Empty stadiums, then and now
On June 21, 1948, Life magazine ran a gleeful series of photos ridiculing Harry Truman’s famous don’t-call-it-a-campaign-trip campaign trip through the West — a tour that was widely mocked by his adversaries but which actually had the effect of reviving his fortunes at a time when many within his party were scouting about for a replacement candidate. Henry Luce was a first-rate Truman hater, believing him to be insufficiently hostile toward the Soviet Union and insufficiently supportive of the Chinese nationalists, so when a publicity gaffe led Truman to deliver a speech to a nearly-empty Ak-Sar-Ben coliseum in Omaha, his magazine provided ample space for this:
Life conveniently overlooked the fact that Truman had drawn 160,000 Omahans to a parade earlier in the day, just as they had almost nothing to say about the substance of Truman’s speech, which endorsed still-popular New Deal policies including agricultural price supports, soil conservation efforts, federal support for farm cooperatives, measures to alleviate food insecurity and malnutrition, electrification programs as well as improvements to rural health services. Though Truman would eventually lose Nebraska by a margin of 54-46 percent, it’s perhaps worth pointing out that FDR had lost the state by 15 and 17 points in 1940 and 1944. So while the Republican media made strong efforts to depict Truman’s speaking tour as the work of a bumbling dope, the reality was that the more Truman spoke — sparse crowds or no — the more popular he became with voters.
Not so with Mittens, whose dishonest speech to an empty stadium in Detroit offered — as Ezra Klein points out — a horrifying call for Americans to address a debt non-emergency by hacking away at programs that serve the poorest citizens. No wonder, then, that the more Willard Romney speaks, the more everyone dislikes him.
Sometimes the empty stadium is an anomaly, and sometimes you’ve really earned it.
Interesting.
Obama really did fill stadiums in ’08. How much of an anomaly is this, or am I just kooky weird?
It’s a closed speech to the Detroit Economic Club, or somesuch. It was supposed to be in some hall or meeting room for 800. When registration hit 1,200, the speech was moved to a larger venue, and they overdid it.
Organizers went to a lot of trouble to arrange the audience and speaking platform to look “normal” rather than like a few people in a stadium. Obviously, they failed to control where the photographers sat.
And I’ll add, they originally planned to move the speach to the atrium of the stadium, not the stadium itself. The Secret Service didn’t like that venue.
This explains the source of my impression about the composition of the audience, below – but what the heck was Romney doing taking before the Detroit Economic Club in late February 2012? It’s a venue for serious (or “serious”) policy exegesis, not for a stump speech days before the state primary, for heavens sake; Obama spoke there some time in 2007 when he was running. I still maintain that Romney was speaking to the only sort of audience he can manage to bring out: executive types whose employers are paying for them to attend.
You know, it sticks in my craw to defend the guy, but frankly I think Mittens is getting unwarranted flak over this.
They had a speech planned, they filled the venue, they wanted to kick it up to a larger one and through a series of unfortunate events they overshot. Big fucking deal. Happens all the time.
Ever inch of newsprint wasted on discussing his ‘failure’ to fill a stadium is an inch that could have been used discussing his myriad failings as a policymaker and, indeed, as a human being. It’s also small and petty.
And every inch of newsprint “discussing his myriad failings as a policymaker and, indeed, as a human being” will be ignored by people who do not already agree that Romney has those failings.
Isn’t there a Ritz-Carlton or something there? Hold it in a hotel ballroom!! Most of us knew days before that it would turn into a clusterfu-k if what we heard was true. And it did indeed turn out to be true!!
To me, more shocking than the absurd mismatch between crowd size and venue is the makeup of the crowd: it’s like no political rally I’ve ever seen. At least if you judge by the picture posted at Charlie Pierce’s blog, the crowd seems to be north of 80% male, likely over 90%, and almost every damn one of them is wearing a dark suit. No kids, no gauche retirees. What sort of a viable political candidate has such a crowd at their rallies? I’ve been to (small-dollar) fundraisers with considerably more variety of attendee and attire.
One of the really striking things about Romney’s campaign is how little money he’s raised from small donors. He raised just $6m last year in less-than-$200 increments. For comparison, Gingrich raised $7m this way, and Cain $10m. The guy excites no one (except, presumably, Mormoms). No one is taking a semester off to campaign for Mitt. No one is moved to create “We Love Mitt” websites and social media storms. No one is canvassing their neighborhood or holding little in-house fundraising parties or streetcorner rallies for Mitt. When Sarah Palin announced she wasn’t going to run last fall, I remember reading about how heartbroken her self-organized volunteer campaign staff was – people who took time off their jobs at no pay to go to Iowa to start building her campaign organization in preparation for the eventual run that every non-delusional political observer knew was never going to happen. I have yet to see a single person who is insipred to go out and volunteer their own time and efforts on Mitt’s behalf because they’re so inspired by Mitt and what Mitt stands for. Not one.
I’ve never seen a major-party candidate inspire so little passion among his own base. He barely rises to the level of “grudging acceptance” and “he’s the best we can do, I guess”. It’s kind of amazing. The fall election should be a combination cakewalk/bloodbath (assuming economic/foreign policy developments cooperate).
Isn’t that about the attitude that Democrats had towards Kerry in 2004? I’m not really old enough to remember, but was anyone passionate about Michael Dukakis? I certainly don’t remember much enthusiasm for Bob Dole.
Dukakis had lot of supporters from MA who worked for him. Kerry, too. Neither was a candidate of wild enthusiasms. Both, stupidly, let the GOBP noise/lie machine define them.
If this is true, then Ron Paul should be cleaning up. His fans are devoted, visible and seem to have endless amounts of time and energy to hand-paint signs and hang them on every streetcorner on earth. At least, they do where I live.
I don’t think Mitt really cares about rallying the people. He’s concerned about rallying the money. He knows that’s all he really needs, and that most of the Republican voters will line up and vote for him once he’s got the nomination, even if they have to hold their noses. So why waste his time with the little people? He wants corporate cash.
Ron Paul’s base absolutely adores him, but the rest of the Republican party hates him with a fiery passion. He pretty much does clean up when it comes to small donations from his base. Still, a good candidate needs a fired up base but also needs to be acceptable to those outside his base. Pandering to dope-smoking congenital assholes who don’t understand the concepts of money or government and who reject federal government financing of blowing up brown people because it gets in the way of states exercising autonomy over women’s uteri really doesn’t have much appeal outside those being pandered to.
The guy excites no one (except, presumably, Mormoms).
Mormons and business executives are the only ones who get a woody over Mittens. Well, the ones that get paid to work for his campaign. But you are right. Then again, I’ve never run across GOP canvassers.
Looks like a typical Mormon Priesthood Meeting, amongst other things.
The problem is that Mitt has all of the charisma of a brick.
He makes even John Kerry sound like Martin Luther King Jr.
And Evangelicals, who are the worker bee’s for Conservatives, and seem to have made their peace with Catholics now that many of them sip “corn” holy water from the same misogynistic and hate-filled chalice, still can’t stand Mormons, who they view as some cult.
So, sure, Mitt’s electable.
But who the hell wants to work like hell to help elect him?
People who are getting paid, and co-religionists. And in many parts of the country, there aren’t enough Mormons to pick-up the slack that’s being caused by Evangelicals giving their time to Rick or Newt, or sitting at home.
The only option for the Republican leaders, is to appeal to the lizard-brain, and make this the most negative election in history. And that will take some doing. But I’m sure they’re up to the task.
The next 8+ months are going to be Hell.
I’m wondering who will be the first to scream the “N-word?” The whispering is over…
As “rea says” points out above, it turns out it was the Secret Service that moved Mitt’s speech from the atrium into the stadium.
How long before Obama’s blamed for this?
3… 2… 1…
So the cops get to tell the president and the presidential candidates where they can speak? I don’t doubt you, but it sure does give an interesting perspective on who controls what.
So far everybody says someone is unelectable because he holds views that are too radical for the mainstream.
I think that needs to be changed to include “So vanilla nobody gives a shit”.
Hey! I like vanilla! dont go giving it a bad name (and how it became synonymous with bland and lacking taste or distinction I simply dont get … try sniffing some vanilla root sometime).
It’s all that cheap “vanilla” ice cream that tastes only of cream and sugar, and nothing else. Not knocking cream and sugar as a taste, especially for kiddies, but a lot of cheap “vanilla” ice creams don’t especially taste of vanilla.
I couldn’t help but laugh at this.
Multiple levels of nested digression to make a simple point? Check.
Seymour-Skinner-esque grammatical precision? Check.
Heart-warming anecdote introduced in a manner that reminds the audience of his immense wealth and/or power? Check.
That’s our Lurch.
On the plus side, at least he didn’t also chime in with Teresa driving two Cadillac’s.
Besides, she probably prefers Mercedes.
And a chauffeur.
If she drives a foreign car we’d have heard about it in 2004, no? Remember what a big deal it was when McCain’s daughter drove a Prius, or whatever it was?
Dave, thanks for the look back at the Golden Age of objective journalism
I ran out of “unsuperlatives” trying to describe to my wife how sparse a crowd 1200 people was.
After remembering that the Eastern League was good for ~3000-5000 on any given night, I settled on the late, unlamented Boston Bolts.
Just felt I should point out that the coliseum in Omaha got its name by spelling Nebraska backwards. I mean, who does that? There used to be an Ak-Sar-Ben racetrack and yearly Ak-Sar-Ben beauty queens, too, but I think they’re now a thing of the past (as is NebraSki, a little practice ski hillock south of Omaha).