Westerville: Part One

By a weird scheduling fluke, both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama will be appearing in this small town outside of the Columbus today, at separate high schools and just a few hours apart. I'm with Clinton; Jay Newton-Small is with Obama. So that gives us a chance to give our Swampland readers the kind of on-the-ground comparison we rarely see.

My report first: There are some big names on the press bus whom I haven't seen here before (Tina Brown reporting for Newsweek; Gail Sheehy, for Vanity Fair). That suggests to me that the assignment editors have decided we are at the end of the road. But no one, apparently, has told that to the folks of Westerville. The crowd was not the biggest I've seen for Clinton (though the fire marshals were turning people away), but it was one of the most intense and passionate. There were big contingents from a number of unions; I picked out IUPAT, the Teachers; AFSCME, Sheet Metal Workers, the Nurses. The campaign was organizing them afterward to go out for a day of canvassing. The Ohio campaign is in the middle of what it is calling its 88-hour project, a GOTV effort in all the state's 88 counties. "We have a base in the state. It's a big base, and we're just making sure they know when and where to go vote," says Clinton Ohio State Director Robby Mook.

Indeed, at Clinton's first event of the day, there was almost an anger at the idea that the pundits and the press have annointed a winner before the people have voted. Ohio First Lady Frances Strickland, making reference to that now-famous SNL skit, declared: "Who would have thought Saturday Night Live would have been the ones who got it right?" (HRC herself appeared on SNL last night.) And I saw one woman carrying a sign that said: DON'T LET THE PRESS BOY CRUSH PICK OUR PRESIDENT.

As for the candidate, she is hammering hard on the twin themes of substance and experience. She feels their pain by rattling off statistics: the price of gas being $3.68 a gallon in the poorest part of Ohio; 1.3 million in the state without health insurance. She tells stories of the people she has met in this state, like the family in Dayton that lost their home in the foreclosure crisis. And she takes on the change mantra this way: "Change is part of life. The question is, are we going to make progress together." As for conciliation? "I am not afraid to get into a fight on your behalf. ... You can count of me. ... I am determined. We are going to have progress again in our country."

Will check in again later today.