As It Happened, He Couldn’t

I normally don’t say much about current politics here, but I do like Obama, as does my mom, so when we got into Philadelphia and learned that there just so happened to be an Obama rally planned for that very night we were glad to get the opportunity to check it out.  It was outside on the lawn in front of Independence Hall, so even though we were too far back to see him, we had no trouble finding a place to stand.  It took a long time for him to show up, but when he did he was electrifying.  The man’s a damn good speaker.  While he did have some harsh words for HRC, with whom he was then locked in a tight struggle for Pennsylvania, I found it interesting that he started out by blasting McCain instead, and only moved on to the primary fight toward the end of the speech.  He definitely seems to be positioning himself for the general.  While the speech he gave was clearly just his normal stump speech, he did manage to weave in a theme of “declaring independence” throughout, a nod to the specific location.

It was pretty exciting to be in Philadelphia just before the primary.  The city was abuzz with political fervor, mostly pro-Obama in the areas we saw.  While he did end up losing the state, of course, it was pretty cool to see how fired-up people were in his support.

The real reason we were in town, of course, was for the seder, and it was very nice.  We actually went to two, on Saturday and Sunday nights, then flew out on Monday (my mom and sister back to Albuquerque, me on to Budapest).  During the downtime I took some pictures.