I was volunteering at the front entrance, and I watched (and helped out a bit) as thousands of people, from across the city and state, from all walks of life, filled the RIC field house to the brim. I didn’t realize how long the line was until another volunteer pointed out that it was snaking back around into view again across several parking lots.

The rough number seems to be about 10,000 people at RIC today, with 5,000+ inside, and another 3000+ who stuck around outside even after the line was closed off to see Obama speak outside before he came inside to a packed house. The atmosphere was electricity, most of the crowd standing, roaring, families with children, elderly folks, vets, young people, elected officials and first timers and organizers of every race religion and background. A huge, responsive crowd. Matt, in his liveblogging, notes:

ProJo reporter Scott MacKay just made the observation that Rhode Island hasn’t seen a political rally like this since Clinton in 1996 and that was when he was already President!

Let’s just note upfront, 10,000 people is more than 1/4 of the total number of votes in the 2004 RI PrezPrimary.

Read so much more:

On substance, there was a lot of more or less familiar, though still excellent, material- familiar perhaps to someone who has heard his stump speech, been watching the debates, etc. Still, some lines shone through, and Matt’s liveblogging is the best place to go for some of the choice content.

Certainly, the nod to former Sen. Chafee’s vote against the war was big, especially because of how pumped the crowd got.

“The title of the bill was ‘A Resolution to Authorize the Use of the United States Armed Forces Against Iraq,’ ” Obama said. “That sounds like you were voting for authorizing the use of armed forces against Iraq. I knew what it was. Lincoln Chaffee knew what it was.”

Of course, the RIC field house was the same place that HRC mocked Obama with her “heavenly choirs” bit, an even more rancid stinker now that it’s clear that HRC layed that one on a crowd perhaps a quarter the size of the one that came out for Obama today. CBakst’s latest column has some of the backstory on these:

In a telephone interview on Wednesday, Obama told me he didn’t know offhand that the footage of Clinton’s melodramatic lampooning of him — her saying, “I could stand up here and say, ‘Let’s just get everybody together, let’s get unified — the sky will open, the light will come down, celestial choirs will be singing…’ ” — took place in Rhode Island.

But, yes, now that I mentioned it, he noticed a smiling Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, Clinton’s co-chair here, sitting behind her. “That I did see.”

And now I said that the rally was in the very same RIC recreation center in which Obama campaigned for Whitehouse in 2006.

“You should remind Sheldon of that,” Obama chuckled.

The big-time newsmedia HorseRace Inc, also in the house, is playing up Obama’s rougher hits on Clinton today. He called her out, basically, as something of a hack for her support of the Credit-Card Bankruptcy Bill and NAFTA, and THE WAR among other things. Micro-parsing notwithstanding, it makes sense that he would engage HRC a bit more here, where her favorables are probably way more decent than in the other March4th! states. To be fair, Barack hit her on both these issues on the last debate, but I will say that highlighting and contextualizing actual policy decisions beats sarcastic summonings of heavenly choirs any day of the week.

Lots of economic populism today, too, with flashes of both political realism and underlying a strong underlying moral case for economic justice. Lines like this:

“I won’t stand here and tell you that I will stop every job from disappearing because of globalization, but I will tell you that I will be thinking about workers and not just Wall Street when I put together trade agreements.”

And also like this:

If you work in this country, you should not be poor.

You better believe RI democrats are down with it.

One other note, which was that I felt that something was left unsaid, maybe because it didn’t need to be. As Obama talked about what hope really means- about the willingness and the strength to fight for something better, about how it was hope that allowed him to become what he is, that powered the American revolution and the civil rights movement, and abolition and suffrage and labor and the greatest social movements in our nation’s history- I kept looking up at the Rhode Island flag above him, emblazoned with ours, the shortest state motto of all: “Hope.” I was expecting a shout out to it, but perhaps its better left for us to draw the conclusion, or to just feel it in our bones and know it’s there.

A few more things, and then I’m through:

1) The fainting. We know that there is always at least one person who faints at Obama rallies, and it happened again today. While there are certain d-bags who try to turn this one against Obama/ Obama supporters, it seems to me there’s some very simple math behind it. Massive crowds= longer lines+higher density+longer waits+more total people= statistically greater chance that at least one person will faint.

2) The exit. With that many people, who have been waiting that long, things are bound to get chaotic. Traffic must have been ridiculous too. I hope everyone got out ok, and for that matter, got their umbrellas. Attendees who got in probably walked past a tree surrounded by hundreds of umbrellas that wer spontaneously abandoned because they couldn’t be brought in. I do hope the umbrella honor system worked out and that people retrieved theirs.

Cheers to the folks passing out coffee and snacks to those waiting in line (Blue State? Seven Stars?), and a word to the Obama campaign- more water and snacks for the weary!

3) Grassroots democracy. That’s the real story here. Obama’s speech was great, but what made it was the crowd, thousands of Rhode Islanders together, united by common purpose. Public Assembly, that hallowed right, is at its core a display that power lies with the people, if only they take it up. In drawing that crowd and creating that energy, Obama articulates his campaign’s premise that words cannot describe- that the people, with hope and determination, can and will be the masters of democracy. That’s what all the electricity is about.

The crowds aren’t about Obama, or the promise that he use his magic powers to heal the nation. They are a demonstration of how real change happens- the only way it has ever happened - when the people are inspired enough and organized enough and confident enough in their own strength to demand it.

And it can even happen in Rhode Island.

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