Critical differences between Obama crowds and McCain crowds:

[EffieBlack]

1. For all of the fawning over the crowds that Palin pulls, the McCain campaign is touching significantly fewer people each day.

Campaign 101 teaches that you fan out your top assets - the two nominees and their spouses - as often as possible, since having them appear together means they aren't out touching other people. (JFK supposedly told Jackie to always wave to a different part of the crowd than he did. "If we both wave at the same voter, it's a waste.")

But not so with the McCain-Palin ticket who move around the country in a clump like a four-headed beast . So if Palin gets 20,000 people to a rally, that breaks down to 4,000 voters for each of the principals. Not impressive.

On the other hand, Barack, Michelle and Joe are confident enough to headline their own events and Jill often does her own, as well. Between the four of them, they are reaching tens of thousands more people people per day than the McCain caravan does..

2. Which leads to my next point - the crowds. Look at the Obama crowds - a shing sea of racial, gender, class, age, economic and ethnic diversity. There's no doubt that Obama's crowds come from many different places to which they will return after his events to spread the word about the man and his message.

McCain's crowds? Not so much. The only diversity I see is that some are men and some are women, some have different color hair and some are a little paler than others. Otherwisen for the most part, they look like they all come from the same neighborhood - in fact, the same block. Where do they go after a McCain rally? I'll bet it's right back to the same neighborhoods filled with people who think like them and thus, were probably already going to vote for McCain anyway. I sincerely doubt that many of the people we see at McCain rallies are spreading out and reaching people who aren't like them and convincing them to join the McCain train.

These two differences are critical and are a significant reason that Obama's numbers keep growing and McCain just seems stuck.

[BlooInBloo]

1. The biggest difference to me is that Obama's are open to the public.

[Olney Blue]

2. McCain can't draw a crowd without his hockey mom sidekick.

[zbdent]

3. you know, I think that we might be able to signal intelligent life on other planets by

shining a spotlight on a Palin/McCain gathering ... the reflection of light on all those upturned white faces probably would intensify the light enough that it would shine brighter and burn a hole on a planet's surface ...

[Seen the light]

4. The two Obama rallies I've been to have been uplifting and joyous

McCain wasn't even mentioned. We did make fun of Sarah Palin quite a bit before the one in Greensboro NC, but it was all in good fun. Nobody was angry. Nobody was accusing anyone of treason. The Greensboro one was in the rain for part of the time, yet nobody complained, nobody said anything negative. The babies in the tight crowd didn't even cry.

There's a positive energy at Obama rallies that I can't ever remember feeling anywhere else.

[dgibby]

5. The biggest difference is that the Obama

crowds are intelligent. McCain's=not so much!

[texpatriot2004]

6. McSame adds "hate-mongering" to the "fear-mongering"

MO. Shame. The crowds are an additional disappointment.