To See the Edwards

So, Saturday morning we took Brandy’s mom to the airport in Orlando to go back to Pennsylvania. (She had been visiting for Amy’s birthday.) As it happens, Brandy, having signed up to volunteer for the Kerry campaign, had some tickets to a John Edwards event in Orlando. So we stopped by. Before and after the event, Amy got to play on the moon bounce that was provided for the kids. There was an hour or so of waiting before anything happened. It was good that it was a nice day! Finally there were a few short speeches by some union types and local politicians… then John Edwards did indeed appear. We were probably about 30 feet back in the crowd from the podium. I took a few pictures. Including the one here.

The event we were at was the opening of a new union hall, so the crowd was mostly union. And Edwards oriented his speech in that direction. So there was a little bit on foreign policy and Iraq and such, but not a huge amount. Then they talked about health care, and social security, and trade policies, and all of that sort of thing. For me though, that probably had the wrong effect. Because what he was doing was not talking much about the areas in which I agree with them and instead he was emphasising the stuff where I disagree with them. Of course, I was not the intended audience. The union folks in the crowd were. And they ate it up. There was all sorts of waving of signs and cheering and people were very excited. After the event they were organizing busses to early voting locations and the like. I bet a lot of the folks did just that.

We did not however. We weren’t in the right county to actually vote. And in my case anyway, I still have more research to do before I am ready to vote, especially on the local races and issues. Also, Amy had something to do in the afternoon, so we had to get back to Melbourne.

Coincidentally, President Bush was speaking just north of Melbourne today as well. I wish we had had tickets for that as well. It would have been very interesting to go straight from one to the other and compare and contrast. As it turns out, one of Amy’s friends from the neighborhood did have tickets and went with her family. We did not though. Coming home on I-95, we had to content ourselves with watching what appeared from a distance to be Air Force One on final approach into Patrick Air Force Base. That almost counts, right?