INDIANAPOLIS – A crowd of 2,300 enthusiastic Democrats reveled in Indiana’s big night Sunday as Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama pitched their potential presidencies just two days before the state’s primary election.
“The truth is the only thing that can stop us from winning the presidency is ourselves. We need to support whichever candidate wins the nomination,” said Howard Dean, chairman of the National Democratic Committee. “In the long run, this is not about Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. This is about our country.”
Dean was the original featured speaker for the Indiana Democratic Party’s annual Jefferson Jackson Day dinner, which was sold out even before the announcement that Obama and Clinton would attend.
In all, thousands of Hoosiers paid at least $100 to eat parmesan-crusted chicken breast with cream sauce and white chocolate mousse with exotic fruit.
But the main event was seeing Obama and Clinton in the same room, if not at the same time. The two are locked in a rare Indiana primary fight, both vying for the state’s 72 delegates and the all-important momentum in gaining the nomination.
The beginning of Clinton’s 30-minute speech focused on a resurgence of Indiana Democrats and getting Republicans out of the White House.
“With the Indy 500 right around the corner, let me ask you Indiana Democrats, are you ready to start your engines and get America going again?” she asked. “All that unites us as Democrats is so much greater than the differences, and the stakes for our country are high.”
Then she called for immediate action to suspend the federal gasoline tax this summer, saying the country needed both short-term and long-term solutions. She also gave a muted version of a familiar stump speech, saying she would get tough on China, bring the nation’s troops home from Iraq and provide health care for all.
“I am no shrinking violet. I may stumble. I may get knocked down. But I will always get right back up. I will never quit until the job is finished,” Clinton said. “All we need is a president who will seize this moment, lift this nation and lead this world; a president who will go into the Oval Office on Jan. 20, 2009, and roll up her sleeves and get to work.”
But Obama clearly owned the crowd. He was introduced as the “next president of the United States,” and there was wild applause and chanting.
He outlined a number of crises facing Americans today, including rising gas prices, a sagging economy and millions of uninsured people.
“We are not powerless in the face of these challenges. We don’t have to sit here and watch our leaders do nothing,” he said. “And that’s why I’m running for president today. Politics didn’t lead me to working people – working people led me to politics.”
As for Clinton’s gas tax holiday, he said it would save Hoosiers 30 cents a day for three months.
“And that’s if the oil companies don’t simply jack up their price to fill the gap,” Obama said. “Does anybody here really trust the oil companies to give you the savings instead of just pocketing the money themselves? It’s a shell game. Literally.”
Obama’s finale drew roars from the partisan crowd. He pointed out that he was at the lectern as possibly the first black president because millions stood up to change the world.
“If we’re willing to do what they did; if we’re willing to shed our cynicism and our doubts and our fears; if we’re willing to believe in what’s possible again; then we won’t just win here in Indiana,” he said. “We will win this nomination, we will win the general election, and you and I together Indiana, we will change this country and we will change the world.”
Earlier in the day, both candidates appeared on talk shows taped in Indianapolis and then met with voters and campaign workers in Fort Wayne.
A dozen years before she’ll be able to vote, 6-year-old Sacha Obama had some election advice for the crowd at Headwaters Park.
“Vote for daddy!” she said into the microphone, producing cheers and applause from the 3,000 Obama fans.
A few hours earlier, Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., his voice hoarse from weeks of campaigning, reminded about 600 people at an Indiana Tech rally that “this is not just a regular election” and that Clinton’s “fate is in your hands.”
“This is the final push,” Clinton said. “Make sure everybody knows what the stakes are.”
The stakes are the state’s 72 pledged delegates, including 47 allocated based on the results in each of the nine congressional districts.
Under Democratic Party rules, each candidate will get half the delegates unless one of them wins at least 58 percent of the vote in the congressional district. In northeast Indiana, however, the winner would have to get 62.5 percent of the vote to win more than two of the region’s four delegates.
Because of the closeness of the race, both candidates have crisscrossed the state for the past two weeks. The two campaigns have spent $8.8 million on TV ads, according to Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson, with Obama out-spending Clinton nearly 2-to-1.
Democrats are expecting a record turnout in all parts of the state, which is playing a role in a presidential election for the first time in 40 years. In the past 10 presidential races, each party’s nominee had been selected before Hoosiers’ spring primary.
This year, though, neither Clinton nor Obama has collected enough delegates so far to seal the nomination, and statewide polls show the candidates running neck-and-neck.
Treated to a midafternoon picnic of hot dogs, fried chicken, spaghetti, salads and desserts, people came to the Obama rally in their Sunday church clothes or T-shirts and jeans.
Obama said people ask him why – as a relatively young man of 46 – he doesn’t wait a few years to run for president.
“I am running because of what Dr. King called the ‘fierce urgency of now,’ ” he said, referring to civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
Obama asked people to be sure to vote and said the race has been a hard-fought one. But come November, he said, “we will be united because we don’t want another year of George Bush.”
Clinton, like Obama, reminded her supporters of her views on key issues because “I don’t want anybody having to guess about what I will do as president.”
She told the Indiana Tech crowd she has “what it takes to stand up and fight for you when you need a president on your side” and “generally just get this country moving again.”
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