/ 4 November 2008

Obama ends final rally with cry for change

Presidential frontrunner Barack Obama issued a barnstorming call for change at his final campaign rally on Monday as he vowed to fight to honour his late grandmother and America’s other ”quiet heroes”.

The Democrat stormed through Florida, North Carolina and Virginia — three states he is bidding to wrench out of the Republican column — on the final day of his dramatic White House epic against John McCain before Tuesday’s vote.

”Virginia, let’s go change the world,” Obama, who stands on the historic threshold of becoming the first black United States president, told more than 90 000 people at the conclusion of his closing rally in Manassas.

”Fired up?” he demanded to know of the sea of supporters. ”Ready to go!” they responded in a deafening roar.

But if the polls are correct and Obama triumphs against McCain on Tuesday, the Democrat’s white grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, will not be there to see it. The last survivor of the family that raised him, she died earlier, aged 86.

Obama said the ”unlikely journey” that started out 21 months ago was now on the cusp of remaking the stricken US economy, ending the war in Iraq, taking the fight to al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and restoring the nation’s global leadership.

”That’s how we’re going to change this country, because of you,” he told the vast crowd here, while urging his supporters on the campaign’s climax not to ”slow down or sit back or let up, not for one hour, not for one second”.

The Illinois senator started the long day on a wrenching note as he received news that Dunham had passed away in her sleep at her Hawaii home after a long battle with cancer, two weeks after he dashed back to see her one last time.

Tears running down his face and his voice thick with grief at an earlier rally in Charlotte, North Carolina, the 47-year-old Obama thanked McCain for an ”incredibly gracious” statement of condolence.

Long life of struggle
He told the Charlotte crowd of 25 000 that now was a ”bitter-sweet time for me” as he recapped his grandmother’s long life of struggle through the Great Depression and, with his infant mother, through World War II.

”She was one of those quiet heroes that we have all across America,” said Obama, who was criticised for remarking on his grandmother’s latent racial prejudice after a storm over incendiary sermons by his former pastor.

”They’re not famous. Their names aren’t in the newspapers,” he said.

”But each and every day they work hard. They sacrifice for their children and their grandchildren. They aren’t seeking the limelight. All they try to do is just do the right thing.

”And in this crowd there are a lot of quiet heroes like that,” he said in Charlotte.

”That’s what America is about,” Obama exclaimed, his voice rising to an impassioned cry, and ”in just one more day, we have the opportunity to honour all those quiet heroes all across America”.

Aides said Obama had learned of Dunham’s passing early on Monday before his first rally of the day in Jacksonville, Florida, but he showed no obvious signs of distress at the event.

Obama pumped up a swaying, chanting, screaming crowd of more than 9 000 in the Jacksonville Veterans’ Memorial Arena as he bid to lock down the state that broke Democratic hearts in the 2000 election.

It was the same venue where McCain, on September 15, had called the US economy fundamentally ”strong” despite a crisis sweeping through Wall Street, and Obama has mercilessly attacked his rival for the remark ever since.

The audience hissed when reminded by Obama of McCain’s damaging misstep. But in a line that has become a guaranteed crowd-pleaser at his rallies, the Democrat said: ”You don’t need to boo, you just need to vote!”

But the loss of the last surviving member of the family that brought him up cast a profound shadow heading into Obama’s date with electoral destiny.

Obama barely knew his Kenyan-born father. His mother, Ann, died from cancer in 1995, and his grandfather has also passed on.

”She was the cornerstone of our family, and a woman of extraordinary accomplishment, strength, and humility,” Obama and his half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, who was at Dunham’s bedside, said in a joint statement.

”Our debt to her is beyond measure.” — AFP

 

AFP