Obama Packs Independence Park

Fridays usually bring a downswing in my blog readership. Heck, on any beautiful spring evening, not to mention a Friday, we all have better things to do than talk politics (I was out with the shovel transplanting trees).

But on a warm, clear Friday night when the Mets are in town to play the Phillies, Barack Obama can go to Independence Park in Philadelphia to talk politics and get 35,000 people to come listen. (O.K., so the Phillies drew 45,000.) And that number doesn't come from Obama's people; 35,000 is the estimate from park officials.

What those 35,000 heard:

It was over two hundred years ago that a group of patriots gathered in this city to do something that no one in the world believed they could do. After years of a government that didn’t listen to them, or speak for them, or represent their hopes and their dreams, a few humble colonists came to Philadelphia to declare their independence from the tyranny of the British throne.

The union they created has endured for two centuries not because we’re perfect, but because we’ve always been perfectible – because each generation of Americans has been willing to stand up and sacrifice and do what’s necessary to inch us closer to the ideals at the core of our founding promise – equality, and liberty, and opportunity for all who seek it. That’s how we survived a civil war and two world wars; a Great Depression and great struggles for civil rights and women’s rights and worker’s rights, and now Philadelphia it's our turn [Senator Barack Obama, public speech, Independence Park, Philadelphia, 2008.04.18].

Now that's my kind of Friday night. Rhetorical home run, anyone?

(Photo: Michael Bryant, Philadelphia Inquirer)

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Update: and for a line drive up the middle, see SD Moderate's sharp post on elitism.