Just 24 hours after Barack Obama had the crowds spilling out of the North Nashua High School in the northeastern state of New Hampshire, US presidential rival Hillary Clinton arrived at the same location to fire up her supporters.An elementary rule in politics is never book the same venue to follow a surging rival.
So huge is the popular wave for Obama that his supporters swamped his event and staff had to scramble to open an adjoining sports hall to fit everyone in. More than 3000 turned up.
The question in the travelling media pool following Clinton was how many she would attract to the same place. It's just two days out from the vote in the New Hampshire primary for the nomination of the US president and this kind of momentum and numbers matters.
At first blush it looked as if she had as much support as Obama. The queue to see Clinton snaked almost as long as the kilometre or so for the man who could be the US's first African American president. But that queue was helped by the fact that the Clinton camp had kept the doors shut. And as they did eventually make their way in, the work of what they call the "Clinton machine" was clearly discernible.
Clinton's campaign staff had shrunk the room. It made the crowd look bigger.
Using barricades, the public area in front of Clinton was considerably smaller than at the Obama event the previous day. Instead, they expanded the area reserved for the media. Even so, the public standing space could have crammed plenty more people in. But the Clinton staff stopped people moving into the area and instead opened the overflow room. In there just 250 or so were forced to sit when they could have easily been in the main hall to see Clinton herself.
"What a great crowd, I'm overwhelmed by the turnout!" Clinton said as, she bounded on to stage with daughter Chelsea. "They say there are about 3500 people here."
It was more like 2000. It was another sign of desperation in a campaign that is being overwhelmed by Obama's emphatic defeat of Clinton in the Iowa caucus last week...
(Source: The Australian, Jan. 8th)
