Michelle Obama Tells The Folks In Tallahassee, Florida That President Obama Cares About The American People And The Issues That Concern Them

Guest Post by PL_Florida

Monday, September 17th, was the Michelle Obama speech in Tallahassee.  It was so much fun to be there.

So, the doors of the Civic Center opened at 4:00 and the talk was at 6:55.  We ended up arriving at just after 5:00.  I naively thought that all of the people who lined up very early to get the best seats would have filtered into the facility by 5:00 and the rest of us would easily make our way into the building.  I was very surprised to first find that the whole parking lot was already full but also that the line of people went around the whole four blocks of the center.  Long blocks.  Wow!  We were fortunately able to find parking in a fairly close lot that was metered until 6:00.  We then made the long trek to the back of the line.

After standing for about 10 minutes, the rain decided to greet us with a downpour, made worse by the wind.  The tickets instructed that we could not bring umbrellas into the center, so we brought our coats in case of rain.  Some people without protection screamed and ran out of line for cover.  That moved us up a bit.  At the end of the first block, there were about eight Romney supporters with their signs.  Hardly a strong showing!  So I did not end up getting many pictures outside because of the rain.  It rained off and on for the approximately one hour and ten minutes that it took us to get to the building.  We had to walk through an airport-type security metal detector and have our purses searched and all electronics had to be on when checked.  So we finally got in and we had seats quite high up, but managed to get some pretty good photos from my husband's camera.  

Before Michelle came out, the big screen showed the clip of President Obama talking about the lady from Greenwood, SC and how she got everyone revved up with her "Fired up, ready to go" mantra.  

 


 I think that clip was played during the convention.  So of course everyone there was now chanting -- fired up, ready to go!!  The crowd was deafening when Michelle came out.  It was a fantastic feeling to be there.  She had another great speech, some of it very similar to her convention speech, covering why she fell in love with Barack, how he truly cares about people and the issues, covering his many successes.  She told us that in 2008, President Obama won by about 236,000 votes in Florida.  She said that may sound like a large number, but it equalled only 36 votes per precinct.  The point, obviously, is that every vote does count!  She encouraged everyone to do everything they can between now and November 6 to help President Obama win.  She also encouraged people to vote early (in Florida, early voting starts October 27th) so that we can help others vote on election day.

The Civic Center was full, by the way, except for box seats that were closed and seats that did not have a view of the stage.  One news report cited 10,000 people were there.

Thank you sharing your thoughts and photos with us PL_Florida.

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UPDATE:

I couldn't resist adding this photo to PL_Florida's lovely post.

Can you imagine President Michelle Obama? I can! Just close your eyes and wish really hard. Easy, isn't it?