I’ve been invited to attend a Tim Walz rally tonight, and I have no idea what to expect. Share your stories and get me pumped up to see our next VP!
Update: Everybody was right, lots of standing and clapping, but what I really didn’t expect was the sense of family I felt with all these strangers around me. We’d bump into each other, and laugh it off, one guy was telling me about how his son was thinking about going to the college that I work at (I was still wearing my shirt from work), and we all just knew that we were working together to make great things happen. I’ll probably skip the next one, but it was a great experience. I’m glad I went, and would recommend going to one if you have a chance, and a candidate you believe in.
I’ve been to a few. I literally met Joe Biden at one of them, when he ran for president in 1988 but tanked in the primaries. He gave a stump speech at my school with maybe 100 people gathered, and he stayed around and chatted afterwards. It was pretty relaxed, Biden spouted platitudes, and he tried to recruit one of the student organizers to his local campaign (no idea what if anything happened with that).
Frankly I wouldn’t go to one now, especially an indoor one. Think of Herman Cain who now has an award named after him. The Biden one I went to was outdoors. If you go, wear a properly fitted N95 mask and keep it on the whole time, or as much as possible.
I went to a Republican campaign launch, state level candidates were there to put some sound bites on local TV and get the volunteers hyped. The free lunch was pretty good.
I attended a Ralph Nader rally in Boston ahead of the 2000 US presidential election. It was a high energy event, with an atmosphere almost like a pop music show. Nader and his VP candidate both spoke about their campaign positions, with frequent pauses for enthusiastic applause from the crowd. Nader was a third-party candidate, which meant that he was an outsider to the regular election process, and in particular was not invited to the nationally televised debates. There were frequent chants of “Let Ralph Debate”, and we were certain that the establishment was uncomfortable with that idea because they knew his policies would be very popular. Cash donations were collected, and many people wrote pro-Nader messages on the bills they gave.
I suspect your rally will be similar, really. Not quite as much of an outsider vibe, but maybe it’ll be replaced with an underdog vibe. Expect an optimistic event that tries to inspire enthusiasm. It’s not just about encouraging your direct support, but also about inspiring you encourage others to support the campaign.
I work AV and have worked many of these events on both sides of the aisle. Presidents, VP’s, presidential hopefuls, the whole gamut. The democrats tend to be less organized but way more friendly and accommodating, the republicans are very their way or the highway, but tend to have all their ducks in a row. As far as attending you hear someone parrot ideas that you’ve already heard before, and either already agree with or don’t. They won’t take any hard stances and are unlikely to answer any questions, if they do they will answer the softball questions and sidestep the hard questions. All in all, largely a waste of time and resources.
The only two that I’ve worked that didn’t fall into that category was beto o’rourke and chris christy. Both of them were very engaging with the audience, were willing to answer hard questions, they actually seemed like they cared, and were doing this for country, not career.
In 2008 I saw Michelle Obama speak in the 18th and Vine jazz district in Kansas City.
It was electric. She wore red and looked like a million bucks, and the speech was amazing. At the time we all honestly believed the Obamas would be elected with a historic mandate to make real, lasting change.
I remember it fondly, because the Obamas are the same people who caused me to lose faith in our Federal Government. All we got from the first black president was more war, more expensive health care, and one dead terrorist, and he had the power to do so much more.
Yeah. I feel that. I wouldn’t trade Obama in for anyone else during that time, but I would have liked to have seen more progress instead of just “not letting it get any worse”. I wonder if he or his cabinet were nervous of rocking the boat too much as the first black president, and enraging the conservatives even more. That’s just me pondering and not really based on anything concrete.
My feeling was that President Obama kept compromising. It seemed that he was trying to get people moving together and he went too far into the appeasement side of things with the alt right racist arm. It was also the real power growth cycle for Fox News and early online podcast/streamers. They are fast on the backs of the racist counter swell… And we got the fallout over the last decade now.
I went to a Clinton rally in 1992.
It was interesting. They didn’t allow signs on sticks, and Clinton was over an hour late. Really all I remember.
My government teacher in high school took our class to a Herman Cain rally. It was… interesting. Towards the end of his campaign, so it was in a BBQ restaurant that had a stage for bands and maybe 50 people were there total. I don’t remember much about it, other than it was hard to hear because we were in a restaurant that was still playing music in the other room. I believe you’ll have a very different experience tonight lol
I saw Obama in 2016 in Elkhart, IN, where he made the infamous “if if if if we…” gaffe. It was a fun speech and the crowd was very energetic.
I went to a Sanders rally in 2016. It was fun. Get there early! There was a line a mile long (literally) by the time we found our seats. Oh, as to what to expect, expect speeches and a tiny view of a person standing on a stage. There wasn’t really a show or anything. We just went to show support for our chosen candidate.
I went to a John Kerry Rally in 2004. I got there about 30 minutes late and for whatever reason was ushered up to the front corral of people. Inexplicably, Bon Jovi takes the stage and shouts, “You what George Bush’s financial policy is? Bad Medicine!” and launches into the song ‘Bad Medicine’. I started laughing my ass off because it was corny as shit and Bon Jovi and I made eye contact for a brief second.
YMMV
I went to a Bernie rally in 2015. It was by far (by a wide, wide margin) the best attended political rally we’d ever had in Idaho. It was at the college stadium and I chose to stand in the crowd nearest the podium. That was cool. But, I was standing in line for two hours and then the rally was about three hours. The standing floor at the rally was really crushed in so you don’t have personal space and you can’t really shift your weight and relax muscles. So, I recommend getting a chair if they’re available. I was getting so fatigued I was having a hard time enjoying it. I would totally do it again. But I’d head for seating.
There is a “special guest” on the itinerary. My wife asked “What if it’s Bernie?”
I doubt it will be, but I low key geeked out a little at the possibility. 😁
I went to a Sanders rally in 2016 here in Seattle. I went on to be a county Delegate for the caucus - our last caucus, thankfully. The energy was huge, the people were absolutely stoked, and the arena was 100% packed with lines wrapping around outside.
Hey, me too! I just commented about it. We got there two hours early. After about an hour I went up to the balcony to vape, and the line outside was at least a mile long. The rally itself was pretty much the same thing we already heard on TV, but it was fun to show our support.
We also became delegates for him, and moved on to the following caucus. After that fiasco we passed the torch to someone else to carry, because the caucus was a complete train wreck. There were 600 people packed into a tiny middle school gymnasium, and we had to debate for 6 fucking hours over whether we could start debating yet, since some Hillary delegates didn’t show. The other Hillary delegates refused to accept the delegate count, hoping they’d get some more support from the missing delegates, and us Sanders delegates kept arguing that we had waited long enough and should start the debates. All-in-all it was a miserable experience, but I’m glad that we were able to experience it before they changed how votes are handled here in Washington State.
'Had a similar experience with a 2020 Bernie rally in Los Angeles. Big arena, lots of energy, long lines. It was loud but a good experience. I’d recommend it at least once for a candidate that you feel strongly for.
PS: I went on to canvas for Bernie. He won the primary in California!
He won quite a number of primaries in 2016. We were robbed of a better past future.
Yeah, the Democratic party really showed us how they think about positive change when they blocked Bernie. We’re seeing the same dysfunction with how Harris has softened her position on a number of issues. That party machine mainly thinks of itself.
We saw how much they clamped down on party dissent against Biden ahead of the 2024 primaries while also trying to undermine the calls for Biden to step down.
Unfortunately we won’t see a completely new phase of the Democratic party until the DWSs and Third Way Clinton crowd are gone from the party.
Same. Sanders rally was my first experience and it was wonderful. Diverse, smart, compassionate, joyful people. Had a lot of fun talking to other people!
I tried to go to Harris/Walz rally but it was over capacity!
I went to one for a candidate for the House district I lived in a few election cycles ago, It was mostly stump speeches and other “rah rah we’re gonna win!” style pontificating. But one thing I did not expect and I actually found interesting was the house candidate spent a lot of time introducing other local politicians that were in down ballot races in the district. City council seats, education board seats etc. That turned out to be really useful, because it meant I got to meet/ hear from candidates who I either had no idea existed or who were just a name of a flyer before then. I suppose that experience may not transfer to a national candidate rally though.
