Sen. [tag]Barack Obama[/tag] was in Nebraska on Saturday campaigning for Sen. [tag]Ben Nelson[/tag] and Democratic gubernatorial candidate [tag]David Hahn[/tag]. From what I hear, Obama was very well received.
“This is our moment to lead,” he told 900 [tag]Nebraska[/tag] Democrats at the party’s annual Morrison-Exon Dinner. “Enough of the broken promises,” Obama declared. “Enough of the failed leadership.”
When President [tag]Bush[/tag] said in his 2000 campaign he was against nation-building, Obama said, “we just didn’t know he was talking about this one.”
Nebraska is, of course, one of the most solidly Republican states in the country and one of only four states in the Union in which Bush’s approval rating is still above 50%. And yet, Nebraskan Dems couldn’t wait to see this liberal lawyer from Chicago. At the party’s annual dinner, the audience included a sizable overflow crowd. Earlier, Obama addressed an “enthusiastic crowd” of 1,000 people at a Baptist church near Omaha.
“I’ve had enough of folks not telling the truth, manipulating intelligence, fudging numbers,” he said. Bungling their way to “three-dollar-something gasoline,” he added.
While as much as a trillion dollars may be spent on the war in [tag]Iraq[/tag], Obama said, investments are lacking at home in “neighborhoods where rats outnumber computers and kids can’t walk home safely.”
The Bush administration, he said, has slashed funding for day care and after-school programs, and embraced a policy of “social Darwinism, every man or woman for him or herself.”
Obama told the Democratic dinner audience that, somehow, the administration believes “that if you say the words ‘plan for victory’ and point to the number of schools painted and roads paved and cell phones used in Iraq, no one will notice the more than 2,300 flag-draped coffins that have arrived at Dover Air Force Base.”
Well,” he said, “it’s time we finally said we notice, and we care, and we’re not gonna settle any more.”
First, can someone remind me why Obama can’t run for national office in 2008?
Second, what I like most about this story is the fact that Nebraskans like Ben Nelson, who is probably the Senate’s most conservative Dem, was anxious to campaign alongside Obama in this reliably “red” state. How many national Dems would Nelson want to bring to Nebraska for campaign events? The number of Dems who can receive the same rock-star reception in Nebraska as in New York is quite small. Obama, right now, is near the top of that list.