The Crossed Pond

If you want to read me chatter away from a laptop in the middle of the Independence Mall on a cold November day surrounded by thousands of cheering Ron Paul supporters while a bunch of speeches were going on, just search for “Liveblogging Philly” (or check our “Dispatches From the Front Lines” category on the right there, the last 10 of which or so were Philly liveblogging). I don’t know how good a job I actually did (livebloging a political speech, particularly with a connection that takes 3-5 minutes to load anything, is sort of a weird and not altogether natural process), but I certainly had a fun time doing it.

Just a few summary-type final thoughts.

Before that, here’s a pic that shows the scope of the rally better than any of mine did. The stage is to the left of the frame (that pole on the left is literally the far right edge of the stage)(my open tent, incidentally, is JUST out of sight on the bottom right portion), so this is about 35%-45% of the crowd maybe.

The rally in Philadelphia was a huge success, the biggest yet by the campaign’s own estimation, but more importantly, it was a different kind of rally, a different animal from the well-organized but still sort of (necessarily) on-the-cheap and thrown-together traveling funhog roadshow of the types we’ve seen before (which are also great, by the way). Despite some small local hit pieces that pop up every now and then describing Ron Paul supporters as all middle class geeky white men, this crowd was all over the map, racially (partly because it was Philly I suppose, but I saw more African-Americans, for instance, than at any Republican rally I’ve ever been to), class-wise, age-wise, even ideologically (big cheers came up for each group when Ron mentioned there are “a lot of Republicans, some Democrats, Libertarians, even a few anarchists out there”). Businessmen, students, veterans (it didn’t look good in the 30 minutes before the rally when only a few dozen vets were in the designated vet area which had a few hundred seats, but the entire section filled up with Vets of all ages and from all branches, in their unofficial uniforms, by the time things began), families, crazies, rednecks, urbanite liberals, you name it. This wasn’t just diverse in terms of weirdness, this was as close to a cross-section of the real America that I’ve ever seen represented at a political event.

And I think, at some point in the future, I might look back to this weekend as a real turning point in the campaign. This was the campaign spending real money putting on a real, frontrunner-worthy event, and to at least my eyes (and other people I spoke with shared my perspective), this was a real pivot point from grassroots-based rabble-rousing, to genuine contention slash real deal campaigning. And, the key point is, that money was well used. The event was a huge success, and will likely be the new template for the Paul campaign for their future big rallies.

What’s more, there were a helluva lot of new people. One worry early on was that these enthusiastic crowds were just the same people coming over and over again. I’m one of those people, in that I’ve probably been to almost a third of his bigger Eastern seaboard rallies in the last few months, but I can say from doing that, and it was particularly evident this weekend, that the movement is being padded every week by a steady stream (or at least healthy trickle) of new supporters who are very quickly being turned to the same vehement and committed activists that the old supporters now are. I can’t tell you how many people I met this weekend who had never heard of Ron Paul, or hadn’t heard much of him beyond a debate performance, until very very recently. But once they’re hooked, they’re hooked. Ron’s still only at say 5% nationally, but that’s another 1% a month since the day he started (more or less), and from what I’ve been seeing as a tree in that forest, is those 5% are assimilating into a larger movement that has already become organic, and, salient here, self-sustaining. To put it simply, we’re winning converts, we’re getting bigger and better with each passing day. We’re not turning millions of people onto the message yet, but we’re growing, and that, as often as anything, is the key indicator for any campaign or ideological movement.

What’s more, I also saw, or had reiterated to me, that Ron doesn’t NEED to run according to most mainstream “conventional wisdom” rules of campaigning. It made a lot of us anxious, in the early campaign, when he would even say the phrase “sound money”, or when he would start to get educational and specific rather than simply give milquetoast mainstream meaningless but nice-sounding platitudes. Does this make him less likely to win? Perhaps, in the sense that he’s certainly not entirely what’s expected of a national frontrunner, and so he probably won’t be until the day people realize he’s got the delegates. However, what I haven’t given enough people credit for, is not 50%+ of America, but a lot of people, know honesty, know integrity, know leadership, when they see it. And Ron’s got it. And that’s attracting people, even people who themselves are just now getting to the eye-rolling, anxious stage, but are still being drawn in. Ron’s one of the few campaigners I’ve ever seen who, as a human being, is just as interested in educating his audiences, or confronting dominant ideologies, than with just getting the crowd to easy applause lines, stringing those together, and leaving. What’s more, and again this is relative, but that approach is working. People (like me) often watch him and react to the effect of “Well, *I* know that the normal way of doing things is bullshit, but that’s how it’s done! You’re doing it wrong!” What we’re not giving enough credit to is the fact that there are a fair few people, like us, who are themselves saying the exact same thing. And when you do string enough of those people together, and start getting those people listening, eventually they start becoming less and less concerned with the last clause of the sentence and more concerned with the first, essentially flipping their emphasis. Like I said, not 50%+ of people, but not 1% either.

Now, because I do this, my personal anecdote from the weekend.

I was, as usual, with the T-shirt selling fools you often see at the rallies. I was doing my liveblogging thing, but they were there, slinging shirts (and, in this case, DVDs, pocket constitutions, buttons, yard signs, bumper stickers, you name it, all to fund various grassroots efforts). They had to set up across the street from the Mall, due to zoning reasons (or whatever), but they had a good morning, both financially and just in the sense that, as usual, they got to meet and greet more Ron Paul supporters than anybody. From experience, the work can be grueling, but that facet of it makes up for the labor.

After the rally, when I had finished up my liveblogging shtick, I joined them. The rally, because it was so crowded, too a long time after it was finished before the masses had finally mostly dispersed. There were still giant pockets of the crowd leaving the area a good hour and a half after the speech ended.

A long time after the event ended, the people had mostly trickled out, and after awhile, we finally thought it was about time to start tearing down. There were maybe 12 of us on the corner of Market and 7th, beginning to put our respective wares in boxes, organizing our stuff, etc.

As we were doing that, a green van that was driving by swerved gently towards us, hopped the curb on our corner, the side door opened, and Ron popped out.

“Hi!” he said as he walked over to shake our hands. “I can’t believe there’s still people around!”.

He ended up hanging out with us, posing for pictures, signing stuff, and just generally shooting the shit for about 10 minutes, smiling the whole time, honestly getting a kick out the whole thing. Just on some random street corner in downtown Philly that he happened to be driving by on his way out of town. Apparently, he saw us and just felt like stopping and saying hello. “I like doing these impromptu things a lot,” he said. “They’re the most fun sometimes.”

He was, as always, gracious, polite, happy, and enjoying our company (US!) and the fact that we had come out to put in for the cause. He stayed until anybody that wanted to talk to him could talk to him, until everybody got their pictures taken, their stuff signed, and their words of gushing thanks to him for being where he is (in the American political scene, not the street corner) gotten out. He seemed to enjoy himself just as much as we did. He also left with a bunch of free T-shirts slung over his shoulder, noting with some bemusement that his grandkids and in-laws already had a fair few of the ones we were selling (Kari and I sold a bunch of ours to his entire grandkid clan, and another guy we were with had apparently gotten approached by some other family members. They seem to get a kick of their own going through merchandise of their grandfather/father-in-law, and can often be found browsing the merch tables).

So, that marks about the 6th time I got a chance to shake Ron’s hand and chat with him a bit, and about the third time it came as a complete surprise. I swear, if it’s the last thing I do, I’m going to get to the point where he starts recognizing me. But, after a long, long day for all of us, I can’t tell you the charge we all got from it. People just kind of stood around for a few minutes afterwards, laughing to each other at how weird that just was. After those few minutes, it was back to work, loading up, but now everybody had a big grin on their faces, and the work seemed a lot less tedious and exhausting than it had 15 minutes prior.

So, that’s my Philly story.

I want to once again pimp the other people involved in the liveblogging.

Laura at Red State Eclectic, who relayed pics for us.

TheSpiritof76.org

And the esteemed Tex McCrae at LewRockwell’s blog

And, here’s a clip from a local news network that covered the rally.