The good news is that Romney attracted at crowd of almost 3,000 here today, about twice the size of McCain’s largest recent rally. The bad news: they were mostly under the age of eighteen.
The ratio of potential voters to teenagers was, by a rough estimate, about 30 to one one to thirty. As a reporter sitting next to me said, “He’d have more voters if he went to a diner.”
I asked one of the students if they had a choice about coming to the assembly. “No, it was mandatory,” she said. I asked what she thought of the presentation (which was basically his standard stump speech — complete with references to Dan Jansen and the 1980 Olympic hockey team! — plus “say no to drugs”), and she said, “It got us out of class.” I’m not using her name because her teacher was standing about five feet away. (UPDATE: Oops: You’re right, the distance wasn’t the factor, just not wanting to appear like a slacker in the national media.)
Our next stop is the Detroit Economic Club, for his much anticipated economic policy speech. (See below.)