My abiding hatred of large crowds won out yesterday...and it turns out that I was on the right track, because 75,000 people (and that's no typo, y'all) turned out in Waterfront Park in downtown Portland yesterday to attend a rally for Sen. Barack Obama. I'd been toying with the idea of going to the really, back when the prevailing estimate held that some 20,000 people might show up. The idea of 75,000 people in one place just absolutely gives me the creeps (I'd rather be forced to moonwalk buck naked through Pioneer Courthouse Square), so my decision to catch the highlights on the Sunday evening news turned out to be prescient.
The idea of 75,000 Portlanders turning out for anything is difficult to imagine, and the idea that Portland provided the Obama campaign with it's largest turnout to date (the only thing missing was the Popemobile) is even more mind-boggling. This is not a city known for being easy to impress (unless the Trailblazers win an NBA championship...but that hasn't happened since 1977). Combine the excitement of the presumptive Democratic candidate with a warm spring afternoon, and downtown Portland was crawling with Liberal Democrats (and somewhere, Bill O'Reilly is about to have a cerebral hemorrhage).
The thing that truly frustrates me about Tuesday's primary is that I'll be in Cleveland (&^%$#@ Ohio of all places, watching it all play out on TV. Then again, it could have been worse; I might have found myself stuck in the midst of a crowd of 75,000 of my closest friends.
