After hours of speeches and musical acts at Invesco field yesterday evening, Illinois' own Sen. Dick Durbin took to the stage to introduce his colleague and friend Barack Obama. About 36 hours earlier, I'd spoken briefly with Durbin at the Illinois delegation breakfast and noticed that (like many other attendees) he seemed to be losing his voice. Or maybe he was just saving it, because he didn't appear to have any problem addressing the stadium last night. Here's a brief video taken during Durbin's remarks:
Adam already gave his thoughts from the upper deck, so I'll give mine from a lower vantage point in the stadium.
I agree that Obama's condemnation of the GOP's "ownership society" conceit was a highlight of the speech. As was Barack's simple statement that his Republican opponent "just doesn't get it," which he put forth after noting Phil Gramm's "mental recession" comments and McCain's definition of middle class as those earning under $5 million.
Beyond capitalizing on the McCain campaign's missteps, Obama also took many of the attacks leveled at him over the past few months and deftly turned them on their head.
I too was rather stunned by the four or five ordinary Americans who, with grace and poise, addressed the enormous crowd in the hour before Obama's speech. After the event, a friend of mine asked: "What did they do to those people to get them to speak in front of 70,000 people?" They did seem remarkably comfortable in this monumental setting.
But then, so did everyone in attendance. The atmosphere in the stadium was really lovely and a marked contrast to the crazy, jostling nature of the Pepsi Center during the first three nights of the convention. As Ezra Klein writes, it felt like a "clean break":
Physically abandoning the recycled air and florescent lights of the Pepsi Center for the soft sun and incredible size of Invesco Field created the impression of a clean break with all that came before it. It was as if the first three days were the Democratic Party's convention, when the usual lineup of pols and dignitaries got rewarded for their service, and the final night was Obama's convention, where Obama, all on his lonesome, defined the contours of the campaign and laid out what he meant liberalism to look like on his watch.
Indeed.
But most moving of all was the trial that many attendees endured to simply get in the stadium. We showed up on the West side of Invesco around 3:30 pm -- five hours before Obama's speech -- only to watch one of the longest lines I've ever witnessed unfold before us. No water in sight, the sun sweltering overhead, the crowd nonetheless seemed relatively docile -- willing to wait as long as it took, determined to be part of history. And while some shuffled forward for three or four hours before getting in, I doubt any regret it today.
UPDATE: Here's a photo taken near the end of the line around 3 pm yesterday. This doesn't really do it justice, though you can get a sense of how far from the stadium these folks are at this point. When I took this photo, the line was coiling into itself in this parking lot. By the time I left, the lot had almost filled. I hear that after countless people called the DNC hotline, the cops eventually showed up and sorted things out.
Click for high-res version.
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