by John McCormick
The night before he is to campaign in Iowa with Oprah Winfrey, Sen. Barack Obama stopped by a rock concert fundraiser in Chicago and expressed confidence in his standing in the primary race.
“It turns out, we might win,” he said, as the audience cheered. “It’s possible. It is possible. They said it wasn’t possible, but it is possible.”
The “Change Rocks” event at the Riviera Theater featured musical guests Macy Gray, Stephan Jenkins, Jill Sobule and Jeff Tweedy, as well as other members of his band Wilco.
A security official at the theater estimated the crowd at between 600 and 800, although the campaign said it sold 2,000 tickets, ranging in price from $35 to $500.
Obama, wearing his signature suit coat over a shirt with no tie, gave a fierier version of his standard stump speech for an audience that was more unruly than those he typically faces in places like Iowa and New Hampshire.
When someone yelled a swear word about something he had said about the Bush administration, he reminded the crowd “this is a PG-rated event.”
The speech was similar to a well received one he gave at the Jefferson Jackson dinner in Des Moines nearly a month ago that is now being used in television ads in Iowa.
“Chicago, our moment is now,” he said at one point. “This is our moment.”
Obama also made mention of a press release Sen. Hillary Clinton’s campaign recently sent out that made mention of a paper he wrote as a child expressing interest in being president.
“Senator Clinton has been looking through my kindergarten papers,” he said. “It’s silly season in politics.”Despite his big upcoming weekend with Winfrey, he made no mention of the pending appearances.
Earlier in the evening, Obama stopped by Second City to finally see a performance of “Between Barack and a Hard Place,” a spoof on his place in the political world.
Obama’s wife, Michelle, and his sister from Honolulu, Maya Soetoro-Ng, saw the show in July. Tickets to tonight’s show cost $750.
