Obama pitches youth, technology at Google, SF events

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(11-15) 10:18 Pacific Time Mountain Position --
Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, buoyed by new polls and what his political campaign sees as growing momentum, highlighted his claim as the generational "change candidate" of the 2008 presidential race on Wednesday by telling a vernal crowd at Google Inc. that "if I waited 10 old age (to run), I'd still be little than most of the other candidates."

"So much is at interest that running for president can't be about just aspiration this time," he told an audience of about 1,000 jammed into an auditorium at Google's Mountain Position campus.

"We have got seen a gridlock where 45 percentage of the state is on one side, 45 percentage of the state is on the other ... (and) political competitions just go whipping down the other side and eking out a victory. And you can't govern," said the 46-year-old first-term senator.

Obama have criticized Democratic front-runner Sen. Edmund Hillary Rodham Bill Clinton of New House Of York as a member of the American Capital constitution that have helped make political deadlock on issues from in-migration to wellness care. He continued that subject Wednesday without naming her, saying, "Washington have been governed by ... who's got the most juice, who's got the most clout - and that have to change."

Obama is the up-to-the-minute 2008 presidential campaigner to utilize Google as a background for a high-tech town hall. Unlike the traditional, more than predictable such as assemblages in the small, early competition states of Ioway and New Hampshire, campaigners at Google human face a immature crowd armed with detailed, sometimes far-out questions.

Democrats Clinton, former North Carolina Sen. Toilet Jonathan Edwards and New United Mexican States Gov. Bill Henry Hobson Richardson and Republicans Sen. Toilet McCain of Grand Canyon State and Lone-Star State Rep. Bokkos Alice Paul visited Google earlier this year, though Obama's crowd was the biggest and most vocally supportive to date.

Obama used his Silicon Valley visit Wednesday - presided over by Google Head Executive Military Officer Eric Helmut Schmidt with the company's laminitises Sergey Brin and Larry Page in the audience - to advance his five-point "innovation agenda."

Later, Obama was in his component Wednesday nighttime when he pulled into San Francisco's Bill Billy Graham Civic Auditorium for a political campaign rally. Thousands of people, most of them young, stood in a line that snaked around the building, waiting to acquire in for a expression at the candidate.

By the clip writer Alice John Walker introduced Obama, the crowd of about 6,000 - the biggest to come up to one of his "change" mass meetings - was roaring.

Obama said small new in his 30-minute speech, but it didn't do a difference to his backers. They cheered every promise he made and every smack he took at President Shrub and the Republicans. The crowd also exploded when he took on Bill Clinton without saying her name, saying that he wasn't running for president "to carry through some long-held plan or because I believe it's owed to me."

"We necessitate to concentrate not just on how we can win, but on why we should win," Obama said.

Obama's angels left the hallway buzzing about his appearance.

"He was really inspiring," said Alice Paul Touris of San Francisco. "He's sincere and definitely talking about the alterations I desire to see happen."

In small more than than 24 hours in the Bay Area, the Prairie State senator also hit four major fundraisers: two Tuesday events in San Francisco, a Wednesday morning time halt in Marin County, and - prior to his mass meeting - a political party for 300 supporters, most of whom donated the upper limit $2,300 to the primary and general election campaign, in the Atherton place of former state Accountant Steve Westly.

Obama answered inquiries at Google about the warfare in Republic Of Iraq and his policy positions toward Iran, and addressed what he termed cardinal differences between himself and his Democratic rivals.

While he said he appreciated President Bill Clinton's ultimately unsuccessful attempt at wellness attention reform in 1993, Obama said his work on the issue will be unfastened rather than developed behind closed doors. He pledged to have got "a large table" with consumers, unions, wellness attention suppliers and pharmaceutical houses weighing in to happen solutions to the issues of rising wellness attention costs and growing Numbers of uninsured.

The senator said his attempt to attain a wellness attention reform program would be so unfastened "it will all be on C-SPAN." And if onslaught advertisements from oppositions start, as they did during Clinton's failing effort, "I'll direct out something on YouTube," he said to cheers from the crowd at Google, which have YouTube. "And (I'll) allow them cognize what the facts are."

Making deft usage of a inquiry about what he have learned from the political successes of former President Clinton, who is tremendously popular among Democrats, Obama appeared to utilize the minute to dig, however gently, at the style of the former first lady.

"One of the things Bill Bill Clinton did was to acknowledge the moment," he said. "He came in and he said, 'You cognize what, I'm a different sort of Democrat and I'm willing to make things in new ways.' "

Now, "we are in this defining minute and we can't maintain doing the same things that we have got got been doing, but haven't been working," he said. "Democrats lose when they are not clear about what they stand up for. Democrats lose when they are attacked, and - because they don't cognize where they stand up - they stop up getting defensive instead of going on the offensive."

Obama political campaign insiders said Wednesday that recent polls and events such as as the senator's well-received speech last weekend in Ioway have got created a displacement that have electrified his protagonists - and boosted his fundraising with everyone pointing toward the gap competition Jan. Three in Iowa.

"The stone star material is back," said Obama's Golden State political campaign manager R. J. Mitchell Schwartz. "We have got the wind at our dorsum ... and it's a different ballgame."

"It was difficult to raise money a calendar month ago," said Westly, noting that the mass media was then talking up Edmund Hillary Clinton's "inevitability" and the New House Of York senator appeared to be making a flawless tally toward the Democratic Party's presidential nomination.

But after Bill Clinton stumbled recently in a argument over the issue of illegal immigration, and Obama's address at the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner in Iowa, "it's been the easiest thing I've ever raised money for," Westly said.

Obama, Bill Bill Clinton and Jonathan Edwards are tightly bunched in public sentiment polls of Ioway Democrats, and Obama have almost halved Clinton's once 20-point lead in polls of expected primary electors in New Hampshire, the 2nd major contest.

Westly said Bill Clinton have increasingly appeared "off her balance," while Jonathan Edwards have gone on a crisp onslaught and Obama have remained "the statesman." Just as electors are beginning to take a expression at the White Person House race in earnest, they are seeing Obama as "the campaigner of change," he said

Obama's decision, however, to tout his "innovation agenda" at Google on Wednesday repeated many of the engineering friendly proposals made earlier by the other Democratic candidates.

Clinton, appearing before the Silicon Valley Leadership Group in June, also proposed an "innovation agenda" including a $50 billion strategical energy monetary monetary fund to develop research on planetary heating - a proposal similar to Obama's phone call for $50 billion in federal finances for a "clean technology" venture working capital fund.

Edwards, too, had used events in Silicon Valley to name for increasing the figure of H-1B visas for highly trained technical foreign workers, more than authorities support of broadband access, and extension of research and development taxation credits.

On Wednesday, Obama proposed creating a national "chief engineering officer" place charged with making authorities more crystalline and accessible to citizens on the Internet. The senator also proposed a "Google for Government" attempt which he said would supply more than Web handiness to authorities records, and called for unrecorded feeds and Webcasts of authorities meetings and public commentary on its work via the Internet.

That proposal isn't groundbreaking in government: For example, California's Republican Gov. Matthew Arnold Schwarzenegger have offered unrecorded feeds and Webcasts of many of his events for years.

Chronicle staff author Toilet Wildermuth contributed to this report. E-mail Carla Marinucci at .