New York Times: Gosh, Remember Obama’s ‘Jaw-Dropping’ Crowds?

For The New York Times, reporter Jackie Calmes must have found Chris Matthews’ leg tingle as she penned a story dreamily reminiscing about Obama’s “jaw-dropping crowds” he used to garner at campaign stops back in 2007-08.

Calmes also wondered why Obama isn’t getting those great crowds anymore? Oh, she was filled with all sorts of reasons to explain away Obama’s smaller crowd sizes, mind you. The most amusing one is her regurgitation of the campaign’s claims that Obama wants smaller crowds. Yes, Calmes says he meant to do that. Still, she doesn’t think it matters that The One is drawing stadium-sized crowds these days. Why? Because Mitt Romney is a racist, naturally. When she turned to slash Mitt Romney, she describes his crowds saying, you guessed it, they are racists.

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Romney crowds are overwhelmingly white compared with the more diverse Obama audiences, and older voters generally outnumber younger supporters.

Calmes also revives the false lefty narrative that was attached to a campaign event Romney held at Detroit’s Ford Field in February.

Democratic operatives have had their own fun sending out pictures of empty seats over e-mail and Twitter. A favorite was in February, when Mr. Romney met with Detroit business leaders surrounded by the empty seats of cavernous Ford Field.

Naturally, Calmes does not give her readers the benefit of an explanation. The “empty stadium” characterization is simply an untrue description of that event. What really happened at the Ford Field event was that the stadium security wouldn’t allow the gathering to be held in the atrium where team Romney planned for it to be held. Along with the Secret Service, stadium security said that the atrium could not be properly secured so they were the ones that insisted it be moved out onto the field. Romney’s team meant for that rally to be in a smaller venue one where there wouldn’t be an entire stadium of empty seats surrounding them but were overridden by security. They never had any intentions of filling a whole stadium in the first place so it shouldn’t be any surprise that the stadium wasn’t filled. Ah, but truth doesn’t matter to Jackie Calmes. She’s too busy having leg tingles over her Obammessiah and his throngs of fainting fans.