They’re wailing at the President, and not in a good way. Three guys up in the middle section of the Wolstein Center: white, mid to late 20s, angry. The President’s only about a minute into his remarks and things are getting awkward here, a mid-air collision between Obama’s cool campaign delivery and these three guys screaming at the top of their lungs.
The shouting’s so loud you can’t make out what their saying, just one constant raw screech. Pretty soon the event’s security team is hauling the guys out and the crowd is answering with a thunderous “Yes We Can” straight out of ’08.
It was all over quickly, just a blip in the program and Obama moved on. But the brief disturbance was also a crystallized form of the very anti-Dem antipathy Sunday’s event in downtown Cleveland was staged to counter. Otherwise, the Halloween rally was politics as usual: The PA played Jackie Wilson’s “You Love Keeps Lifting Me (Higher and Higher)” not once, not twice, but three times; pumpkin cheesecake was on the menu in the press room; Common rhymed “Obama” with “Obama” on more than one occasion; and a guy wearing a Joe Biden costume took the stage and asked the party faithful to turn out on Tuesday.
This article appears in Oct 27 – Nov 2, 2010.