Will money win you the race?

As you, your professor, The Daily Cal, and probably even your mom already know, Barack Obama paid a visit to our fair Bay Area last Saturday afternoon to give a speech outside of Oakland City Hall. I arrived at 12th Street around 12:30 in the afternoon to help sell t-shirts, buttons, and stickers for the campaign, and although the gates for the event didn’t even open until 3:00 (not to mention the fact that Obama himself didn’t begin speaking until around 4:30), crowds were already lined up around the block by 1:30!

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On Sunday John Edwards came to Berkeley to give a campaign speech. The audience—a mixture of students and community members—packed the auditorium in the YWCA across the street from campus, and hundreds more listened to his speech on loudspeakers outside. Organizers estimated that 1000 (!) people were in attendance. Cal Dems president Michelle Wasserman introduced Edwards, identifying Cal as the perfect venue thanks to its tradition of political activism and committment to civil rights.

What Edwards talked about, in brief:

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• Tonight’s debate, Cal Dems vs. Berkeley College Republicans! The topics are immigration and healthcare. 7pm, 2060 VLSB.
• Former Senator, vice presidential nominee and ‘08 presidential hopeful John Edwards is visiting Cal this Sunday! He’ll be speaking to students at 2:30pm at the YWCA on Bancroft. For more info see the Facebook event.

With the 2008 presidential campaign just barely begun, it’s entirely fitting that, already, things are getting nasty. While some (yours truly included) are waiting for a Lewinsky-size scandal to rock American politics and finally wake the nation up to something called the government and its workings, for now we’ll have to settle with yet another irritating billionaire stirring things up—in this case movie and music maverick David Geffen.

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John McCain has officially declared his candidacy for President in the 2008 Election, and some have wondered whether “his age may be Mr McCain’s biggest handicap. If he won the presidency, he would by then—at 72—be the oldest man ever elected to the White House.”

I think it’s more likely that McCain’s unpopular stances on issues, especially his support of sending more troops to Iraq, would overshadow concerns about his age in the minds of voters. What do you think?