THE QUEUE stretched farther than I could see; some 11,000 Americans waited good-naturedly to see President Barack Obama in a tennis stadium yesterday morning. Under blue sky, with palm trees quivering above the stars and stripes, they chanted “Four more years. Four more years”.
Obama’s victory in the foreign policy debate, down the road in Boca Raton, had given them a boost. For half an hour in Delray Beach, hope lived again.
Somehow, Mitt Romney’s rallies never attain the warm and fuzzy brotherhood thing Obama does so well. With post debate polls giving Obama a victory ranging from eight to 16 percentage points, the president was in top form. True, it was nothing like the 45 per cent lead Romney scored on his October 3rd debate performance. If Obama loses 12 days from now, history will trace his defeat back to Denver.
Obama’s at his best when he wields humour. Google reported a rush on the word “bayonets” on Monday night, after the president mocked Romney’s desire to spend “an extra $2 trillion on defence that the military haven’t even asked for”. The US navy is smaller than it’s been since 1917; the air force at its most ill-equipped since 1947, Romney moaned.
“I think Governor Romney maybe hasn’t spent enough time looking at how our military works,” Obama said.
“You mentioned the navy, for example, that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well, governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets.” Laughter erupted in the press room.
At yesterday’s rally, Obama revisited the debate, using a new term he’s coined to describe Romney’s shifting policies.
Romney’s foreign policy “has been wrong and reckless”, Obama said. “Last night, he was all over the map . . . During the debate he said he didn’t want more troops in Iraq, but he was caught on video saying it was unthinkable not to leave 20,000 troops in Iraq . . . Last night, he claimed to support my plan to end the war in Afghanistan. I’m glad he supports it. But he’s opposed a timeline that would actually bring our troops home.” At the debate, Romney said he always supported killing Osama bin Laden. “But in 2007, he said it wasn’t worth moving heaven and earth to catch one man,” Obama reminded the crowd. “Now we’ve come up with a name for this condition: It’s called Romnesia.”
By now, anyone following the campaign has heard of “Romnesia”. The crowd nonetheless roared with laughter. “Romnesia! Romnesia! Romnesia!” they chanted. “We had a severe outbreak last night,” Obama continued. “It was at least stage three Romnesia.”
Over the past three weeks, Romney has bolted for the centre: in domestic policies on October 3rd and in foreign policy on Monday night. Seeking to reassure voters who fear he would drag the US into another war, Romney talked mostly of peace. His most memorable line: “We can’t kill our way out of this mess” in the Middle East.
Yesterday, Obama pivoted to domestic issues, mocking Romney’s “Romnesia” on the auto bailout, the hiring of teachers and the saving of Medicare. Romnesia means “you can’t seem to remember the policies on your website, or the promises that you’ve been making over the six years that you’ve been running for president,” he said.
“Don’t worry, Obamacare covers pre-existing conditions. We can fix you up. We can cure this disease!” Many of the supporters in the Delray stadium were true believers. African American Natalie King (33), a customer services representative for a local newspaper in Boca Raton, said proudly: “I volunteered for the Obama campaign. I’m a phone bank captain.” She brought her 93-year-old mother to the rally, and refuses to believe polls that give Romney a slight edge in Florida. I mentioned seeing plenty of Romney signs, but no Obama signs. “Everything the Romney campaign does is dirty and nasty,” King says. “They’re stealing Obama signs. We don’t steal theirs.”
Catherine Belle (68) wore an Obama T-shirt, an Obama watch, three Obama bracelets and dangly Obama ear-rings. Belle, who is also African American, boasted that her nephew in Tallahassee is often mistaken for Obama. A retired school bus attendant for special needs children, Belle travelled to Washington for the inauguration in 2009.
“He stands for women and healthcare and all of us,” she says. “I don’t like the things that Romney stands for; from what I understand, he stands for the rich.” Because she is Jewish, Sheri Jacobs (46) is concerned that Obama has not visited Israel. But she’ll vote for him anyway, because “I think he needs more of a chance. Nobody could solve these problems in four years.”
The “Romnesia” angle appears to have swayed Jacobs and her husband Jack (60) with whom she shares a catering business.
Sheri Jacobs is a registered Independent and considered voting Romney “but he never stayed the same. He’s a moderate when he’s with moderates, and something else when he’s not. If the Republicans had a truly moderate candidate, I’d have voted for him.”
If Obama can convince people like Jack Jacobs, he should win 12 days from now. Jacobs is afraid Romney would take the US back to the Bush years, which “did not benefit the middle class and upper middle class – people like us – only the rich.” After the first debate, Jacobs leaned towards Romney. Now he’s leaning back towards Obama.
“It seemed like Romney’s tail was tucked between his legs” in the foreign policy debate, Jacobs says. “Romney changes his mind every other week. I don’t like that, and I don’t like his stand on women’s rights either.”
Unlike the Romney event I attended last week, no one left the Obama rally before it ended. Instead, supporters stood in the bleachers, cheering their candidate as he plunged into the crowd. Bruce Springsteen’s We Take Care of Our Own blared from the loudspeakers, and many in the audience sang along. I thought of Obama’s tardy appropriation of the term “Obamacare”, which the Republicans meant to be derogatory. “I do care,” Obama says now. If Mitt Romney loses the election, it will be because he couldn’t convince Americans that he cared too.
