Barack Obama still talks a good game, highlights popular talking points, but as Breitbart.com's Big Government points out, this ain't 2008.What good is being a good orator if the public is tuning you out?
Barack Obama launched his campaign in unspectacular fashion today at Ohio State University, the largest college in the crucial swing state. A photo posted to twitter by Mitt Romney's campaign spokesman Ryan Williams reveals sparse attendance. The above image, according to Williams, was taken during the President's first official campaign speech.
During the speech, Obama ripped into the presumptive GOP nominee and discussed nation building at home, but the most newsworthy item of the day was not the talking points Obama delivered: it was the crowd... or lack thereof. According to ABC News, the Obama campaign had expected an "overflow" of people. Instead, the arena looked half-empty. The Columbus Dispatch reports that Obama organizers even had people move from the seats to the floor of the gym in order to project a larger crowd on television.According to the Toledo Blade, the venue for Obama's rally seats 20,000 but "there were a lot of empty seats." Comparatively, Obama drew a crowd of 35,000 at Ohio State when he campaigned for former Governor Ted Strickland in 2010.
Marlow over at Breitbart calls it a "campaign faux pas to hold an event in a room that isn't full."
Not sure if campaign faux is the right description though, this appears to be a campaign and a candidate for reelection that doesn't quite understand that Obama is not as popular as he was before. Obama's rhetoric not as meaningful now that voters have an actual record to compare it to. Obama's promises of "Hope and Change" have turned into what the RNC calls "Hype and Blame." The enthusiasm from 2008 for a candidate with promises of being a different kind of politician has fallen under the realization that Obama has been more partisan and more divisive, more polarizing than any other in the last 60 years.
Obama's campaign advisers should be advising him right about now to stick to smaller venues, as they did in Virginia where they were "nearly at capacity" according to ABC News, then perhaps they can still say he filled the room.
H/T Greg Lewis.