By David Usborne in Indianapolis
I am just returned from American Legion Field here in downtown Indianopolis - a stunning natural arena of grass with the city's monumental World War Memorial at one end, where the Obama rally happened. I was perplexed going there. My hotel is far from the park, certainly a mile, yet the end of the line to get into the event was virtually at my front door, snaking from one end of downtown to the other. A LOT of people - white, blacks, old and young - were willing to wait a LONG time to see the man. The local news says the head count was 21,000. And when he got on stage finally, Obama seemed like the candidate he used to be before all that tricky stuff - Wright, bitter voters and so forth - shattered his focus. Aides told me the line to get in actually stretched two miles. They also said that in the course of a day attending events here and in North Carolina, Obama also squeezed in 22 media interviews.
A huge rally does not necessarily turn into a hyge victory, or even a razor-thin one. We will see how Indiana goes tonight.
In case anyone is still wondering about that secret mega-star .. well, I should have guessed, because he has become a bit of a staple of Obama love-fests. Stevie Wonder was back, winding up the crowd before Barack with a couple of songs, including his standby, Signed, Sealed, Delivered, but with re-worked lyrics specially for the candidate. He also got the entire park singing the syllables of Obama's name up and down the chromatic scale. (And they sing pretty well here.)
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