What sets McCain, Obama apart? The crowds, to start
By Steven Thomma | McClatchy Newspapers
There are lots of differences traveling on the bus with John McCain and Barack Obama in the closing days of the 2008 presidential campaign. The most obvious is visible through the window, miles before it arrives at a campaign event.
As the Obama motorcade gets within two or three miles, it starts passing people walking, carrying Obama posters, wearing Obama sweatshirts. Walking from their cars, which they had to park far, far away.
From about a block away, the lines of people waiting to get in through the metal detectors become visible. Sometimes hundreds, often thousands.
Once at the rally, the crowds are huge. In recent days, Obama drew 10,000 to a park in Leesburg; 35,000 to a park in downtown Indianapolis, 100,000 in Denver.
It's starkly different on the McCain bus.
On a recent visit to Kettering, Ohio, for example, the McCain motorcade was within a block of a local campus rally before there was any outward sign a presidential campaign was arriving.
Inside, maybe 2,000 supporters waited, but dozens and dozens and dozens of seats stood empty, and remained empty. At an outdoor rally that evening in Lancaster, about 2,000 attended. Behind them, a wide open field.
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