Last update 6:29 P.M.
2:48 P.M. Bernita “Awesome Chick” has called upon the good side of the Force again, and so I bring you news from Macon, where Bill Clinton will eventually speak to a rather sizable looking crowd here at Mercer University. Word from Angela is that there are 1700+ RSVP’s, and I can believe it:
Folks are continuing to fill in here. I took some time to talk to some of the people in line about what brought them here. One older African American man told me that he had thought long and hard about Obama, but that he was going with Hillary because of her “more centrist” views on the war; I also talked to a Mercer student named Steven who said that he was still undecided and was concerned about education and student loans. An African American woman named Barbara Norwood said that she was close to deciding to vote for Hillary because she felt Senator Clinton would be more effective at producing economic change.
This woman, Frances Olson, came with her Republican husband and said that she was definitely going to vote for Hillary because of her level of experience. Interestingly, though, she said that she wished Senator Clinton hadn’t run, because she thought the campaign would be very dirty – I suppose we won’t be surprised when that happens, no matter who the nominee is.
These students all said they were undecided, with their issues being climate change, the war, and the economy. I didn’t have a chance to ask them about their political leanings, but I was interested to see that the climate change sign had a union bug on it – I wonder where it came from? He wasn’t allowed to bring the sign in, and he muttered something about free speech, so I’m not sure he was too thrilled about that.
We’re getting underway now, more to come.
3:13 P.M. We’re back in waiting mode, but Macon City Councilwoman Elaine Lucas started us off with a cheer of “H R C”.
Beth Perera is here, in addition to some other local VIP’s (and Bernita’s “posse” of VIP’s, of course).
We have some of the VIP’s taking the cheering to, um, new levels here. Councilwoman Lucas is on the podium again, we’re apparently waiting for Bill to get here from the MLK events. The folks behind the flag look like mostly young super activists (Angela told me one of them is a UGA student who braved the snow and ice on Saturday to drive to HRC headquarters and made himself very useful indeed. HRC seems to still have problems with the youth demographic and I’m glad there look to be a lot of YD’s here.
Most recent cheer is “We Love Bill”.
3:49 P.M. Bill Clinton is here now and speaking. Tommy Irvin did us the honor of introducing the President:
Bill definitely has brought out the papparrazo in us (speaking as one myself…):
Bill started his remarks by thanking some of his VIP supporters, including former House Speaker Terry Coleman (who joined us shortly before we really got started). So far, we haven’t gotten too much on Iraq – the main issues are education, health care, and the economy, which seems to be the right mix for the attendees here. Bill has gotten huge applause when he talks about the need to create jobs and Hillary’s plans to get student loans under control. He just pointed out that training people to install green technology produces unoutsourceable jobs, which was another solid applause line.
4:00 P.M. Bill is now tackling Iraq, and he’s said point blank that Hillary’s position is that we can’t leave Iraq immediately or without a plan, but that she will get out as soon as we can get out without hurting people. I think he knew it would be a tough sell, but he’s still managing to get some decent applause; “Message number one we send to the world: ‘We’re back’”.
Bill got some cool points by devoting some bullet points to government corruption – “We’ll appoint competent people instead of cronies” (Angela said “snap!”). “Do you think if you went into the bank right now and slapped the living daylights out of the bank manager, you could get a loan the next morning?” (said in reference to our growing indebtedness to foreign governments).
4:27 P.M. Bill’s into questions now. The questions have been a lot of health care, and Bill is reiterating that Hillary is against privatizing Social Security at the moment. A personal theory of mine, that all kids that misbehave are named “Christopher”, is being proven yet again. Bill’s best story was his last before we went into questions – he told a story about him going golfing in New York, with the caddie confiding that his day job was as a FDNY firefighter, and that he was so grateful for Hillary realizing that some of his friends could get sick from fighting the fires after 9/11, and that she should be President. Bill said that he was crying by the end of the conversation, and as someone who didn’t really fully experience Bill in his prime, I have to say that all the stories about Bill being the “I feel your pain” president have got to be true.
I took a man’s picture in front of Bill speaking; he had a German-sounding accent, and he really sounded like a real Bill fan. A woman who asked Bill a question 12 years ago about stopping ethnic cleansing in Albania is thanking him, and she got a huge round of applause from everyone. Bill is specially recognizing students for questions now; first question is about No Child Left Behind.
4:51 P.M. Finally, a good photo of Bill!
Bill is giving a good answer on the No Child left behind question, which is that no one intended it to turn out to be the mess that it is.
5:16 P.M. I get the feeling that we’re winding down here, but Bill is still taking questions even though he said “one more” some time ago. There’s just been an incredible amount of inquisitiveness about a lot of issues (Bill is talking about our water issues right now):
Bill really is on the last question, and it’s quite bizarre, “would you live in the White House with Hillary?” and of course that got a lot of nervous laughter and “wtf” thought balloons. Unless Hillary knows something we don’t… (Oops, not the last question after all. Surprise!)
6:29 P.M. Well, it’s all over now and we’re heading back, so now I have plenty of time and battery power to close this down. Bill could not stop answering questions for anything, so we ran quite a bit later than expected. Afterward, Tommy Irvin took some time to greet the people waiting to touch Bill:
According to Angela, Tommy is grooming Terry Coleman to take over as ag commissioner, which is a prospect I certainly wouldn’t be unhappy with (not to say that Terry is forgiven for past mistakes, however). Bill certainly still has his mojo firing on all cylinders – he was completely mobbed, and being the politician to the core his is, he was willing to shake hands with EVERYONE.
I decided to skip the gladhanding and found a couple more people to talk to. An African American woman named Kim, who looked to be maybe 40, said that she was still undecided about the race. Her issues were health care, education, and the problems with the housing market, which were all things Bill went into detail on, so I asked her what she thought of his comments. She said that while his answers were what she wanted to hear, she also thought they were “political” answers. She planned to watch the debate tonight.
I also met these two young women:
They were also undecided; their issues were immigration and the war. Bill said that Hillary’s plan was to strengthen border enforcement, enforce labor laws, and give undocumented workers a path to citizenship – it was quite a detailed answer, and these people said that the answer was better than they expected. They also said that they would be watching the debate tonight and looking closely at Barack Obama, so it seems that contrary to my belief, there are actually people who will be using this debate to try to make a decision.
Last but not least, good job and thanks to Bernita for making this bit of journalism possible!
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