Need some exercise? Just go to a Howard Dean appearance should he come through your town. I swear, with the number of standing ovations after every major point Dean makes, his supporters are up and down more often than your average Episcopal congregation!
Not that that’s a bad thing, of course. It just amused me during today’s Town Hall meeting with Gov. Dean.
The event wasn’t due to start until 3pm, with the doors to Town Hall scheduled to open at 2:15, but after my meeting with the property manager I poked my head out the window and noticed that there was already a pretty sizeable line starting to wrap around the building. It was already 1:30, so I tossed on my coat and headed down to snag a spot. Even then, I didn’t find the end of the line until it had already turned two corners and was around the back of Town Hall, and it was only a few more minutes before it wrapped around the third corner.
Of course, it wasn’t long after that that the line wrapped completely around the block. I saw a few people who came up to the line, started walking around the building trying to find the end, and eventually ended up right back where they started, swearing up and down that there was no end to the line! Just a möebus strip of Dean supporters surrounding the building.
Eventually, the doors opened, and we started heading in. They were taking it slow, though, in order to prevent overcrowding, and only letting about 20 people in at a time. This ended up working out well — at one point I was standing by the side of the building, right next to the back doors. Suddenly I heard people start shouting “Howard!” I turned around, and there he was, getting out of a rental van and heading into the building. He paused for a moment to wave and shake a few hands (which I was just too far away to take advantage of), and then headed into Town Hall.
Once in, there were tables set up to let us register for next week’s Caucuses, and once done with that, we filed into the main hall. There things got a little goofy, as it was already crowded, and it became fairly difficult to find a seat, but it all worked out in the end. We ended up filling the upstairs hall to capacity plus standing room only (over 1000 people in the room), and had a large amount of overflow crowd watching via monitors downstairs.
Congressman Jim McDermott came in first to rousing applause, and after a short speech from him and a woman member of SEIU, Dean came up and took the stage. As this was officially a Town Hall Meeting about health care, he split his appearance into two parts. The first half was the “motivational” stump speech section, and for the second half he took some questions about his policies and plans. He handled himself quite well for both of these.
First off, a quick apology — I didn’t think to bring along anything to take notes with, and as I have a mind like a steel trap (rusty and illegal in thirty-seven states), I can’t remember all the details of his plans and everything he said. I did like what I heard, I just can’t retain any of it for more than about thirty seconds. The retention capability of a goldfish, that’s me. So, what follows is more general impressions than “this particular part of his plan impresses me” reporting.
During the stump speech part, he came across as more of an “official” candidate — still just as charismatic as ever (which I think is one of his greatest strengths when he can make an in-person appearance, though it doesn’t always show as much in interviews), but more subdued than he’s come across as (or has been portrayed as) recently. The crowd was still very responsive and very supportive, too, jumping to their feet and applauding for his points, and hissing and booing as he ran through the litany of all that Bush has done for us. While the media may be doing their best to damn Dean to oblivion, he definitely still has his supporters!
The question and answer period looked like it was originally supposed to be simply questions from a group of people pre-selected and arranged on stage behind Dean. However, after a couple of those, someone from the audience stood up and hollered out a question possibly intended to derail Dean, asking how he intended to reduce the number of abortions in America today. If this was intended to fluster him, though, it failed miserably — he immediately said that the first thing we needed to do was ensure health care for all children under the age of eighteen, and the second thing we need to do was to promote sexual education in schools that didn’t limit itself to preaching abstinence, at which point the entire crowd erupted with cheers. Once those died down, Dean said that the third part would be to tell all those white boys in Washington to stay out of our bedrooms and pay attention to things that really matter, and everyone started cheering all over again.
Dean took a few more questions from the audience, and a couple more from the people on stage with him, and then it was time to wrap things up. He returned to the more “motivational”/rousing the troops/stump speech pattern for a few minutes, then called things to an end, clasping hands with McDermott and the people around him onstage, then making is way off, signing autographs on the way.
All in all, it was an excellent afternoon. I’m still quite solidly behind Dean as my candidate of choice, and it was good to be able to see him in person again (especially in a still-crowded but more intimate setting than Westlake Plaza).
Next step: next week’s caucuses!
Update: Dean’s blog says that there were over 2,500 people at today’s event.
Update: I’ve uploaded a quick photo gallery of the event.
iTunes: “My Baby’s In Love With Eddie Vedder” by Yankovic, “Weird Al” from the album Running With Scissors (1999, 3:26).