I’m a little late with this, but I joined about 37,500 students and activists at USC with Antonio Villaraigosa, Kamala Harris, Jerry Brown, Barbara Boxer, Jamie Foxx, Kal Penn, the Trojan Marching Band, Ozomatli and President Obama. It was one of the several Moving America Forward rallies happening on college campuses across the country.

I don’t think I’ll be going to these anymore. They take up a substantial portion of the day and don’t offer much insight except on the margins. Anyway, you can read or even watch the speeches, and the resulting stories are basically banal. Nevertheless, to the extent I can glean anything from this, here goes:

• There were apparently people lining up for this event, which started a bit after noon, at 6am. The sheer numbers involved do suggest that talk of an “enthusiasm gap” is less grounded in reality than the expectations. But I do think a lot of attendees just wanted to see a President. A classroom of magnet school students hanging out by the press riser pretty much all said that.

• I’m amazed they gave Jamie Foxx the mike to emcee this event. He managed to introduce every candidate on the statewide ticket without mentioning that they’re running for anything. He spent most of the day reiterating that he was at the Inauguration and how great it was. He also referenced a recent Obama appearance at a town hall where a woman told the President that he was “exhausted defending you,” lead the crowd in a rousing chorus of “we’re not exhausted.” Hell of a rallying cry!

• One of the bigger applause lines of the entire day was Mayor Villaraigosa announcing that he got federal funding for “a light rail line down Crenshaw Boulevard.” People love public transit.  [cont’d]

• At least one protester with GetEQUAL managed to smuggle in a “Repal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” sign. The guy was pretty close to the stage, and held up the sign throughout the candidate speeches. Obama acknowledged him, going off script when he said “we’re fighting to end Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.” I assume he means in the Congressional and not judicial sphere. Kal Penn also mentioned the need to “repeal DOMA and Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.”

• Jerry Brown quoted both Spiro Agnew (calling Republicans “nattering nabobs of negativism”) and Mahatma Gandhi in about 3 minutes.

• The President’s speech was very familiar, with the bits about going forward by putting the car in D, and going backward by putting it in R, chants of “Yes We Can,” and how “America plays for first place,” and all the rest. It’s a stump speech, you’ve seen it before.

I would just say this. The biggest applause came for the appointment of Sonia Sotomayor and student loan reform. A pleasantly solid liberal Supreme Court Justice, and a pleasantly progressive reform policy that helped students. The biggest boos were when the President mentioned the Citizens United decision, and the orgy of spending that resulted. There was also quite an outpouring for getting 100,000 troops out of Iraq, which you can say is a bright-side way of putting it, but still moved things away from the policies of the past.

Here was the close:

Change is always hard. And if our parents, if our grandparents, if our great-grandparents, if they have listened to the cynics 50 years ago, 100 years ago, 200 years ago, we wouldn’t be here today.

Think about it. This country was founded on 13 colonies coming together to do what had never been done before — declaring a revolution, throwing off the yoke of tyranny, battling the biggest, baddest empire on Earth. And then, they decided, you know, we’re going to try to form a new type of government. And they wrote on paper, they said in their declaration, “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal” — (applause) — “that we are all endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” (Applause.)

The cynics didn’t believe it. And then, when we had to perfect that union and fight a civil war, the cynics didn’t believe it. They didn’t think we could free the slaves. If our ancestors had given up, if they had given up to the cynics, we couldn’t have gotten through war; we couldn’t have gotten through depression; we would not have been able to battle and finally achieve civil rights and women’s rights and workers’ rights. (Applause.)

That is the spirit we have to summon today. The journey we began together was not just about putting a President in the White House. It was about building a movement for change. (Applause.) It was about realizing the promise of the United States of America, and understanding that if we’re willing to work for it, there’s nothing we cannot achieve. (Applause.)

So I need you to keep on believing. I need you to keep hoping. And if you knock on some doors and make some phone calls, and keep marching and keep organizing, we won’t just win this election; we are going to restore the American Dream for not just some, but for every — every — everybody in this great land. (Applause.)

I think what the “cynics” want, if I read this right, are more policies like student loan reform, Sonia Sotomayor, and withdrawing from Iraq. They want to know that the President is on their side. They are mindful of the challenges and the difficulties, but they want to believe in something other than “not as bad as the other guys.”