Washington Post: Obama raises $250,000 in Springfield

With media access limited to campaign-approved press pool reporters, Obama’s campaign provided this report by Washington Post political writer Jonathan Weisman. It was posted last night on the newspaper’s presidential blog, “The Trail."

Here’s the report:

In a nondescript, windowless room in the University Plaza Hotel (to call it a ballroom would be generous), 40 to 50 Missourians stood in line to take pictures with Barack Obama, milled around and chatted with Sen. Claire McCaskill. Participants say they paid $5,000 to the Obama Victory Fund to get in, although some confessed they were invitees, not donors.

Organizer Nadia Cavner said the event raised $250,000, hailing that as a record for Springfield, although John McCain was raising $3.2 million the same night at a lavish estate outside of Denver. Sen. McCaskill introduced Obama, saying, “I know we’re all tired of being embarrassed by our commander in chief, and won’t it be nice to be proud” of our president.

Obama stood on a small riser, beginning his talk at 9:55 CST. He spoke proudly of his trip last week abroad, saying, “What struck me was how hungry people were for American leadership.” Of the 200,000 Germans who came out to hear him in Berlin, he said, “They know that if America stands up and is leading with its values and ideals, then the whole world benefits.”

A shortened stump speech lamented the 468,000 jobs lost since the beginning of this year, the highest rate of foreclosure since the Great Depression, spiraling gas and education prices and an average family income that has “flat lined.”

“We may be the first generation to pass on an America that is a little poorer than the one we inherited from our parents and grandparents,” he said.

Speaking to “a lot of doctors in this room,” he promised universal health care access by the end of his first term, a line that drew loud applause. He promised to spend $15 billion a year over the next decade on renewable energy sources, and he spoke of common sense Midwestern values, singling out a woman who said she was his fourth cousin twice removed on his maternal side.

“There are going to be some struggles and some hardships and some difficult choices that we’re going to have to make to pull us out of our doldrums, but I want everybody to know better days are ahead of us,” he concluded. “They’re not behind us.”

Speaking to the almost all-white audience, he conceded, “It’s a leap, we know it, electing a 46-year old black guy named Barack Obama. It’s new.”

“The challenge we have is to make sure that hope overcomes fear,” he concluded. “You are wonderful messengers for that process.”

He concluded at 10:10 CST.[[In-content Ad]]