A political speech took on the dimensions of a rock concert Monday as thousands crammed into an American University auditorium to cheer on Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama as he accepted the blessings of Sen. Edward Kennedy and members of his family.
The crowd, mostly students on the upper Northwest campus, began lining up in the wee hours of the morning and emerged from the hour long spectacle exuberant.
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“We had lines all across campus,” said political history professor Allan Lichtman. “This was like rock-concert levels.”
Obama, the first-term senator from Illinois, is hoping to parlay Kennedy’s endorsement and his big win in South Carolina over the weekend into his party’s nomination. He has fashioned himself a candidate who can transcend old divisions and create a new consensus.
It’s a message Kyle Winslow, 20, waited hours to hear. He was one of three students who showed up at 5 a.m. to be first in line.
“We thought there was going to be a line before because it was getting well-hyped up across campus,” said Winslow, a junior at Bucknell University who is spending the spring semester at American. “I’ve been following him a long time.”
To Winslow, a registered Democrat in a conservative Republican family, Obama is an idealistic “underdog” set against “the Clinton machine.” Winslow said his hopes were buoyed by the two other students who joined him at the head of the line.
“They were both Republicans,” he said.
American professor Jane Hall said she was struck by the sense of solidarity among the crowd. She said she saw a woman holding a handmade sign that read, “I’m 59, white and proud to be for Obama.”
As the woman passed, an African-American student from the University of the District of Columbia shouted, “You go, mama,” Hall recalled.
Election years typically bring promises and pitches designed to bring out the youth vote and show little for the effort, but Lichtman said he thinks Obama’s campaign is different.
“My students came out and said, ‘That’s the next president,’” Lichtman said. “I can’t think of any other speaker, national or worldwide, who could have generated that kind of response.”
The last time Lichtman remembered seeing a candidate this exciting to young people was when he was 13 and went to hear a candidate speak in Lower Manhattan.
“We couldn’t even hear [John F.] Kennedy speak,” Lichtman recalled. “But it didn’t matter. He was Kennedy.”
