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Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill
introduces Senator Barack Obama at Thorngate in Cape Girardeau on May 13, 2008
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By Jason Brown.
On Tuesday, Democratic Presidential candidate Barrack Obama made what many are calling his first stop in the general election campaign at the Thorngate clothing factory in Cape Girardeau.
Obama came prepared by wearing a Unite HERE certified suit and was introduced by Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill, who showed enthusiasm for the stop in the highly conservative area. She also took the opportunity to address an important issue to area conservatives - veteran affairs. While on the Senate’s Veteran’s Affairs committee, McCaskill said, Obama “quietly, and effectively, did the most patriotic work you can do in this nation - taking care of those men and women who have been willing to give it all for the United States of America.”
Obama directed most of the comments in his speech toward presumptive Republican nominee John McCain, saying “The Bush/Cheney ticket won’t be up for re-election, but Bush/Cheney policies will, because John McCain has decided that he is running for George Bush’s third term in office.”
Without an official concession from Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, Obama was careful of how he addressed the issue of the pending Democratic race, and only mentioned Clinton twice. During the question and answer segment, Walter White asked about the possibility of a joint Obama-Clinton ticket. “Senator Clinton is still competing,” he responded. “We haven’t resolved this nomination, I haven’t won the nomination yet, and so, what I’ve said is I’m not going to talk about vice president this and vice president that until I’ve actually won.”
Obama emphasized issues that are important throughout the country in this election campaign such as the economy and the war in Iraq, but also focused on the factory workers in the audience. He laid out plans to maintain jobs in small towns through the development of alternative energy sources, such as cellulosic ethanol. “That’s the new direction that we want to move in, and rural communities have a huge competitive advantage because they already know agriculture, they already are dealing with the materials that are going to be used for this new energy.” He added “If we invested in the University right here and in community colleges and universities all across the rural Midwest, just to develop new ways of making energy, then you could have spin-offs that are creating jobs that pay good wages.”
Mike Clay, a Vietnam Veteran and employee of Thorngate, attended the event and describes himself as undecided. He liked what Obama had to say regarding his alternative energy policy. “All I can say is ‘bring it on,’ that’s what we need to do. If we can get away from usage of foreign oil that way, and strictly use we got here at the home…great. We won’t have to purchase any more foreign oil, and that would be even better.”
Obama’s stop emphasizes the role that the state of Missouri has historically played in Presidential elections, according to Jeremy Walling, a Southeast Missouri State University professor of Political Science. An important bellwether state, Missouri tends to choose the candidate who wins the Presidency. “I think we’ve done that in all but one election in the last one hundred years. We tend to go with whoever the country tends to go with, and people say that makes us kind of a barometer for what the national result might be.”
Considering the state’s history, perhaps Cape Girardeau is not such a strange place for Obama to kick off his campaign.
Listen to Senator Obama's Entire Speech |
