Obama's Stadium Gamble

Barack Obama announced yesterday that his campaign will move the candidate's convention acceptance speech from the Pepsi Center in Denver, where the rest of the Democratic National Convention will be held, to the 75,000-seat Invesco Field, home of the NFL's Denver Broncos.

The move, which will surely cement Mr Obama's reputation as a political "rock star," comes at a time when his opponent, John McCain has sought to blunt Mr Obama's speech-making advantage, by tying eloquence to a perceived lack of substance. Mr McCain's troubles with major podium speeches are well-chronicled, and his campaign seems to be subtly attacking the venue-change as a stunt, in part, to deflect attention from the fact that he wouldn't be able to replicate such an event.

In relocating his prime-time acceptance speech to such a large, outdoor stadium, Mr Obama's campaign is claiming that they're opening their convention to regular Americans, and not just the 20,000 party-insiders who regularly attend the convention. More importantly, perhaps, the Obama campaign is taking advantage of the opportunity to capture personal information from tens of thousands of voters in the important swing-state of Colorado. They used similar large-scale events during the primaries to build a data advantage that bolstered their voter-turnout operation.

The speech, which will be held on the 45th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King's famous "I Have a Dream" speech, will also be the first outdoor acceptance speech by a major party-nominee since John F. Kennedy in 1960. History could be made again, but one has to ask, without a roof over their heads, where do the balloons and confetti fall from?

Comments

[Lisa]

For someone who claims to be beyond race and who wants to pick up the mantle of Martin Luther King, he sure did spend a long time at that racist, anti-Semitic church of his. Twenty years.

Heck, in his book, he describes the first Wright sermon he ever heard and how it brought tears to his eyes... a sermon that was nothing but a racist rant about how whitey caused all the ills in the world.

[barrett]

With the move to Invesco field, security becomes an even greater concern now.

Barack has shown that he can give American youth a reason to believe that their political voice can make a difference. That may be just as important to the US as any policy changes he will make as president. I just hope he holds to his morals when he takes office - we'll all be watching.

I for one will try to get tickets for this historic speech in spite of the McCain camp's attempts to downplay its significance.