The Oprah and
Obama tour hit the early primary voting state of South
Carolina, with the talk show host and media mogul Oprah
Winfrey exhorting nearly 30,000 to ignore Barack
Obama's detractors and help him capture the Democratic
nomination and the presidency.
''South Carolina
-- January 26 is your moment,'' Winfrey said, referring
to the state Democratic primary date during a campaign stop
alongside the U.S. senator from Illinois. ''It's your
time to seize the opportunity to support a man who, as
the Bible says, loves mercy and does justly.''
Obama's campaign
said more than 29,000 attended the event Sunday at the
University of South Carolina's football stadium. It had the
feel of a rock concert, with bands playing for early
arrivals and campaign supporters yelling ''fire it
up'' to the crowd.
Winfrey, who also
campaigned for Obama on Saturday in Iowa, offered a
touch of talk show-like advice during a 17-minute speech.
''There are those who say it's not his time, that he
should wait his turn. Think about where you'd be in
your life if you'd waited when people told you to,''
she said.
''I'm sick of
politics as usual,'' Winfrey said. ''We need Barack
Obama.''
A recent AP-Pew
Research poll has Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton leading in
South Carolina with 45 percent of likely Democratic primary
voters, followed by Obama's 31 percent. The two
candidates break even on the black vote here, and that
is where Winfrey's appeal could become a factor --
along with her pull among women.
Obama, during his
address, criticized the Bush administration and took
several veiled swipes at Clinton, though never referenced
his rival by name.
''I'm tired of
Democrats thinking the only way to look tough on national
security is to act like George Bush,'' he said. ''We need a
bold Democratic Party that's going to stand for
something, not just posture and pose.''
He said if were
the party nominee, an opponent would not be able to say
he supported going to war in Iraq, which Clinton did.
''It's not good
enough to tell the people what you think they want to
hear, instead of what they need to hear. That just won't do.
Not this time,'' he said. ''We can't spend all our
time triangulating and poll-testing our positions
because we're worried about what Mitt or Rudy or Fred
or the other Republican nominees are going to say about
us.''
He said voters
will need to cast ballots in favor of a candidate -- not
against an incumbent who is leaving office.
''The name George
W. Bush will not be on the ballot,'' he said, a remark
that brought the crowd to its feet for several minutes.
''The name of my
cousin Dick Cheney won't be on the ballot,'' Obama
added, a reference to their more than 300-year-old, distant
family connection. ''That was some embarrassing stuff
when that came out.''
Obama was
accompanied by his wife, Michelle, and said it was his
campaign's biggest crowd. ''You know you've got a good
program when I'm the third-best speaker on the
stage,'' he said.
The event at
Williams-Brice Stadium initially was planned for a smaller
venue with a capacity of 18,000 but was moved to the stadium
after the campaign gave out all of its free tickets
two days after distribution began. Organizers said
they did not expect to fill the massive arena,
however.
About 8,500
people greeted Obama and Winfrey at their last stop in
Manchester, N.H., Sunday night, including Gov. John Lynch
and the state's two Democratic members of Congress.
After two days of
campaigning, Winfrey said she had overcome her initial
nervousness.
''I'm beginning
to like this,'' she said. ''I'm beginning to like this
because I can feel that you are ready for change.''
In a slightly
different twist on Obama's frequent argument that a long
Washington resume does not necessarily make for a
good president, Winfrey appealed to the parents in the
audience.
''You can't be
fooled by this experience question because you know it's
not the amount of time you spend with your child, it's the
quality of that time,'' she said.
Obama opened his
remarks by acknowledging a labor dispute at the arena
where the rally was held. He noted that he usually ensures
that union workers are involved in his events but that
the arena does not employ union workers as stagehands.
''This is a great
facility, and we should have union workers in here to
make sure the stagehands are getting a fair shake,'' he
said, then repeated three times, ''I believe in
working people.''
Kristen Price,
26, who traveled about 120 miles from Bennington, Vt., to
Manchester, said Winfrey was the main draw but she ended up
as an Obama supporter.
''She played a
big role, I'll admit it, but he held his own just fine,''
Price said.
Price said she
had been torn between supporting Obama or Clinton but now
considered herself firmly in Obama's camp.
''It was like a
religious experience. It was inspiring,'' she said. ''I
feel like now America could do anything.'' (Seanna Adcox,
AP)