New city; same stump speech. So I thought I’d share the insights and impressions of some of the voters I met here at the Zembo Shrine. They are hardly a scientific sample, but all seemed thoughtful about the choices they have made in an election that they are clearly taking very seriously. Two were Clinton supporters; one is agonizing. Two of them were also at a huge Obama rally here on Saturday night (this was a far smaller event, probably around 200 people). All three seemed most interested in the character traits of the candidates, rather than any specific issue differences.
Here’s what they had to say:
“Her presentation was 10 times better than his,” said Clinton supporter Kevin Hancock, a state employee who works with the medicaid program. Unlike Obama, he noted, Clinton did not directly criticize her opponent. He also faulted Obama for distorting Clinton’s health care plan, and making small differences in the substance look much bigger than they are. Hancock supports Clinton for her experience, and even went so far as to describe Obama’s campaign as “a little shallow.”
He’s not worried that the Democratic race is going on too long, or that the increasingly negative tone of the primary campaign is going to damage whoever comes out the winner. Would he vote for that winner, if it turns out to be Obama? Of course, he said. “Supreme Court justices — that’s what it’s all about.”
Lisa Policano Pearson, an elementary school principal and an evangelical christian, was also at that Obama rally, and came away with the opposite impression of the Democratic frontrunner. Where Hancock found Obama’s presentation flat, she said it was “wonderful.” The Obama rally was far more energized and diverse, she said. “This is an NPR crowd.”
As a biracial woman, she identifies with the potential for making history on two fronts. Her husband and family are all voting for Obama. As for her own vote, Policano Pearson says, “I’m just very torn. I never thought I’d be torn about voting for Hillary or not.” She had lived in New York when Clinton was elected to the Senate, and even had what she laughingly referred to as “a little Hillary shrine” in her apartment. But now, she says, “I feel there is need for a total change.”
Then there was Lee Geisler, a land surveyor who proudly told me he had been at Philadelphia’s Mayfair Diner when Bill Clinton stopped there the day before the election in 1992. “I bring them good luck,” he said.
Geisler said he didn’t make up his mind to vote for Hillary Clinton until a couple of weeks ago, after he spent some time on the two candidates’ websites. “She puts down very specific ideas, and how she’s going to pay for them,” he said. But what really convinced him, Geisler told me, is her toughness. “She’s tested and she’s tough,” he explained. “The Republicans have thrown everything they can at her, and she’s still standing.”
On to Philadelphia, and the last event of the day.
