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After two years on the campaign trail, Barack Obama ends his quest for the Presidency tonight in D.C.'s backyard. The rally, to be held in Manassas at the Prince William County Fairgrounds at 9 p.m., is Obama's final scheduled public appearance before Election Day. The event is free and open to the public, though the campaign encourages attendees to RSVP in advance. Expect metal detectors, but will they be checking names at the door?
Organizers are expecting nearly 40,000 supporters, though higher numbers are certainly plausible. Roads are expected to get messy, with rally traffic combining with I-66 rush hour traffic (which is normally horrendous to begin with).
D.C. folk driving over after work will have 33 miles and already intense I-66 rush hour traffic to contend with. Obama will be traveling from Charlotte where he won't speak until after 5:30. But he's got a private plane and Secret Service detail to whisk him around. A Daily Kos commenter offers some tips on fighting the I-66 parking lot. The bottom line: leave yourself two extra hours.
Meanwhile in the Maryland suburbs, the Redskins host the Pittsburgh Steelers in a Monday Night Football matchup at 90,000+ seat FedEx Field. Can Obama outdraw the beloved Redskins? Will voters watching the game or the Saturday Night Live election special alleviate crowds in Manassas?
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Obama can part traffic with a wave of his hand
obama can make cars fart daisies with a smile and wink
who cares about stupid football?
Obama can throw and receive his own touchdown passes
It'll be worth it to see the Quisatz Haderach up close and in person. Hope he rides a Sandworm into the arena, 'cause that would be AWESOME.
And don't forget: Monkey says to vote the straight House Atreides ticket. Eight years of House Harkonnen rule and we still haven't found any WMDs or the spice melange. Tell Baron Vladimir and his youthful sidekick, Tonsil Hockey Mom, where to get off.
Peace. We outta here.
Nice ... this should be a traffic-pocalypse to rival that Coldplay show from a few years ago where half the audience didn't arrive until the final song.
This is news? I-66 is always a parking lot.
Not Coldplay - Radiohead!
And Obama cured my leprosy, acne, and anal seepage.
I wonder if he will still hold the rally since his Grandmother passed away.
The Radiohead show was this year, and it was mostly the weather's fault that it turned into such a clusterfuck. The Coldplay fiasco a couple of years previously was pretty much exclusively due to traffic, and was the first time the Nissan Traffic Nightmare really came to my attention . . .
RSVP? Are you telling me that on the night before the election, in a swing state, the Obama campaign is going to turn away even a single voter? Please, he didn't get to this point by making mistakes like that.
On a side note, way back in 2000, I was actually turned away from a speech by Karenna Gore-Schiff (in support of her father) for not having a free ticket given out by the local Democratic party. Hundreds of others met the same fate. The next day, the first line of the local newspaper article stated that Gore-Schiff played to a half-empty house. Great planning guys.
I'm listening to the speech right now! Fire it up!!
The traffic was thick, but worth it!!
Logistically, getting to the Prince William County Fairground proved to be far less of a hassle than emptying the venue and getting out of Manassas.
Traffic west was nowhere as bad as it had been for Coldplay. Arriving around eight p.m., my friend and I did have to park in a neighborhood about a mile-and-a-half away, as the road to the fairgrounds had been blocked off.
Along the route, there were about 30-40 protesters out on the corner of Hastings and Dumfries and a handful of pro-life and Larouche supporters handing out literature, but we mostly ran into button, t-shirt, and music vendors ("Barack Steady"), and tons and tons of fellow Obama supporters.
Obama arrived late and didn't start speaking until 10:26 but spoke for 39 minutes to a diverse, enthusiastic crowd of nearly 100,000. The speech was a tour de force; even though it was composed mostly of his stump material, it had the crowd "fired up" and "ready to go". :)
Afterwards, my friend and I waited for the very slow emptying of the field, as the crowd funneled out of just a few gates and mixed with the cars and buses parked onsite. All things considered, I have to give props to the police - not sure if they were Manassas or Prince William County - for providing competent traffic management in the face of truly daunting logistics.
One hint for people attending megarallies in the future - don't follow Google Maps to the letter. Everyone traveling back to points east seems to have been following the 234 to 28 route that Google proposed. As soon as we could break free from the traffic, we chose a 25 mph route through residential Manassas that was faster than the 6 mph stop-and-start artery.
Anyway, the rally was a blast. Obama '08! GOTV!
I agree with InMasonicShadows, it was definitely worth it. I probably took us about an hour to walk out of the fairgrounds and another 30 minutes to get back to our car, but by that time there was little to no traffic less so it worked out well.
It was a great speech and an incredibly charged atmosphere -- it was brilliant!