75,000

I didn’t want this to pass without noting that Barack Obama drew an incredible 75,000 people at a rally in Portland, Oregon yesterday. These are unprecedented numbers in a political rally in the United States. (Note to the Clinton campaign: that’s a lot of white people at that rally.) Oregon and Kentucky vote tomorrow.

The news from the rally reached all the way around the world. Here is The Age from Down Under:

IF EVER there was a surer sign that the race for the Democratic presidential nomination is over, it came on a sunny day in a waterfront park in Oregon.

After last Tuesday’s primary in West Virginia, Hillary Clinton had struggled to round up more than a few hundred people for her victory party in a dingy civic centre.

On Sunday, frontrunner Barack Obama packed a record 75,000 crowd into the Waterfront Park in downtown Portland.

On an unseasonably sunny afternoon, it could not have been a more joyous affair. Pleasure craft bobbed in the river and people covered the undulating banks as far as the eye could see, delivering for Senator Obama his biggest rally yet.

Senator Obama, in shirt sleeves, entered to thunderous cheers accompanied by what could soon be the US first family. The gangly eight-year-old, in a lemon sundress, stood close to her father while her six-year-old sister, carried by Michelle, buried her face in her mother’s neck at the sight of the crowd.

Even the candidate seemed a little overawed. "Hello Portland. Wow! Wow! Wow!" he said as he surveyed the sea of people. "I have had a lot of rallies but nothing has been in such a spectacular setting and it doesn’t hurt that it’s a perfect day," he said to wild cheers.

Yes We Can.