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"FacebookPinterest\n\n From the press riser stage right of the podium where Obama is about to give the last speech of his brief bus tour\u2014where the platform is so hot it's literally burning my feet through my shoes\u2014I see several of his \"Forward\" placards being used as fans, a gingham shirted volunteer making his way through the crowd with a spray bottle to squirt down the overheated, and at least one Terrible Towel serving as a sunshade. Already, an elderly black woman in a blue dress is on a stretcher being treated for heat exhaustion. It's impressive that 6,500 people (that's the official estimate, anyway) would come out to see a politician give a stump speech in the unbearable heat\u2014but what's noteworthy about this crowd, gathered on the lawn at Carnegie Mellon University, is that many of the rally goers are old, and luckily for Obama, they came here for reasons other than that terrible jobs report.\n\n\"Thank you for my health care!\" one shouts from the side of the stage where seniors are sitting and watching him speak. His biggest applause line, save for the grand finale, is when he says \"the law I passed is here to stay.\" After the event, Judith Totty, a retired English and film teacher who came to the rally with her daughter and is volunteering on the campaign, says the people she's calling for the campaign always want to talk health care.\n\n\"When I've been calling my elderly friends especially, with Obamacare, it's very important for them. I've been working for Obama's campaign, doing a lot of phone calls,\" she says. \"A woman with a six year old was telling me the other day, 'I'm so happy this went through because we're not going to be bankrupt. We're not going to lose everything. My daughter can go to the doctor again.'\"\n\nBehind Totty, Paula Schultz and her husband Randy, a disabled Air Force Veteran, are posing for a photo in front of a fence painted to welcome Obama to CMU. \"We're living a lot of these situations. I'm going to be 65 in September, my husband is a disabled veteran trying to get the best care he can at the veterans hospital ... I'm getting scared about health care,\" she says. \"My husband and I went on vacation to Mexico, just a month ago, and we met people from all around the world and we engaged in conversation and they had seen more of the world than us. One woman from Germany told us she didn't have to pay for her education because it was provided by the government, she had already had some form of health care, so they have more disposable income and their money buys more things for them, in other countries as well as their own. We'd like to see this country be the strongest in the world and have more security for people our age and young people like yourself,\" she says.\n\nOver by the first aid tent, Dr. Pauline Long, is shaded in a wide brimmed straw hat, fanning herself with a sign. \"Health care was major for me. I retired early and I pay $700 a month for my health care and I know that for some of the people that's not a possibility,\" she says. \"My husband passed away 5 years ago. He had a heart condition and we were at the million dollar limit. We were luckily able to change careers before he reached his million dollar limit, but the last operation he was having before his heart transplant came to a million dollars. So had he lived, we would have been in a bind. Those are issues that are really troubling to me. It's not just something I read in the newspaper.\"\n\n\"I just love him,\" she says, turning her attention back to the president, \"and I knew when I heard he was coming that if I had to be standing on top of one of those little houses I'd be somewhere near where he was.\"\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nRead more on Death Race 2012:\n\n[Back When Presidents Looked Cool: George H.W. Bush\n\n](http://www.gq.com/news-politics/blogs/death-race#ixzz1zsqOYsiT)\n\n[Today's Political Firestorm: New Month, New Batch of Job Numbers\n\n](http://www.gq.com/news-politics/blogs/death-race#ixzz1zsqTqpzg)\n\n[Responding to the Jobs Numbers in Poland (Ohio)\n\n](http://www.gq.com/news-politics/blogs/death-race#ixzz1zsqZBSu0)\n\nHunger Reads: Checking in On Campaign Strategy\n\nFollow Marin Cogan on Twitter for more updates from the political scene in Washington and on the campaign trail."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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