Posted on 09/05/2012 1:00:11 PM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Charlotte It's been raining every afternoon here during the Democratic convention, but from talking to the locals here, short afternoon showers are pretty common this time of year. One imagines that way back when Democrats booked the 74,000 seat Bank of America stadium for Obama's acceptance speech, someone did the due diligence to inquire what the weather might be like in Charlotte this time of year. The possibility of rain must have been considered.
So when the Obama campaign announced today that they were moving the President's acceptance speech from the outdoor stadium to the indoor 20,000 seat Time Warner Cable Arena, there are good reasons to be doubtful that this is happening because the forecast is a 30 percent chance of rain.
"We have decided to move Thursday's proceedings to Time Warner Cable Arena to ensure the safety and security of our delegates and convention guests," says Democratic National Convention Committee CEO Steve Kerrigan in a press release. "The energy and enthusiasm for our convention in Charlotte has been overwhelming and we share the dissappointment of over 65,000 people who signed up for community credentials to be there with the president in person."
But if the Democratic energy and enthusiasm is "overwhelming," why did Democrats already cancel a convention kick-off event at the Charlotte Motor Speedway, which seats a whopping 135,000 people. Again, the official reason for canceling the event at the speedway was to "maximize accessibility, transportation, and proximity of all guests." But it's a safe bet the bad optics of holding an event in a vast stadium that Democrats had little to no chance of filling, must have also weighed heavily on convention organizers's minds.
Another clue that Democrats aren't willing to come out and admit the real reason for downsizing Obama's acceptance speech is that they keep insisting that Bank of America stadium's seating capacity is 65,000 rather than the 74,000 it seats for NFL games. "The way the stadium is constructed, its capacity is 74,000 for football,” said Obama communications director Brent Colburn yesterday. “Our capacity is going to be lower on Thursday night because of staging, place for media, security, so we’re looking at approximately 65,000. We expect 65,000 to show up.”
The trouble with this claim that this is the exact opposite of what happened when Obama accepted the nomination at Invesco Field Denver in 2008. "Invesco’s seating capacity was 76,125 in 2008, according to the Denver Broncos media guide for that year. But when Obama spoke there, DNC organizers estimated that he drew over 84,000. At the time, they were able to actually increase capacity by opening up the field to seating," observes The Washington Examiner's Phil Klein.
This also raises another interesting question: How many tickets did the Obama campaign give out? Several eyebrows were raised when it appeared in the weeks leading up to the convention Democrats were basically trolling through bars and other public places in an attempt to give tickets away. While it's hard to say how many tickets were given away, how many people made travel plans to come to Charlotte for the speech and are now about to be turned away?
Finally, it's already been well documented that 2012 Obama campaign is very sensitive about living up to the crowd sizes of the 2008 campaign. When Obama launched his campaign kick-off event at Ohio State University, he found himself looking out from the lectern and staring out at 4,000 empty seats. Democratic officials tried to shrug it off by pointing to Mitt Romney's relative inability to draw crowds, but Obamaland did not take the failure to fill seats on a large college campus very well.
"But for a campaign struggling to recapture it's fire the empty seats at Obama's announcement added up to a serious downer," writes Politico reporter Glenn Thrush in his e-book, "Obama's Last Stand." Thrush quotes one of the organizers of the OSU event, "It was a stark reminder of how different a year it was going to be."
If the inability to fill seats at the event at Ohio State was a "stark reminder," what must the Obama campaign be thinking about this colossal failure to fill the stadium in Charlotte?
Pray for a perfect day with a beautiful clear sky.
Empty Chair, empty seats.
Obama’s fundraising collapsed in August, too. Things haven’t been going so well for the bisexual Kenyan lately.
So naturally its best to assume that it really is a crowd size issue.
I wouldn’t be surprised if no one voted for him.
Looks like we’re going to have us a good old fashioned landslide, ladies and gentlemen!
If you remember, this is the second venue change. They started out with Charlotte Motor Speedway.
That is from a seating capacity of 135,000 to 70,000 and now somewhere near 20,000. Do the math and that is only 15% of the original site and that is not considering the infield of the speedway.
There is a lot of doublespeak, misinformation and the "supposing" of facts at state media websites. Several times I've read that it will disappoint tens of thousands who will be left out due to the smaller venue.
Right.
_____________
"....The Thursday address was scheduled to be at Bank of America stadium — an outdoor venue with more than 70,000 seats. But forecasts are predicting thunderstorms, forcing a last-minute change in venue.
Campaign officials have been saying all week that the event would go forward "rain or shine" — but reversed themselves Wednesday.
The move has an upside for the campaign, which has reportedly struggled to fill all the seats in the massive outdoor arena. Still, the arena only has a capacity of just over 20,000 — meaning that tens of thousands of potential supporters will be denied the opportunity to see Obama speak.
In a statement, the DNC organizing committee CEO Steve Kerrigan said: "The energy and enthusiasm for our convention in Charlotte has been overwhelming and we share the disappointment of over 65,000 people who signed up for community credentials to be there with the president in person. We encourage our community credential holders and Americans across the country to continue to come together with their friends and neighbors to watch and participate in history. The president will speak to these credential holders on a national conference call tomorrow afternoon, and we will work with the campaign to ensure that those unable to attend tomorrow's event will be invited to see the president between now and election day."......Source
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2927016/posts
:)
:)
10,000 no-shows in a paltry 20,000-seat indoor arena would be priceless.
We can always count on Bahgdad Bob to tell us the truth.
I’m just grateful the Dem Congress did not spend our money building a dome over Black Panthers Stadium for this event.
Charlotte was in the path of Hurricane Barrack.
So, with a forecast of 20% chance of rain, the DNC moves the acceptance speech indoors to a much smaller venue.
Simply put, they could not get the numbers...even by bussing them in from as far away as Chicago...to fill that stadium. Oh, and they want us to believe that there just aren’t enough hotel rooms to accomodate it...but, but, that same stadium gets sold out up to ten times a year with people from other areas crowiing in (depending on the opposing team) to go against the Panthers.
Sorry...not buying all this hooie. They simply cannot fill it for their nominee...and given his record, that is understandable. Their Happy meal is short the fries, the drink, and the meat on the sandwich. Just two pieces of stale bread with some cheap condoments inside is all they have left.
THE DISASTEROUS FIRSTS OF BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA
http://www.jeffhead.com/obama1sts.htm
Its really funny to hear them spin. Like the kid who blurts out to his mother that if she happens to find the kitchen window broken it wasn’t him that did it.
Busing people in is a pretty expensive thing. Think about the cost of transportation, then lodging, and food. Plus the overhead cost to organize such a thing, and the cost could easily run up to $100 per person brought in. Imagine having to do bring in 25-35K, that’s going to cost the campaign $2.5-$3.5 million. I don’t think they can afford to throw away that much money.
The thing I love is that they’re already spinning this whole convention disaster as “well, Charlotte doesn’t have enough hotel rooms and it’s too small a city to hold something like this in.” Well, yeah, this isn’t New York City by a long shot. But it IS the 17th largest city, and 33rd largest metropolitan area, in the United States. This is not some podunk backwater.
Furthermore, it’s a metropolitan area that hosts two massive NASCAR events a year. In May there’s the Sprint All-Star Race the weekend before Memorial Day and the Coca-Cola 600 on Memorial Day weekend, and in October there is the Bank of America 500. Charlotte Motor Speedway in Concord (about 14 miles northeast of Uptown Charlotte) seats about 135,000 people, and they almost fill it up for those races. Not everybody in those seats is a local. This entire metro area is used to handling big events and big crowds.
You nailed it. This isn’t about Charlotte and it isn’t about the weather (although it has been storming here the past four afternoons before today...which is perfectly ordinary late-summer weather in the Carolinas). It’s about Obama and the fact that they can’t even get the family dog to play with him if they tied a pork chop around his neck.
BTW, I live in Kannapolis, which is about 25 miles northeast of the DNC. And quite thoroughly red, thank you very much. (Also, mercifully, it’s upwind from the Occupy camp, or else some of the reek might even make it all the way out here.)
}:-)4
I just checked weather.com and they show Thursday with a 40% chance of scattered storms.
Current radar is showing a nice long line of storm squalls from SW KY to the NE as far as Cinncinati. It’s moving pretty good towards the S and SE and should increase in strength as it picks up more warm air.
But that won’t happen for the next few hours through midnight and the air temps will cool and the storm should break up.
Unless it stalls, it looks like it should be hit and miss and isolated if it even makes it down to the Charlotte area.
So, yes, weather concerns are a flimsy excuse. Local weather news says it’s weakening in our area of middle TN as of 5:30 pm cst.
Too small a city, not enough hotel rooms? LMAO. Then why did they choose Charlotte in the first place? Union presidents want to know.
If the inability to fill seats at the event at Ohio State was a "stark reminder," what must the Obama campaign be thinking about this colossal failure to fill the stadium in Charlotte?
They don't think (not because they are dims).....
..but because their heads have exploded.
A Cognitive Dissonance event for those in Rio Linda.
Day 3, ABC still adding comments into their convention reporting about how packed the arena will be tonight. Reporting live from the firemarshall’s office, apparently.
Network brass aren’t happy either, having wasted untold man hours and big bundles of money for set-up at Bank of America stadium. Journalists don’t care, I’m sure, but their bosses do.
You have to think some of the folks drinking in a bar are unemployed. I’d say it’s dangerous to walk into a bar and ask them to come to an obama speech.
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