Limbaugh: That ‘joke’ Obama can’t fill ‘Black Panther Stadium’
It makes some sense that Team Obama would cancel plans for tomorrow night’s big outdoor love-in at Bank of America Stadium here. Why take a chance on a rain-soaked spectacle when the Democratic National Convention has gotten off to a solid start?
Live video of soggy delegates scrambling out of their seats or cringing in a lightning storm would not, as the professionals say, make for good optics. Yes, the Democrats now have to schedule alternative events for volunteers, some of whom had been planning for months to help fill the big concrete bowl where the Carolina Panthers of the NFL play.
Hurt feelings can be mended. Ugly video lives forever.
Organizers scoffed at the notion they couldn’t fill Bank of America Stadium. They claimed they had given out 65,000 credentials, and had 19,000 people more than they needed on a waiting list.
The Republicans wondered why Obama’s planners would cancel an outdoor speech when the chance of rain at the 10 p.m. Eastern start time had dropped to something like 20%.
Radio provocateur Rush Limbaugh didn’t just wonder. He asserted Wednesday that the stadium cancellation surely revealed that the president is in some sort of dire political straits. Along with Obama’s inability to draw a crowd, he also imagined what a crippling psychological blow this must be.
“When you have the ego Obama has, trust me folks,” Limbaugh said, “I know where of which I speak –you’re used to filling auditoriums and you don’t fill them any more—that’s big. It is not new. He has not been filling arenas of 18 or 20,000.”
This is because Obama has become a “joke,” and “people laugh at him.” Per his standard shtick, Limbaugh couldn’t let the topic go without a racially-charged provocation.
“Now he can’t fill up this 73,000 Black Panther Stadium,” Limbaugh offered. “This does not make for a healthy environment and, I’m telling you, when the crowds no longer show up, when you’re no longer drawing crowds, that is a sobering day, that is a tough reality to face.”
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