Heartland Battleground

Genoa Park sits by the confluence Olentangy and Sciota rivers facing downtown Columbus, Ohio. It was 10 am, a perfectly sunny fall morning and the park buzzed with volunteers and the advance team of the Obama Campaign.

The crowds were to arrive soon and the volunteers were being briefed by Obama staffers in crisp and well rehearsed talking points on how to process people and to encourage as many of them as possible to join upcoming local events.

I was one of these volunteers and not the only one from out-of-state. I met a Brooklyn contingent and an older couple from California.

My job was to work the line of people that stretched over the bridge and up and into the city streets. Thousands of people waited to see Senator Barack Obama speak that afternoon. The day was getting hot, quick.

My job entailed handing out tickets and providing supporters with a pen to include themselves in the volunteering efforts. I directed them to the early voting polling station across the street. I also improvised my own voter outreach pitch, imploring them to speak to their friends about Obama.

I passed by a diverse multitude people in that line, most of them from Columbus, and some who drove up from other counties or from Kentucky.

Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village was the last place I heard Obama speak in person. The crowd to no surprise was young, and thoroughly downtown New York.

To now meet the aged Kentucky women all with the same perm look out at crowds with excitement and a little hesitance, reinforced the draw and strength that Obama's message has outside of my New Yorker/urban/blogisto/ circle.

We volunteers were the last to go through the "mags" (Secret Security's magnetic security gates) and needed to weave through the crowd to hear the opening acts of Governor Ted Strickland, Senator Sherrod Brown and Columbus mayor Michael Coleman. Their buzzword when referring to Senator McCain was"erratic".

Secret Service perched above us with binoculars and the temperature rose into the 80's. Mayor Coleman spoke about early voting obstruction by a Sheriff in Greene Co, Ohio. He closed his speech with a rousing "Hope beats fear!"

The crowd stirred and now properly tanning in the blazing sun, erupted when Barack Obama jumped to the stage. I must confess after watching him on loop in short clips on MSNBC that I yelled, "Look there is he is", as if confirming a celebrity I doubted actually existed.

Obama began to speak and after the preceding politicians' crowd pumping, he seemed subdued. The crowd in the back began to yell at him to speak up. In a wonderful exchange lacking all reverence-the possible future President of the United States softly sparred with the crowd telling them if they quieted down, maybe they could hear him. They did and he went ahead and talked about his tax policy.

Aware of the recent spat of 'taxocrat' characterizing by the McCain camp, Obama hit his refrain on job creation and the support of small businesses through tax cuts for all earners under $250,000. "Raise your hand if you make more than $250,000". Amid the sea of hands, I heard a woman say, "Yeah I make $200,000. Working at Dairy Queen."

He tied policy with some of his unifying lines like, "Destiny is not written for us, but by us." He would then return to economic security pointing back at the city and declaring the need to reopen that factory instead of sending jobs abroad. In fact there was not a shuttered old mill across the but instead the Nationwide Insurance Company's glass tower. Close enough these days. Obama brought back home by recounting a meeting with a restaurant owner in southern Ohio who said he was a registered Republican. Obama said he thanked him for the pie and then asked, "So how's business?"

He turned his speech towards McCain and mentioned the Arizona senator's new plan about buying up all the at risk or defaulted mortgages. Obama proclaimed the ill character of the poorly advised top down design and it received the expected boos. He continued his critique of the senator by speaking bluntly about the slander and thinly veiled racist messaging coming from McCain circles. "Stoking anger". Greeted with equal disapproval the senator picked up the energy to rally momentum for the upcoming 25 more days; starting with telling people to go vote early across the street.

From tiptoes to outstretched camera phones and handhelds, the crowd craned out to capture the senator as he thanked all and asked God to bless these United States of America.

And then on cue the stage flooded with Stevie Wonder's "Signed, Sealed and Delivered".

Not quite yet, but judging from the thousands today- we are on our way.