Day: August 25, 2007

In what could be the last opportunity for a 2008 Democratic presidential candidate to campaign in Florida without being punished by the Democratic National Committee, Barack Obama spoke today before a packed house at a local Democratic fund-raiser. Today was also the day that the Florida Democratic Party had to lobby the national party to not punish it because the state’s Republican-controlled legislature moved Florida’s primary to Feb. 5, violating the opposite party’s rules.

But nobody mentioned that at the rally, a grass-roots Miami-Dade Democratic committee fund-raiser for its mostly state-level local candidates. An early speaker at the event — and there were many of them — noted that in 2000, nobody could have imagined holding a Democratic Party event in Little Havana for a black presidential candidate.

Indeed, just seven years ago, the Miami Cuban voting bloc was perceived as fundamentally and monolithically Republican, with Spanish speakers seen as loyal to the Republicans who seemed to hate Fidel Castro and were willing to impose an ongoing economic embargo until the Third World island nation saw the error of its ways, collapsed economically or Castro died, whichever came first.

But today a Cuban candidate for the state house stated unequivocally and to thunderous applause that the Republican Party could no longer count on the South Florida Hispanic vote.

Obama said that if he were elected he would remove all restrictions on travel to Cuba and lift all restrictions on sending money or goods to family members. But when he said that he would leave the embargo in place “as an inducement to change” and “use aggressive diplomacy” to begin moving toward normalizing relations with Cuba, he received a few scattered boos and some of the Cuban faction began to leave the theater.

But for the most part, it was a rousing rally with at least 3,000 in attendance, and Obama performing his stump speech, often with the spirited inflections of a preacher and with more piss and vinegar than he usually shows in his nuanced television appearances. Indeed, starting with a woman in the balcony hollering, “We love you, Barack!” to which he responded, “I love you, back, baby,” in a convincing Barry White imitation, there was a casual, ongoing call-and-response aspect to the proceedings that continued throughout his speech.

Not to sound too corny, but I think people felt Obama was speaking to them, not at them, and were inclined to holler out questions to which he invariably responded. These were not hecklers, as they waited for an appropriate pause or responded to a comment from Obama before calling out a question or comment.

Obama hit the “audacity” theme pretty hard, saying that if the Washington press corps were there, they would be calling him a “hope peddler” and “hope monger,” monikers he gladly accepts, but it resonated very well with a very mixed audience of blacks, whites and Hispanics who had paid either $30 or $100 for seats.

Busloads of college students from Florida Atlantic University were brought in (the school bought blocks of tickets) to the event, and most responded enthusiastically to Obama’s positions on affordable education and job creation.

Overall, Barack Obama was a hit, keeping his audience fired up and on its feet most of his speech — and that was after an hour and a half of short speeches by local commissioners, state legislators, party officials and music by Democrat folk singer Ellen Buckstell and a rousing number by the Miami Northwest High School marching band.

Obama hit all his stump themes: universal health care, energy independence and green tech, education, jobs and wages, and the failure of the Iraq War and the failure of the Bush administration to make us safer and more secure.

His abiding message, however, is that to him, politics is a mission, that we all have a stake in each other, and that he has both faith and hope in the “decency and generosity in the heart of the American people.”

UPDATE: You can watch an unedited video of Obama’s entire speech here.