A nice first person account of Obama's inner city rally in Philadelphia on Saturday:
And then, with the flags still flapping, it's on to a final bit that wraps all of the historical significance and identity-politics pride--the stuff that gets played up on 52nd Street and played down in a lot of other neighborhoods--into a patriotic package that could work just about anywhere, a national history of perpetual improvement: "That's the story of America. Each successive generation working hard. I'm here because somebody somewhere stood up for me. And because they stood up, a few more stood up. And then a few thousand stood up. And then a few million stood up. And because they stood up, America became a place where dreams were realized."The crowd eats it up, with all the attendant cheers and sobs and exultations. The music comes on and the other pols flank Obama as he basks in the applause. As the audience files away, a retiree named Edith MacDonald stays put in her seat. "This is just such a happy place," she says, watching the crowd stream past. Brooks and Dunn's "Only in America" is playing again, and McDonald shouts over it to tell me that she's the last one left from her generation, born in South Carolina before migrating north. "I told my family, God left me here for a reason," she says. "So when I go up to heaven and see my family, I tell them" that the country had a black president.
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