Pitchfork

As mentioned in these pages earlier this week, a rally featuring presidential hopeful Barack Obama and indie rock band the Decemberists brought some 75,000 people to Portland's Waterfront Park on May 18, a rather large number for an event of this nature. Indeed, several sources cited this crowd as the single biggest in Obama rally history, while a writeup in The New York Times' The Caucus blog notes that Obama's previous audience record was 35,000-- less than half the number of people that attended the Portland gathering.

Confronted with those rather intimidating numbers, some conservative pundits have scrambled to find ways to play down the Obama milestone, and their strategy is a rather amusing one. Items in both National Review's The Campaign Spot blog and anti-"liberal media bias" website NewsBusters take issue with the manner in which the Decemberists/Obama rally was reported, questioning why stories in The New York Times and other national media outlets neglected to mention the free Decemberists show that preceded Senator Obama's speech [via The Huffington Post].

The assumption here, of course, is that the Decemberists played a significant part in enticing those 75,000 people out to that lovely park on that sunny spring day, and that the Times and other "liberally biased" media outlets somehow conspired to ignore the band's presence in order to make Obama look better. That's cute, but let's be realistic here, folks. We love the Decemberists and all, but as the Huffington Post writeup notes, they tend to fill up venues such as the 1,200-person capacity 9:30 Club in D.C. Also worth taking into account: the Obama rally announcement doesn't even bill the Decemberists as such, instead mentioning "special guest" performers Colin Meloy, Chris Funk, Jenny Conlee, Nate Query, and John Moen.

The Campaign Spot post cites a Chicagoist review's estimate that 10,000 people attended a free Decemberists concert at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Chicago's Millennium Park last year as evidence that the Decemberists can attract large numbers to free events. (The same post also cites Chris Funk's suggestion that the band may have drawn as many as 20,000 that day-- a lovely notion, but bogus: Jay Pritzker Pavilion's capacity caps at 11,000.) It's also worth noting that the Chicago Decemberists show in question also featured a symphony orchestra, and the people in that orchestra probably have fans and friends and family too.

But hey, let's play this game anyway: supposing for a moment that the Decemberists really did draw 10,000 of those 75,000 people to Waterfront Park this past Sunday, that leaves 65,000 who came solely to see Obama speak-- still a landmark for his campaign. And that, of course, assumes Decemberists fans and Obama supporters are mutually exclusive entities. Um, LOL.

And we won't even get into the "Decemberists are Commies!" theories being bandied about. Instead, have another look at the Decemberists kicking it with Senator Obama in the photo above, and catch the band opening for Death Cab for Cutie May 24 at the 8,000-capacity Les Schwab Amphitheater in Bend, Oregon.