Congress, and they might even lose both. Turnout won't reach the heights it did in 2008, and Obama's approval rating looks good only when compared to how bad it should be given the state of the economy. But for a few hours inside a University of Washington sports arena, it felt just like 2008 again. 

Tags: Barack Obama, Christine Gregoire, Hecedmundson Pavilion, Huskies, Midterms 2010, Norm Dicks, Patty Murray, Political Rally, Seattle, Suzan Delbene, University Of Washington

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