Obama for America promises to fill stadium for Obama’s convention speech.

Alternative title: Main campaign team for an allegedly likeable President who won the general election with 53% of the popular vote and 365-173 in the Electoral College issues statement that the President will be able to fill a 74,000 seat stadium on the night of his convention speech.  Which is, of course, far too long.

There’s a bit more absurdity in that Hill article (H/T Hot Air Headlines) – particularly the bits about how Obama for America is still pretending that it has a shot at winning North Carolina again, instead of just counting the days until it can bail out of the state for good – but the above represents the main incongruity.  It’s not whether or not OfA can fill a stadium; filling the stadium by fair means or foul is OfA’s job*.  It’s not even that questions have been raised whether or not OfA is capable of filling a stadium. It’s that OfA is tacitly admitting that those questions were justified. 

Which is somewhat… incautious of them. Oh, I suppose that they may be trying to manage expectations by trying to impose artificially low ones; this is a trick that they did with fund-raising numbers all throughout 2008.  If you don’t remember, OfA would not immediately reveal its numbers every month, causing people to wonder whether that meant that the campaign had done badly… and thus heightening the impact when it turned out that Obama had done well again.  It was a good trick… but the reason why it worked was because a potential “Obama not living up to expectations” story would have been legitimate news throughout what turned out to be far, far too much of that election cycle.  These days, it’d be strictly a ‘dog-eats-man’ story.**

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*Ken Lundberg summed it up nicely for the Hill: “The rule is standing-room-only… The campaign knows that, and there’s no question they will fill the stadium. If they have to bus union groups from Miami, New York and Kalamazoo into Charlotte, that’s what they’ll do.”

**As God is my witness, the intent there was to write ‘dog-bites-man.’  And I don’t even really push the ‘Obama ate a dog’ meme.  Guess said meme worked, huh?