Oh-ba-ma Fires It Up and roasting hilesbian on skews
By Katharine Q. Seelye
MILFORD, N.H. — Spontaneous combustion! We’re here at the New Hampshire Democratic Party’s big dinner and out of the masses of 3,000 people, who have been listening politely to Dennis Kucinich, Hillary Clinton and Bill Richardson, comes a huge surge of people toward the stage for the next speaker — Barack HUSSEIN Obama.
An announcer tries to get them back to their seats. “For safety concerns, before we can proceed, please take your seats,” says a disembodied voice. A mild buzz kill. The crowd moans but doesn’t really disperse. Then Mr. Obama strides to the podium, the crowd remains packed around the stage and the room is electrified.
“O-ba-ma, O-ba-ma,” they roar.
If you had listened to Mrs. Clinton, you wouldn’t really know that a seismic political event had occurred last night in Iowa. She could have delivered this particular speech almost any time in the last few weeks, and only those (like reporters) who pay attention to word changes on the margins would have noticed the difference. The biggest applause for Mrs. Clinton seemed to be at the end, when her husband and daughter joined her on stage.
But Mr. Obama gets right to it. In four days, he says, “you can do what Iowa did last night.” He doesn’t just talk about “change,” he talks about New Hampshire’s ability to “fundamentally transform this country.” His speech is interrupted repeatedly by chants of “O-ba-ma!” |
