An e-mail:

Hello K-Lo,
Just thought you might find it interesting to hear what it was like at the McCain-Palin rally in Hershey, PA this morning as my wife and I attended. First you should know that the weather here is miserable today. 40’s, heavy rain, winds gusting to 20 mph. Also, the doors opened at 7am, so people wanting to attend had to get up early, skip work and wait outside the Giant Center in horrid weather to get through security. All that being said, I would estimate that there were still about 8000-8500* of us inside (including a guy with a sign saying he was “Joe the Chocolate Maker”) and we were riled up. No death threats or exhortations to violence, however, just a lot of excited McCainiacs (Oh, and there were a few Obama supporters who tried to make themselves heard during some early points in Palin’s speech, but they left peacefully when asked.) The place erupted when the McCain bus drove into the arena and both McCain and Palin emerged. While the speeches were, for the most part, the same as we’ve seen in news coverage in recent days, McCain has added references to the supposed infighting in the campaign (“Mavericks have disagreements, they’re fun”) as well as the Obama “redistributive justice” audio-tapes that came to light yesterday and Obama’s dropping threshold for his tax cuts ($250k – $200k – $150k). Overall the ticket looked energized and that energy was returned by the crowd.
This part of Pennsylvania (around Harrisburg) may not be in western reaches of the state where Murtha’s racist, redneck oldsters live, but there are enough of us here clinging to our guns and religion that we tend to lean Republican in this neck of the woods. As such, a good turnout isn’t really that big of a surprise, and so we shouldn’t be read too much into it. Still, for the folks at the rally today there were probably many more reasons to stay home than there likely will be on election day, and the fact that they didn’t has to be viewed as a good thing.
Keep up the good work,
Steve
* I have CNN on now and they are saying it was 5000-6000. I just don’t see that being correct. The Giants Center seats 10500 for Hershey Bears hockey games. If you took the people on the floor in front of the stage, you could have filled in the sections kept empty in the “lower bowl” which makes up roughly 2/3 of the seating. On top of that about half of the upper bowl was filled. That’s how I get to my estimate of 8000-8500. Scientific, I know. Oh, and now local news is saying “nearly filled to capacity,” so they’re siding with me. So we outvote CNN 2-1.