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(DENVER) It was still more six hours before Barack Obama was scheduled to take the stage to formally accept the Democratic nomination for president, but Verda Martin had already settled into her seat at Denver’s open-air Invesco Field for what she called “one of the most important moments we’ve had in probably the last 20 or 30 years.”

“I’m really excited, I’m really, really excited,” Martin said, laughing, as her boyfriend nodded emphatically in the next seat over. “I never thought I would see a nomination speech live, and then for it to be the first African-American presidential nominee, so yeah – I’m just about to jump out of my skin.”

Inside the stadium, venders who normally would be selling Denver Broncos merchandise instead hawked Obama t-shirts and hats at tables strewn with forms asking customers to donate to the Obama Victory Fund. (The form made it clear that between donations to Obama’s primary campaign, general election campaign and the Democratic National Committee, donors could give more than $30,000.)


Outside, meanwhile, the line snaked for blocks, nearly back to the Pepsi Center a mile away. The mood, however, was festive, with corporate sponsors handing out free water bottles and a blue sky that likely eased the nerves of organizers worried that rain would come down on Obama’s triumphant moment.

Dave Newell, a former Hillary Clinton supporter who “immediately joined Obama’s team,” said he waited for forty-five minutes to get into the stadium, where more than 75,000 are expected to turn out.

“I came out just to kind of be inspired, to soak up a little of the energy of the crowd and maybe take some energy out and spread it around for Obama,” he said, looking out over the stage affixed with columns where Obama would later speak.


Leonardo Ranzani, meanwhile, had come to Denver from Milan. He sat in the stadium in a red, white and blue top hat.

Most of the people he knows in Milan, he said, “tend to be Obama supporters, probably because he is more similar to a European way of seeing things. Maybe because of the health care plan.”

“The idea to have a black president,” he said, explaining what drew him all the way to Denver. “Many, many people believe that many Americans are maybe racist or something, and then you say, ‘oh, a black president, he’s going to win, it’s a kind of change.’”

Barack Obama’s campaign plans to announce today that the candidate will deliver his speech accepting the Democratic nomination at Denver’s Invesco Field rather than the smaller, more confined Pepsi Center where the rest of the convention speeches will be held. The change in venue (for a one-night event) may be a logistical nightmare for organizers, the media and security, but it fits perfectly with what appears to be Obama’s emerging strategy – one focused not on just winning, but winning big in November.

Political events, particularly conventions, are made-for-television events, meaning they are much smaller and cozier than they appear on the screen. Anyone attending such an event for the first time would likely be surprised at audiences than number maybe ten to twenty thousand. By taking his moment out of a near-studio environment and turning into a rock-star moment before as many as 75,000 cheering spectators, he will be setting a new aesthetic standard for one of the most important moments in a presidential campaign.

For all of Obama’s reliance on symbolism and big speeches before huge crowds, there’s more than theatrics involved in it all. His campaign has systematically, and from the very beginning, sent a clear message: They will compete anywhere and everywhere.

Obama may not have ended up in the position to be thinking about his acceptance speech had he not followed that strategy, competing in states like Wyoming and Kansas almost uncontested by Hillary Clinton. And his campaign has already been running general election ads in states seemingly locked in the GOP column, like Alaska, South Carolina and Montana. He spent the holiday weekend in Montana and North Dakota, talking about the possibility of winning states Democrats wrote off for decades.

Couple that with Obama’s seemingly swift move to the middle ground on issues like wire-taps, gun control and his aggressive courting of religious voters and it’s becoming clear that it’s not all designed just to pay lip service to the idea of making this a truly national campaign. Obama may face criticism from that part of his party which carried him to the nomination (he had to write an open letter last week to supporters upset with his support of the FISA compromise, for example), but so far there’s no sign that a full-fledged revolt is anywhere near likely.

The campaign map may yet end up looking very similar to the ones we’ve seen in recent cycles and it could still wind up being all about the results in a swing state like Ohio on election night. But Obama is doing more than nibbling around the edges in this general so far. He’s trying to take the kind of bite out of the map that could deliver surprising victories in November.

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