Obama Draws Huge Crowd in Oregon

[Truth Bearer]

Obama Draws Huge Crowd in Oregon as Clinton Courts Kentucky

By LARRY ROHTER and JULIE BOSMAN
Published: May 19, 2008



Barack Obama spoke to 75,000 people on Sunday in Portland, Ore. He called it “the most spectacular setting for the most spectacular crowd” of the campaign.


PORTLAND, Ore. — Senator Barack Obama drew the largest crowd of his campaign so far on Sunday, addressing an estimated 75,000 people who had gathered here on the banks of the Willamette River.

“Wow! Wow! Wow!” were his first words as he surveyed the multitude, which included people in kayaks and small pleasure craft on the river on an unseasonably hot day in Oregon.

It is “fair to say this is the most spectacular setting for the most spectacular crowd” of his campaign, he told the audience. His wife and daughters, who have been with him most of the weekend, joined him on the stage at the beginning of the event but left as he was about to speak.

Mr. Obama has been campaigning extensively in Oregon, a state he hopes to win in Tuesday’s primary, as the Democratic presidential nominating race ticks down to its last handful of contests. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton has been on a four-day swing through Kentucky, which also holds its primary on Tuesday and where she appears likely to draw the most votes.

Mr. Obama stopped earlier at an ice cream parlor, Lew’s Dari-Freeze and Drive In, in Milwaukie, a suburb of Portland. There, answering questions from reporters, he edged closer to declaring victory in the Democratic battle than has been his habit. He said he was returning to Iowa to await the results of the primaries on Tuesday night because “we thought it was a terrific way to bring things full circle.”




If things “go as we hope,” he said, “then we think we will have a majority of pledged delegates at that point.” That, he continued, would be “a pretty significant mark.”

While “that does not mean we declare victory,” Mr. Obama added, it puts him close and makes it easier for undecided and undeclared superdelegates to endorse him.

In Kentucky, Mrs. Clinton’s campaign events have had a simple feel, with speeches at street fairs, in parking lots or on the grassy lawns of college campuses.

“She’s doing what she needs to do,” said Mo Elleithee, a spokesman for Mrs. Clinton, gesturing at the crowd gathered for a Sunday rally in western Kentucky.

Mrs. Clinton acknowledged that she was staging a one-sided war for votes in the state.

“My opponent said the other day he wasn’t coming back, so I’ve got the whole state to myself,” Mrs. Clinton said on Sunday afternoon at an outdoor rally in Bowling Green. “What a treat!”

Oregon is one of the greenest states in the nation, in both the literal and political sense. As such, it is viewed as particularly receptive to Mr. Obama’s promises “to change politics” in ways large and small.



Mr. Obama played to those sentiments in his speech on Sunday afternoon, in which he criticized the presumptive Republican nominee, Senator John McCain, at great length while virtually ignoring Mrs. Clinton. He again rejected a temporary suspension of the federal gasoline tax, criticizing Mr. McCain for supporting the idea while failing to mention that Mrs. Clinton has also endorsed it.

He denied, however, that he was effectively conceding Kentucky to his rival by focusing almost exclusively on the Oregon vote. “I don’t give up on things,” he said at the ice cream parlor. “We have got to make choices, and I can’t be everywhere at once.”

Mrs. Clinton has continued to make the case that she is a better candidate than Mr. Obama, delivering a stump speech in Bowling Green that highlighted many familiar points: that she will be ready on Day 1, will be a more capable commander in chief, and is more experienced in foreign policy matters.

“I’m going to get to work as soon as I’m inaugurated to make sure that we do build a strong and prosperous middle class,” she told a crowd at the Maker’s Mark distillery in Loretto, Ky.

And she has argued to audiences here that she is leading in the popular vote, based on a count that includes the elections in Florida and Michigan, whose votes were moved up in violation of Democratic Party rules. (Mr. Obama was not on the ballot in Michigan; neither candidate campaigned in Florida.)

“I’ll tell you where this race stands right now,” Mrs. Clinton told a crowd in Mayfield on Sunday. “Right now I am leading in the popular vote. More Americans have voted for me. And the states that I have won are states that a Democrat has to win to be elected in the fall.”




But her planned attack on Mr. McCain in a speech on Saturday, which criticized his economic policy in unusually strident tones, failed to generate any response from his campaign. The Obama and McCain campaigns, meanwhile, continued to fire at each other over Social Security and foreign policy on Sunday in dueling memorandums to reporters. Talk about Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain also dominated the morning political shows.

Mr. Obama spoke only briefly about Mrs. Clinton on Sunday, in remarks that were so magnanimous that he almost seemed to be speaking of her in the past tense.

“She has been a formidable candidate, smart and tough and determined,” he said as some in the crowd applauded politely. “She has worked as hard as she can. She has run an extraordinary campaign.”





Larry Rohter reported from Portland, and Julie Bosman from Bowling Green, Ky.


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/19/us...A5Kjqu1Jxwwhsw