Obama draws record crowd of 100,000 in St. Louis
Posted October 18, 2008 1:23 PM
by John McCormick
ST. LOUIS - Standing under the Gateway Arch, Sen. Barack Obama spoke this afternoon before a crowd his campaign said totaled 100,000, a new U.S. record for his presidential bid.
"All I can say is wow," Obama said as he took the stage, his home state behind his back across the Mississippi River.
The Illinois Democrat had in May attracted about 75,000 to an event in Portland, Ore., before that state's primary election. In Berlin, he drew more than 200,000 during a foreign trip in July.
The campaign provided a name and number for a St. Louis police officer to verify the estimate. He could not be immediately reached.
In the first of two Missouri stops today, Obama misspoke at one point, mentioning where he will be this evening instead of where he was this afternoon. "If we can rebuild Baghdad, we can rebuild Kansas City," he said.
Obama also defended his tax cut proposals, which Sen. John McCain had criticized earlier in the day during a stop in North Carolina.
"John McCain is so out of touch with the struggles you are facing, he must be the first politician in history to call a tax cut for working people 'welfare.'" Obama said. "George Bush and John McCain are out of ideas, they are out of touch, and if you stand with me in 17 days they'll be out of time."
Every four years, Missouri commands attention because of its bellwether status. It has voted for every presidential winner since 1900, with the exception of 1956.
And a CNN/Time/Opinion Research poll released earlier this week showed Obama and McCain in a virtual tie in the state.
As a resident from a neighboring state, including one that shares a major media market with Illinois, has also offered Obama advantages in Missouri.
His campaign said this was his seventh trip to Missouri since he secured the nomination. McCain, meanwhile, is schedule to stop in the state on Monday.
The ability of Obama to give attention to Missouri so just more than two weeks before Election Day stands in stark contrast to Sen. John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic nominee who had virtually conceded Missouri at this point in his campaign.
As it has in other states, economic stress in Missouri has boosted Obama's campaign here, as voters express strong frustration with the nation's current direction.
If he is to win the state, Obama will need to boost turnout in the urban centers of St. Louis and Kansas City to counter the state's strong base of conservative evangelicals.
Obama's campaign, however, has been aggressively registering new voters, especially in the major urban centers of St. Louis and Kansas City, where it hopes to dramatically increase voter turnout.
"We are going to break every turnout record in Missouri and this nation," said Rep. William Lacy Clay, a Missouri congressman who was part of Obama's warm up act.
Clay and others cautioned voters waiting to hear Obama to be aware of potential polling place problems, while offering a toll free number for those who have trouble casting their votes.
Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri said she expects her state's outcome to be close because of its tradition that "sometimes a one-point victory in Missouri is called a landslide."
McCaskill also criticized Republican running mate and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin for a comment she made this week about campaigning in "pro-America" places.
"We have reached a new low in American politics when someone dares to say that one part of America is more pro-American than another part of America," McCaskill countered.
Even before Obama secured his party's nomination, he started making trips into the state, including one in May where he met with workers in Cape Girardeau, the boyhood home of conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh.
"We're going to spend a lot of time in Missouri making sure we win this state," Obama said during that stop.
