Michelle Obama speaks to an enthusiastic crowd during a rally for Barack Obama on the Cheyenne campus of College of Southern Nevada.
Published Monday, Nov. 3, 2008 | 11:38 a.m.
Updated Monday, Nov. 3, 2008 | 1:27 p.m.
The mood after today’s Michelle Obama rally was jubilant. Supporters danced to the sounds of Motown and crowded around Obama for pictures.
Michelle Obama gave an 30-minute speech to a crowd estimated by campus police to be 1,700. She implored supporters to vote.
“This year has been fun,” she said. “The rallies are great, but the only day that matters is tomorrow. The crowd sizes don’t matter. The money doesn’t matter. The enthusiasm doesn’t matter if people don’t vote. That where we all come in.”
If the crowd’s reaction was any indication, Obama was preaching to the choir. She was interrupted several times with chants of “Yes we can!” and “O-bam-a!” So, she outlined the argument for the undecided.
The speech was an emotional one for Michelle Obama, with North Las Vegas being her second to last stop on the campaign trail.
“What I want people to understand is Barack gets things in a way we need in a leader,” she said. “We need someone who understands the challenges of working families. … Barack understands it because he’s lived it.”
She said his upbringing by a single mother had given him compassion and the understanding that people sometimes “need a little hand up every now and then.”
She summed up her husband’s policy proposals: cutting taxes for 95 percent of working families, providing tax breaks for companies that create American jobs, enacting near universal health care, investing in education and ending the war in Iraq.
The message though was focused firmly on voting.
“Tomorrow, if you haven’t voted, vote,” she said. “Stay in the lines. Be patient. Don’t get out of the line until you’ve cast your vote. Bring lunch, bring water, bring a folding chair. Find a friend, a grandparent, an uncle, a neighbor. Bring them with you. Young people, we know you can sleep through things. So wake your friends up. Then we can start imagining and dreaming.”
The speech was an emotional one for Michelle Obama, with North Las Vegas being her second to last stop on the campaign trail.
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