Obama rallies 100,000+ in Denver
Posted: Sunday, October 26, 2008 4:35 PM by Mark Murray
From NBC/NJ's Athena Jones
DENVER -- At his second six-figure rally in just over a week,
Obama urged his supporters to vote early and again linked his rival to
President Bush.
The campaign, citing police, said more than 100,000 people attended the event here.
Obama talked about comments McCain made on Meet the Press this morning. “Just this morning, Sen. McCain said that actually he and President Bush 'share a common philosophy.' That’s right, Colorado. I guess that was John McCain finally giving us a little straight talk -- owning up to the fact that he and George Bush actually have a whole lot in common,” he said to laughter from the crowd gathered on a chilly Sunday morning near the state capitol building. “Well, here’s the thing though: We know what the Bush-McCain philosophy looks like. It’s a philosophy that says we should give more and more to millionaires and billionaires and hope that it trickles down on everybody else.”
This morning, in talking about his differences with Bush and others in his party, McCain said: "Do we share a common philosophy of the Republican Party? Of course. But I've, I've stood up against my party, not just President Bush, but others; and I've got the scars to prove it."
In rallies in Nevada and New Mexico yesterday, Obama joked about McCain’s recent efforts to distance himself from the unpopular Republican president -- at one point calling McCain Bush’s “sidekick” and saying that McCain attacking Bush for his economic policies was like “Robin getting mad at Batman.”
The Democratic nominee, who drew 100,000 people to a rally under the Gateway Arch in St. Louis last weekend, told Coloradoans to go out and vote early him -- just as Bush did for McCain -- and argued that as president he would do more to help the middle class.
Denver is in a strongly Democratic county, where Obama is hoping to boost turnout. He was set to hold a rally in Fort Collins later today, which is in strongly Republican Larimer County. Polls show Obama leading McCain in a tight race in the state, which Bush won in 2004.
In talking about his tax policy, Obama mentioned Bill Clinton -- something he does from time to time on the stump. He said he would roll back the Bush tax cuts on the very wealthiest Americans, so that they paid the same rate they paid under Clinton.
"By the way, they were doing fine under Bill Clinton. In fact, they were doing better under Bill Clinton because everybody was doing well," he said. "And those who owned businesses, their customers could actually afford to get their products and hire their services."
Hillary Clinton often invoked her husband's administration on the trail during the primaries to remind people about the relative prosperity of his two terms. Obama is set to rally with the former president in Orlando on Wednesday.
The McCain campaign sent a response to Obama's speech that sought to link him to Bush policies. “Barack Obama can’t name a single issue or philosophy on which he’s opposed the Democratic-controlled Congress -- not one," wrote Spokesman Tucker Bounds. "John McCain opposed President Bush’s wasteful spending policy, his Big Oil energy policy and his efforts to grow the federal government by 40% -- Obama supported Bush on all three."
