A day after John McCain held his panderfest at the Versailles restaurant in Miami (for those not from South Florida, Versailles is where the old Cuban heads hang out and kvetch about Fidel Castro, and how they coulda, shoulda, and woulda deposed him if not for those darned Kennedys...) Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama barnstormed Florida today, and with very, very different vibes. First, Mrs. Clinton:
She spoke to about 800 "seasoned folk" at the Century Village retirement complex in Boca. An unfortunate paragraph from the Sun-Sentinel article: Clinton added a new wrinkle to her argument: Not only should Florida's vote count - but all of the state's 210 delegates should be seated according to the results that gave her a 17-percentage point victory. Did they have to mention wrinkles??? Meanwhile, Barack Obama spoke to the LARGEST CROWD EVER in the state, in of all places, Republican-leaning Tampa. The Miami Herald's Beth Reinhard does the honors: How does a presidential candidate make up for snubbing, disparaging and being downright rude to the nation's largest battleground state for nine long months?
If you're Barack Obama, you do it with the largest campaign event ever in the state of Florida -- a sold-out rally at a hockey arena with more than 15,000 people.
''It's good to be back in Florida,'' Obama told the rowdy crowd, which didn't want to sit down or shut up. ``I know you guys have been holding down the fort.'' Hey, Beth, what's with the snubbing and disparaging? I don't remember Barack doing any of that... Anyhoo, the contrast, you might say, is striking.
And look for Barack to beat the Tampa crowd record when he comes to Broward on Friday. The BankAtlantic Center arena in Sunrise holds more than 20,000 people.
| Labels: 2008 election, Barack Obama, Florida, Hillary Clinton, presidential candidates |
