Delirious in Florida

“These people are all on our list,” says a Kerry volunteer. She’s a junior at NYU. “When we found out the senator was coming, we let everyone on the list know.” It looks like everyone showed up. Unfortunately, the crowd won’t have much time with the two senators. Today’s rally is only one stop on a four-day tour meant to introduce the Kerry-Edwards ticket to voters in Ohio, West Virginia, New Mexico, and Florida–all swing states in this year’s presidential election. And right now, with four months to go, this swing state is swinging toward the challenger: The latest Zogby poll, conducted in late June, has Kerry winning here 46 to 44; pollster Jim Rasmussen has Kerry ahead in Florida 48 to 43.

Maybe that’s why a celebratory air hangs over the Jet Center, commingling with the thick July haze. “You know, it feels like the last week of a campaign,” says one Kerry press aide. He looks astonished. Sweat soaks through his dress shirt, but he doesn’t seem to mind the heat. He’s too busy thinking about today’s St. Petersburg Times, which he shows to anyone passing by. The paper features an article on last night’s rally at the St. Petersburg Coliseum. “How about that? Huh?” he asks no one in particular. “The police say 10,000 people showed up.” He shakes his head. “Incredible.”

Also incredible is the fact that somehow, in the space of the two hours before Kerry’s plane touches the tarmac, each person in line has trudged through one of two metal detectors at the entrance to the hangar, pockets emptied and belongings searched. The crowd seems resigned to the security. The press isn’t. Photographers and television cameramen moan when they discover their equipment needs to be searched by a bomb-sniffing dog–which, the Kerry campaign regrets to report, is 45 minutes away.

But eventually the dog shows up. And once they’re inside the hangar, the “photogs” confront a chaotic scene: Bells are ringing, foghorns sounding; retirees are yelling, children laughing. Every few minutes, as a plane takes off from the nearby tarmac, people turn and watch, open-mouthed, silent, the roar of the turbines drowning out all other noise. Then a Telemundo crew is almost bowled over by a cameraman from one of Miami’s adult cable stations, a buxom “reporter” in tow, and people start to laugh. There is no air conditioning inside the hangar. The place stinks of sweat. Everyone has a tan. And practically everyone wears a T-shirt with the name of a union emblazoned on the front. It’s an organized-labor alphabet soup: AFSCME, SEIU, IUPAT. Only the Teamsters are without an acronym.

People fan themselves with today’s newspaper. An ambulance waits nearby in case someone faints. Soon truckloads of bottled water appear on the tarmac, where the Teamsters, performing their ancient duty, offload them, passing the boxes into the hangar and distributing bottles among the mass of people. Kids splash water on their faces.

More trucks arrive. These carry portable toilets, and the IUPAT members decide to unload them. It’s a tricky business. First the IUPAT guys set the toilets down in front of part of the crowd, which sparks howls of protest. One IUPAT member is stumped. He scratches his head, looking around the crowded hangar for a place to put them. The crowd boos and hisses. Eventually the IUPAT members figure out what to do. Smiles on their faces, they move the toilets directly in front of the press. The crowd applauds.

Moments pass before the crowd spots Kerry’s campaign plane. Pony-tailed Jim, the audio guy, cues up today’s entrance music, Bruce Springsteen’s “Land of Hope and Dreams”:

Big wheels rolling through the fields / Where sunlight streams / Meet me in the land of hope and dreams . . .

A helicopter floats high above the tarmac, filming the scene.

Tomorrow there’ll be sunshine / And all this darkness past . . .

John Kerry emerges from the plane, John Edwards behind him. They walk quickly, almost breaking into a jog toward the grandstand, hands raised toward their screaming supporters.

Each has his signature gesture on the stump. Kerry points with his long, thin index finger to someone in the crowd, flashes his small white teeth, then transitions smoothly to an emphatic thumbs-up. Edwards, in contrast, holds both thumbs up, high above his head, unleashing his chipmunk grin.

Hear the steel wheels singin’ . . . Bells of freedom ringin’ . . .

The music fades. Florida senator Bill Nelson introduces Edwards, to raucous applause. Edwards speaks quickly, knowing he has little time. “It’s been an extraordinary few days,” he says in his trademark drawl. He hits all his old campaign themes, resurrected from his failed primary run: “I grew up in a small town . . . the son of a mill worker.” But Edwards’s voice is hoarse. He must have strained it at last night’s rally in St. Petersburg. It’s hard to talk over 10,000 people. Or maybe he’s not used to the grueling presidential campaign schedule, which carries him to six states in four days. Whatever the cause, his voice isn’t just scratchy. It cracks, it squeaks, it breaks up, like a teenage boy’s.

Yet Edwards persists. He and Kerry engage in a rhetorical dance, nodding toward the war in Iraq, but never naming that country. Not once. Ditto with Afghanistan. Instead Edwards and Kerry speak in innuendo. “John Kerry will keep the military strong, protect Americans, and keep strong alliances–so that no American goes to war needlessly, just because America wants to,” Edwards says. “He will do what he did in Vietnam: protect Americans.” He swallows. And “when John Kerry is president . . . he will tell the American people the truth.”

Keh-ry! Keh-ry! Keh-ry!

Edwards stands back, passes the mike to his new boss, arms folded across his chest. Mission accomplished.

Kerry takes the mike. He paces the stage and nods. A plane takes off in the distance, and Kerry waits for the roar to dull. He asks, “So what do you think of my choice?” Cheers.

Then Kerry unveils a short stand-up routine. For someone who looks humorless, the man can crack a joke. Or, in this case, several. “Two Johns . . . Some people talk about the environment and how important recycling is,” he says. “But we practice it. We saved you a lot of paper and a lot of ink.” Laughs. “The only person who did better than John Kerry and John Edwards these past few days is Spider Man.” Belly laughs. “John and I have a lot in common,” he says. “We both share the first name John. And John was selected People magazine’s sexiest politician of the year. I read People magazine.” Even the press laughs at this one.

Kerry says he’s been spending some quality time with John Edwards’s two young children. Jack is 4 and Emma Claire is 6. “They’re good at math,” he says. “They can count well.” So “I promised them something . . . ”

The applause builds. The crowd knows where this is going.

“. . . We’re sending Jack and Emma Claire down here to help those Republicans in West Palm Beach count those votes.”

More chants.

“And not only does every vote in Florida count, but every vote is going to be counted.” Florida Democrats lap this stuff up, so Kerry continues to feed it to them. “I made a deal with the people who are working on the voting machines,” he says. “They fix those machines, and we’ll fix America.”

Soon the one-liners are over, however, and Kerry moves into his stump speech, sometimes drifting into uncharted waters, unmoored, bobbing up and down, awash in profundity. He starts talking about how it feels, “looking at you,” this “sea of human beings, sea of American citizens, sea of people,” and why the faces in the crowd tell him so much about American ingenuity. We can build the microchip, he says. Why can’t we have universal health care?

The crowd stares at the candidate, enraptured.

A lady with stringy blonde hair turns away from Kerry and faces the television cameras and photographers. She must be hot, wearing a white wool sweater over her T-shirt. Her blush is smeared. She smiles at the cameras and pulls a large piece of red cardboard from her purse.

“We’re going to fight for the middle class,” Kerry says. “I pledge to you: We will never privatize Social Security.”

The blonde woman unfolds the red cardboard. It’s a sign. “No More Blood for Oil.” She parades in front of the cameras like a card girl at a boxing match.

“It’s the workers, the people in the foundry, the people in the fields, the people in the factory, who must bring America back again,” Kerry says.

A man in black is wandering aimlessly. He’s half paying attention to Kerry as he looks for a bottle of water. The thing about him is the T-shirt he’s wearing. It’s a black and white photo of the president. Above and below the president are the words “International Terrorist.”

Kerry challenges the crowd to perform “the work of democracy,” which means badgering your friends to vote. Then he takes a bow and waves at the cameras. After four hours of preparation, the rally is over in 45 minutes.

Their hero gone, the fans exit smiling, gabbing cheerfully, relieved to get out of the sauna-like hangar and into their air-conditioned cars. A few scrawny college kids are waiting outside. They’re dressed in white Ralph Nader T-shirts, hemp and seashell necklaces around their necks. Some distribute Green party literature. Another holds a sign that says simply: “John Kerry, I respect you, but unless you moderate your pro-war stance I won’t be able to vote for you.” The kids are quiet. They look mournful.

“Echhhh!” snorts a tall man with curly hair. He’s with his wife. “Don’t throw your vote away!” he shouts at the kids. He snorts again. “We can’t afford people like you!”

The kids stare at him blankly.

“Don’t you get it?” he yells. “We can’t have another four years of this guy! Don’t waste your vote!” He’s screaming now, enraged, even as he walks past the Green party protesters. But there’s something more. His voice is almost plaintive. He’s practically begging the Naderites. “We can’t afford you!” he yells again.

“Harry,” his wife mutters. She’s embarrassed. She pushes Harry toward their car. “Give it a break.”

“I can’t,” Harry says. He looks past his wife, talking to the other Kerry supporters walking around him, and shakes his head. “This is too important.”

He lowers his head and stares at the black pavement. A drop of sweat falls off his face and plops to the ground.

He speaks softly. “This is just too goddamn important.”

Matthew Continetti is a reporter at The Weekly Standard.