by John McCormick
Part of Sen. Barack Obama’s success at last weekend’s Jefferson Jackson dinner in Iowa was his campaign’s decision to seat supporters with red signs on one side of the auditorium and those with the blue signs on the other.
It might sound like a simple thing, but the assigned seating in the balcony section of the auditorium in Des Moines allowed the Illinois Democrat to exploit a short story he has told religiously on the campaign trail for months.
Anyone who has spent a day or more with Obama knows the story about a woman he met during a visit to a small South Carolina town earlier this year.
Although his supporters seem to love it, many reporters roll their eyes when they hear Obama start his delivery of the five-minute story that ends with a “fired up, ready to go” chant, a sure sign that it is time to pack up for the next stop on the campaign trail.
(The Swamp provided video of the story this summer.)
At the JJ dinner, an event Obama’s campaign had been preparing for since July, supporters with red signs, chanted “fired up,” while those with blue responded “ready to go.”
It was an impressive display of organization for a campaign that claimed to have about 3,000 supporters at the dinner, about a third of the audience.
The Tribune asked Obama late last week about the story and whether he planned to always tell it as part of his standard stump speech. Here is what he said:”It’s a wonderful story. I’m sure that in the last two months we will be updating, you know, my stump to reflect what I’m hearing from people, what arguments are being enjoined in the debates and other things. But I tell you what, you’re right, I love the story, too, and people really like it. And it is a very simple story, but I do think it captures part of what this campaign is about and that is, inspiration can come from unlikely places, and, you know, I think that if our politics is open to the American people, I think you’re always pleasantly surprised by how good and decent and strong the American people are…Part of the reason I like to tell the story is not just because it speaks to some of the joys of the campaign, but also because it speaks to how I want to govern. I want to be hearing those voices. And it’s funny, there are a couple reporters who took the story and they sort of said, ‘Well, you know, why should he need to be fired up by other people? You know, he’s running for president, he should be doing the firing up.’ And they missed the point, which is, as I said, I’m confident in my ability to lead this country. But part of the reason I’m confident is because, you know, I’m listening through the power of the American people, and I think Washington just somehow feels like change, or effective government, has to flow from the top down.”