Some of the 10,000 people who attended yesterday’s rally cheer Sen. Barack Obama.

The Providence Journal / Gretchen Ertl

PROVIDENCE

Senator Barack Obama blended themes of optimism and change yesterday with a sharp attack on opponent Hillary Clinton’s vote for the Iraq war, at a presidential campaign rally before an overflow crowd of 10,000 at Rhode Island College.

Obama tailored his stump speech for a Rhode Island audience and drew a deafening swell of cheers for his criticism of Clinton’s 2002 Senate vote authorizing President Bush to invade Iraq.

“Real change isn’t voting for George Bush’s war in Iraq,” Obama said. “And then telling the American people it was actually [a vote] for more diplomacy. The title of the bill was ‘a resolution authorizing the use of the United States armed forces against Iraq.’

“I knew what it was,” he shouted. “Lincoln Chafee knew what it was. It was a vote for war!”

Chafee, the former Rhode Island senator, was the only Republican in the Senate to oppose the resolution. Now an independent, he has endorsed Obama. In Chafee’s upcoming book, he excoriates members of Congress who supported the war, arguing that a vote for the resolution should be “a career-ending lapse in judgment.”

“I opposed this war,” Obama thundered. “Linc opposed this war. And you oppose this war; that’s why I will bring this war to a close when I’m president of the United States.”

The Illinois senator has won 11 Democratic primaries and caucuses in a row.

In his first presidential campaign visit to Providence, Obama attracted the largest political throng in Rhode Island since an outdoor rally 12 years ago by then-president Bill Clinton, which drew some 20,000.

Yesterday, about 5,000 admirers jammed a sweaty RIC field house to capacity for Obama’s 44-minute speech, and another 5,000 gathered outside, braving a cold, wind-driven rain to hear Obama deliver a shortened version of his address.

Standing outdoors under rain, Obama spoke of the U.S. economic slowdown and charged that the Bush administration has not done nearly enough to help people falling behind in mortgages and losing houses to foreclosure.

“People are hurting out there,” said Obama. “People are losing their jobs, they don’t have health care.… it’s hard to save and it’s hard to retire.”

Inside, Obama spoke to a sea of supporters, waving signs and holding cell phone cameras skyward for photos.

Two hours before the speech, the streets near the RIC campus in the city’s Mount Pleasant neighborhood were clotted with traffic. Many Obama supporters parked on side streets a mile or more away and walked through the slush to the campus. Many turned back when they saw the line outside the field house — hundreds of yards long — and realized they would not be able to get inside.

Obama’s rally dwarfed Hillary Clinton’s campaign stop in the same room at RIC last Sunday. Clinton’s crowd, filling just over one-third of the field house, was about 2,000 people, said RIC spokeswoman Jane Fusco. State police and Providence fire officials provided the estimate for Obama’s crowd yesterday.

Obama struck many of his familiar themes throughout his speech, such as providing affordable health care, reforming education and rewarding accomplished teachers with higher pay, offering graduates college grants in exchange for community service and setting the minimum wage to increase with inflation.

“If you work in this country, you should not be poor,” Obama said.

As a sure applause line, Obama attacked President Bush, whose approval rating in Rhode Island, public opinion surveys show, has been under 20 percent for much of the last two years.

“The name George W. Bush will not be on the ballot” in November, he shouted. “It means the failed policies of the last 7½ years — the Katrina and the wiretaps, and the Scooter Libby justice and the Brownie incompetence and the Karl Rove politics — all that will finally be over next year.”

He portrayed Clinton as a political figure who changes positions for expediency, attacking her directly for what he says is a flip-flop on the North American Free Trade Agreement, which was signed into law by Bill Clinton.

“Real change is not calling NAFTA a victory and saying how good it has been for the American people until you decide to run for president. That’s not real change.

“Real change isn’t saying you’ll stand up to lobbyists and special interests, when you’ve taken more money from lobbyists and special interests than any of the Democrats and Republicans running for president,” he said of Clinton.

“Real change is not voting for a bankruptcy bill that makes it harder for families to climb out of debt,” he said. “Now, Senator Clinton and I had a debate back in Las Vegas. She said she voted for this bill but she hoped it wouldn’t pass. I gotta tell ya, that’s not how things work. You don’t want something to pass, you don’t vote for it.”

A week ago, Clinton mocked Obama at RIC over his calls for consensus-building. In remarks repeated many times last week on national news shows, she suggested Obama believes that talking about unity will open the sky and send “celestial choirs” singing.

Obama shot back yesterday.

“I’ve been teased in this campaign a little bit,” he said. “Senator Clinton has said, aw, he talks about hope all the time. In fact I think she was here, right? Right in this building she was saying, ‘he thinks that the clouds will open, you know — he’s so naive.’

“It is true that I talk about hope a lot. I have to. The odds of me standing here are slim.”

As he often does on the stump, Obama spoke of his upbringing by a single mom and his grandparents. “They didn’t have fame or fortune. They gave me love, they gave me an education and they gave me hope.

“I put ‘hope’ on my signs…I wrote a book called The Audacity of Hope. Now, Senator Clinton and others are saying, ‘he peddles false hope. He needs a reality check. He’s a hope-monger.’ The implication is, if you talk about hope, then you must be naive, your head must be in the clouds.”

He spoke of his work in Chicago as a community organizer, and then as a civil rights lawyer and legislator. “I’ve won some battles and I’ve lost some, too,” he said. “Because good intentions are not enough. You’ve got to have political power and political will. You’ve got to be able to build a coalition to make things happen. I know how hard it is because I’ve seen this country turned on itself, how politicians can manipulate in order to make us distrust ourselves, to be suspicious of immigrants, to be suspicious of gay people.

“I’ve seen these things. But here’s what I know, Rhode Island — that nothing worthwhile in this country has ever happened, except somebody, somewhere has been willing to hope.”

The Obama crowd was a reflection of 21st century Rhode Island in all its ethnic, racial and demographic diversity. It included Mike Ryan, of Warwick, a utility executive who was a top aide to former Democratic Gov. J. Joseph Garrahy and the late GOP Sen. John Chafee. Ryan, 56, said he decided to support Obama after long conversations with his daughter, 25-year old Meg Ryan, and his son, Mike Jr., 21.

While many young voters flooded the event, older voters, too, attended, with some saying Obama’s quest represents a historic presidential campaign. Tamia Sullivan, 65, of Newport, a retired grocery store manager, said she is excited by Obama’s call for unity to tackle the nation’s problems and end the divisiveness that has gripped American politics.

Twenty-year-old Angel Camacho, of Providence, stood for hours to hear the candidate for whom Camacho will cast his first vote for president.

“I’m looking at issues of the economy, education and the environment,” he said. The psychology student at Community College of Rhode Island said he has watched the debates, but found Obama more impressive in person.

“He’s a powerful speaker,” Camacho said. “He got to my heart.”

smackay@projo.com