75,000 Dream in Portland

On the banks of Portland, Oregon's Willamette River this past Saturday, the largest crowd of this campaign season gathered to hear Barack Obama speak. According to Portland's Fire and Rescue chief, Duane Bray, a staggering 75,000 people packed Tom McCall Waterfront Park. Not a bad symbolic boost heading into Tuesday's Oregon primary.

More symbols? As Frank Rich pointed out in his column this week, Obama, should he go on to become the party nominee, will deliver his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention exactly 45 years to the day that Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "I Have a Dream" speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. The next day, John McCain, who voted against the creation of a holiday honoring Dr. King (he had a bad dream?) before he voted for it, will turn 72 years old.

The Democrats will gather in Denver--the city whose altitude will launch untold "mile-high" metaphors. The Republicans, meanwhile, will disembark in the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport, and run something of a gauntlet past tempting men's rooms for fear they'll wind up in the one made famous by another very bad Republican dream, Larry Craig.