Just yesterday, the media (including CNN), Democrat-ick officials and Obama campaign staff were claiming that Barry Obama would draw between 25,000 and 50,000 to his “Old-Time Traveling Medicine Show” at the Nissan Pavillion in PWC today where he would hawk his modern day snake oil remedies. The Pavillion holds 25,000 for concerts and it was expected that nearly double that number would show up in a sea of humanity stretching far beyond the gates.
Now, the WashPo is reporting that only about 10,000 people showed up, which given their propensity for fuzzy math favoring Democrats, means there were probably more on the order of about 7,500 to 8,000 people there. (UPDATE: Virginia Pilot has revised the numbers down to “perhaps 8,000.”) Even if they did reach 10,000, the place would have been more than half empty and only 1/5 the size of the crowd they had hoped for.
Barry, meet reality. Welcome to Prince William County.
UPDATE: Bearing Drift is calling this event a “bust” for Obama and the Write Side of My Brain labels this “embarassing.”
UPDATE 2: BVBL calls Obama’s event “underwhelming.” NOVA Townhall refers to it as “fourth-tier,” drawing about the same turnout as the RATT / Poison concert held at the same venue last year. Scott’s Morning Brew says Obama the “Rock Star” failed to sell out the show and points to the Virginia Pilot revising the attendance numbers down to “perhaps 8,000.” Extreme Mortman looks to another aspect in the WashPo story and asks, “Hey, what happened to the anticipated traffic jam? Or should the question be, what happened to the Obama crowd?” The Skeptical Observer says Obama “fizzles.” Leslie Carbone asks, “What if Obama Held a Rally and Nobody Came?” Indeed.
Filed under: 2008 Elections, Prince William County Politics, Teleprompter Barry
[...] Virginia Virtucon: BREAKING: Obama Event In PWC Fails To Attract Predicted Numbers!!! [...]
[...] people to bother with this event. The ridicule for this failure has been fast and hot. Riley at Virtucon pokes fun at the Obama campaign for thinking that Prince William County is a good venue for his [...]
[...] Virtucon notes, the “10,000″ number is highly questionable. In reality, the actual turnout at the [...]
The Potomac news prints tightly cropped photos but on page two
I found this statement “…the crowd was smaller than some expected – there were pockets of empty seats in the pavilion and no one on the lawn…”
This is not hardly a “rock star” crowd.
[...] Virginia Virtucon has information on the dud performance as well as Bearing Drift who calls it a bust, The Write Side Of My Brain who says it’s embarrassing. Black Velvet Bruce Li calls the show underwhelming and Novatownhall calls the crowd 4th teir. [...]
Ask me this — do you think that there are 10,000 people in Virginia as enthusiastic about John McCain as those people are about Barack ?
I don’t.
And that’s why the GOP is in trouble.
[...] Party as best I’ve been able to determine, had predicted. (See their reactions here, here, here, and [...]
[...] Virginia Virtucon’s take: Just yesterday, the media and Democrat-ick officials and Obama campaign staff were claiming [...]
Obama was amazing, with 12,500 supporters, more than the 200 bible thumping McCain supporters that braved to show up at the Lime Green Awakening Louisiana rally the other night . Great Presidents, Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, JFK, Reagan and now Obama!
Spin all you like. Virginia Pilot just revised the numbers DOWN to only 8,000.
I wonder how many of those 8,000 were paid to attend, or arranged by the unions – typical Dem tactics. Doug, please don’t stay home. I bet there are 10,000 who DON’T WANT OBAMA TO BE OUR NEXT CIC!
see some of them on the Roll Call at: htttp://Vets4McCain.com
You’re mocking the 8000 number when McCain could only draw 300? Good job. Ya’ll sound like a bunch of Ron Paulers.
Apples and Oranges, Oath. No one is claiming that the GOP base adores McCain and will do much other than vote for him on Election Day. However, Obama is being proclaimed as the Democrat Messiah who draws tens of thousands of people wherever he goes. They predicted 50,000 and got 8,000. No one ever predicted McCain would do much better than 300 anywhere. This is just exposing the myth vs. reality of Obama.
You have to love the lefties. There boy is toast in Virginia but they are bravely playing the your guy doesn’t draw crowds card. But here’s the thing, GOPers have jobs, aren’t union stooges, and generally don’t show up for rallies because we have better things to do.
Look at the size of some of John Kerry’s rallies and compare them to the crowds Bush drew and it isn’t close, and yet we know how the election turned out.
And here’s the best part–most of the research indicates that rallies are really inefficent campaign tools. They cost a lot of money and unless they draw blow out crowds that garner enormous media attention they give almost no bang for the buck.
Of further interest is the shocking news that McCain actually enjoys a funding advantage–as reported by the great campaign spot at NRO. While Obama has averaged a 114% burn rate on his campaign funds during the last two months (during which he lost six of eight primaries and was blown out in five of them), McCain only had a 45% burn rate and had some massively productive fund raising. He is now in a position to wave federal funding and will do so if Obama will not live by his pledge to do so (gee, another Obama lie, go figure!). More interestingly is the places McCain has recently purchased massive media buys–here’s hint, the overwhelming majority are places where Obama must hold serve and appears to be losing. Most interesting is the news that McCain cancelled a media buy for Virginia after Obama’s pathetic performance in PWC. Obama is getting slaughtered in the internal polling, down by double digits at this point. While it will no doubt narrow a bit, the inside baseball folks think Virginia is now out of play.
[...] in Bob Marshall country. So he shouldn’t be too surprised about the underwhelming turnout (Virginia Virtucon) – Democrats have been imagining thousands of lefty voters in Marshall’s district for years, [...]
[...] likely, that 10,000 volunteers number came from the same person who predicted he would draw 50,000 people to the Nissan Pavillion when he wound up only drawing around [...]
I caught your Old TIme Medicine Show reference. I think I created the phrase Obama’s Traveling Medicine Show and fisrt heard it repeated as such on the BIll O’Reilly Show and just googled the phrase and found my two most recent pieces followed by several people who used it after I first published the phrase on June 28. Most references, except for yours, were after my publishing date, although it may have been first said my someone else still.
Well Riley: I found yet another reference penned by you in April, so obviously I must look foolish to some people, especially you. I should have known that such an obvious metaphor would not only be seen by me. It shows you just how much we can fool ourselves. Unfortunately I cannot abandon the phrase, but I will note periodically that you said it first unless you direct me to even earlier examples. – a humbled wordsmith
It occurs to me you may want to respond so i am leaving my email address- gabruzze@gmail.com