Barack the Vote in Alabama

A “couple thousand people showed up” (according to Fox 6 News) to see Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama at the Sheraton in downtown Birmingham last night.

Some notes:

• Charles Barkley, Auburn and NBA basketball star, has often threatened to run for governor, first (and repeatedly) as a Republican, and more recently as a Democrat. In his few minutes to speak at the beginning of the program, he made sure to claim his connection with the Democratic crowd saying, “Y’all are my people! This is my state!” If you are keeping score at home: Charles Barkley, so far still a Democrat. (Of course, by the time you read this, some hours will have passed from the time he said it.) He did seem to be making a point.
• Barkley handed the mike over to State Senator Quinton Ross (D – Montgomery) who roused the crowd and confused more than a few with his enthusiastic introduction of U.S. Rep. Artur Davis as “the next senator and the next governor of Alabama.”
• Artur Davis: “Mark this moment. You are going to tell your children about this. You are going to tell your grandchildren about this. Mark this day. This is the day you saw the 44th President of the United States!”
• Barack Obama on Artur Davis: “He’s shaking things up in Washington. He’s going to shake things up in Alabama.” Which fits with the talk that Davis is preparing to run in a statewide election.
• More from Obama:

  “We have a government of ‘can’t do,’ ‘won’t do,’ ‘won’t even try.’ We have a health care system that’s broken and bankrupting families. Bankrupting communities.

  “We have an absence of energy policy that has us sending billions of dollars to hostile governments.

  “The gap between the rich and poor has never been so wide since the Great Depression.

  “And there’s this war. That should never have been authorized. Cost us half a trillion dollars with a T.

  “So we know what’s wrong. And that’s before we get to Scooter. Even Paris Hilton had to spend some time in jail.

  “We are tired of politics that is mean-spirited and small-minded. … People want to feel hope, not fearful.

  “People want to reach across the divides of race, faith, region, and yes, even partisanship to achieve a higher purpose.” (Big applause line.)

  He said that being a community organizer taught him more than what he learned at Harvard and Columbia. “It taught me that ordinary people when given a chance can do extra-ordinary things. That when government is accountable to the people, it works. They don’t want government to solve all their problems; they want a fair shake. A living wage. To retire with dignity and respect. To know if their sons and daughters are asked to go to war… (Applause was swelling, and didn’t hear all this line.)

  “If a child is impoverished in Birmingham, it impoverishes us all.

  “If a veteran is going through a dumpster because the system failed him when he came home, then it diminishes the patriotism of us all.

  “We can make sure every American has health care by the end of the next president’s first term.” (Big applause.) “My first term!”

  “We know that every dollar spent on early childhood returns seven dollars.

  “Don’t let people tell you we can’t afford it. We are spending $275 million a day in Iraq.

  “If every car get 45 mpg, well within what we can do, we could reduce foreign imports of oil and gas from the Middle East to zero. Imagine what that would do for our country.

  “In Iraq, there are no good options. There are bad options, and there are worse options. That’s why I opposed the war in 2002. We have to get out as carefully as we were careless getting into it. But we have to bring them home. There is no military solution to Iraq.”

  He mentioned the problems of Darfur, poverty, and HIV/AIDS. “While we are at it, I will close Guantanamo, and restore habeas corpus.” (Big applause.)

  He talked a bit about what it meant to him to participate in the celebration in Selma on the anniversary of the march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, about how we stand on the shoulders of those who go before us.

I didn’t get everything he said, but that gives you a flavor. As you can imagine, the paying crowd responded with enthusiasm.

Here is the Associated Press account of the event.