Garance Franke Ruta has a much better photo showing the enormity of the crowd at the Barack Obama rally in Washington Square Park last night. Garance quotes the Obama campaign's communications directors as saying that 23,000 people had pre-registered to attend. Seems plausible. The best guess on crowd size that I can make is that there were many several thousands people there. But that's a shot in the dark because at no point in the evening could I actually view the entire crowd. It's difficult to judge how many people are gathered in place when you can't even tell where the crowd ends. Gates opened at 5, but I've been to enough political rallies to know that it was unlikely for the candidate to take the stage anytime before 6:30, so that's when I planned to arrive. But by the time I got there, the park was so packed that I couldn't even see the people who could see the stage.

In short, the place was packed. The charged-up crowd milled about for some time after the speech was over, and it wasn't until it finally dispersed that I remembered that there's a rather large empty fountain in the middle of Washington Square Park.

Obama's entry song was Kanye West's Touch the Sky, naughty words duly deleted:

I gotta testify, come up in the spot looking extra fly
For the day I die, I'mma touch the sky
Gotta testify, come up in the spot looking extra fly
For the day I die, I'mma touch the sky

Back when they thought pink polo's would hurt the Roc,
Before Cam got the shit to pop, the doors was closed.
I felt like Bad Boy's street team, I couldn't work the Lox (locks).
Now let's go.
Take 'em back to the plan...
Me and my momma hopped in the U-Haul van.
Any pessimists I ain't talked to them,
Plus, I ain't have no phone in my apartment.
Let's take 'em back to the club.
Least about an hour I would stand on line,
I just wanted to dance.
I went to Jacob an hour after I got my advance.
I just wanted to shine.
Jay's favorite line: "Dog, in due time"
Now he look at me, like "Damn, dog, you where I am"
A hip hop legend.
I think I died in an accident, cause this must be heaven.

Now let's take 'em high-igh-igh-igh-igh-igh la la la la la la la
(Top of the world, baby. T-Top of the world)

Back when Gucci was the shit to rock,
Back when Slick Rick got the shit to pop,
I'd do anything to say "I got it".
Damn, them new loafers hurt my pocket.
Before anybody wanted K-West beats,
Me and my girl split the buffet at KFC.
Dog, I was having nervous breakdowns,
Like "Damn, these...

If you know the song, you'll know that's an opportune place for Obama's staff to cut the lyrics.

Making use of a Kanye song was a fairly direct appeal to this somewhat young and urban crowd -- Washington Square Park is pretty much the center of youth culture in New York City, and choosing to hold an event there says something about the crowd you hope to draw. But Touch the Sky in particularly hits the same notes that Obama hits at his stump speech again and again: striving and achievement. The Obama story is one of him and his mom against the world, and he rose up from challenging circumstances to make something great of himself.

The early sections of Obama's speech last night were dedicated to telling that life story. The later sections were filled with hot exhortations about the need to change Washington. Insurance companies need to be stood up to! The Iraq war needs to end, but carefully! Oil and gas companies can't write our national energy policy! Allowing special interest groups to make our legislation is the way Washington operates, he says, and he'll put a stop to it.

And once we create that change in Washington, positive change will ripple out from America across the planet. We'll even, he said last night, solve AIDS in Africa and bring an end to the genocide in Darfur. (I had to laugh at the latter prediction, earning me scornful looks from the people around me.)

Still, that all sounds good. But how exactly is a President Barack Obama going to make these wonderful things happen? That's the question I have asked Obama in my head again and again over the last few months. Maybe that's the subject for another speech, but it's one that I've haven't seen him yet give.

I've heard Obama speak four or five times this election season already, and there's a line that he uses in every speech. Cynics in Washington, he says, accuse him of being a "hope peddler, a hope monger." It's gotten laughs every time I've heard him use it, helped along by a sly chuckle that Obama contributes after saying it.

But I started to fear last night, perched on a fence railing and watching this incredible crowd feed off of Obama mania, that "hope monger" is exactly where he is now as a candidate. "Obama as hope monger" at the Democratic National Convention in 2004 was a powerful call to action. But there's a real risk that just four months out from the Iowa caucuses "Obama as hope monger" leaves the people all riled up with no place to go.