ALSO ... Madison was a bust yesterday for Kerry
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1261590/posts
Kerry Rally in Madison a big bust?
WTMJ Radio | 10/29/2004 | 620 wtmj
Posted on 10/29/2004 1:18:33 PM EDT by flashbunny
Just heard this bit news on WTMJ 620 AM about the kerry rally in Madison, WI. There is no print version to reference, so for right now you'll just have to trust what I heard. First, a little background:
Kerry appeared in a big rally in Madison, Wisconsin yesterday. This itself is odd because Madison is known as the Berkeley of the midwest. It's an area Kerry should have sewn up by now.
They brought in Bruce Springsteen and Dave Grohl (Foo Fighters / Nirvana) to draw the crowds. They even brought in busloads of people from Iowa and Minnesota. Combine those factors with the fact that the state's largest teacher's convention (WEAC) was being held in Madison this week, you have a built in crowd. The 'official' estimate was 80,000 people, but Internet reports dispute that number.
The big controversy was that the Madison city clerk's office was being held open an extra 3 hours, until 8 pm, to allow people who attended the event to vote absentee. There reportedly was a march planned for after the event, where they would lead throngs of Kerry supporters to vote absentee at the clerk's office.
This is where we get to the news story on the radio. They contacted the clerk's office to see how things went. The office said there was no need for all the controversy, because fewer people voted absentee the day of the big rally than voted the day before.
That's right. They brought in free musical acts. They brought in busloads of people. They had the built in audience from the teacher's union. They had loads of university students milling around. They claimed 80,000 people were there for Kerry. The clerks office was open an extra 3 hours to make sure they all could vote.
And they actually saw a reduction in absentee voters from the day before, when nothing was going on.
Does this sounds like Kerry has 'momentum' going into the final days of the election???
This contradicts Tim Russert on "Today" who made the claim to Katie the poison dwarf that vast hoards of people were going from the Springsteen thing directly to the voting booths. Russert also said that 380,000 tons of weapons were missing. He made one other uncorrected blunder that I can't recall, my anger at his bias having taken over the TV remote.
For a supposedly bigtime NBC political whiz, he was bumbling in his haste to shed the worst possible light on the Bush campaign while slanting his opinions toward Kerry.