It was a HS gym. I didn't even know he was here.
DAILY PUNDIT - What A Mob Scene!
Honolulu Star-Bulletin Hawaii News
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Former Vice President Al Gore fired up a standing-only crowd of more than 1,200 Democrats at a Kalihi rally last night, criticizing President Bush and saying polls that put Bush and Sen. John Kerry neck-and-neck in the islands mean Hawaii voters could decide the election.
Since I once helped do advance work for Senator Robert F. Kennedy during his ill-starred campaign for President, I know a little bit about how this works. One of the primary duties of an advance man is to keep the candidate from embarassment. And part of this means making sure that the high school band scheduled to appear actually does appear, that it has instruments, and that it consists of more than a tuba player and a marching violinist. Another duty is to make damned sure that the candidate never, ever, appears before anything other than "standing room only" crowds.
This doesn't really involve whipping up crowds of voters. What is does involve is figuring out how many are likely to appear, and then selecting a venue that will hold somewhat fewer than that guestimate. 1200 supporters in a dinky-ass high school gym looks great. 1200 in a 50,000 seat stadium looks like a disaster.
The bottom line here is that 1200 is all that Big Honest Al, the Loggers' Pal, was able to draw, at the height of the most heated campaign in recent Hawaiian memory. And some of them were probably paid to show up, one way or another. |
