Sunday, October 26, 2008

No Cyclo-cross today - Instead a little bit of Obama

Today’s post was originally going to be a post on the cyclo-cross race in Boulder. Up until late Thursday I had every intention of racing, but then I found out Obama was coming to Denver Sunday morning and plans changed. Obama was scheduled to speak around 11:30, so hoping for a good viewing point Seamus and I left home at 9:15. By the time we got downtown at 10ish it was clear a good viewing point was out of the question, hell we would have been lucky to even see Obama.

Estimates say 100,000+ people showed up. All I know is it was an incredible site. The mix of cultures, families, young, old, gay, straight, white, black and even Republican were there to see and support Obama. After seeing the crowd and listening to him speak I now have a different (perhaps better) perspective on his appeal. Obama is a man who wants to lead, but knows he cannot create a better world on his own. He needs the help of everyone. All 100,000 today in Denver need to help in their own way. Far more than voting though, Obama wants people to help every day. His priorities are clearly different than McCain, but what is really different is how he wants to go about accomplishing priorities. Obama can allocate money to educate, green energy and health care, but without each of us acting individually to change our lifestyles the money will do no good. John McCain can allocate money to the same causes based on his world view, but what it seems to me John McCain can’t do is inspire people. Obama inspired 100,000 people to come out on a cool fall morning in Denver. He called on each of us to do our part to lessen our energy consumption, to turn off the TV and do homework with our children, to take care of our health to reduce healthcare costs.

My lame crowd shot, there is no way to do justice to the number of people.

After seeing Obama in person his inspiration really comes through. He can clearly lead, now we just need to let him.



Seamus and his sign cheering for Obama.

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