Sen Obama and the Pack Mentality

Senator Barack Obama came through Portland on Sunday May 18 and created an "official" count of 60,000 inside the gates of Waterfront Park with another 15,000 estimated outside on the roads and on the water or bridges bordering on the rally.

 

Some people came since they really support him, some came to be part of the event, some came since standing in line for three hours to pass through security was the best thing to do on a Sunday when the weather was actually nice for a change in the mid 80s.

 

The number of people at the event surprised him - it was only organized a few days before - and the number of people there also surprised most of the expert planners in Portland - hence the three hour wait to get to the park. So much for experts. (Almost all the experts are Blue leaning Democrats.)

 

What the event did more than anything is the illustrate the "bandwagon" mentality of emotion over substance. His speech was pretty much the same, but the feeling people wanted and got from being there outweighed any mental analysis of what he wants to do. (No, I did not attend, I was guessing that at least 50,000 would be there since Portland is such a BLUE city, and so I skipped going.)

 

Senator Hillary Clinton, in state along with her daughter and husband, have gone the low-key small venue route where she can actually TALK to people, explain what she wants to do (substance) and go with logic - shows what happens in a modern America when you try to go with logic vs.. emotion - you get stomped even if you are a Democrat.