PHILADELPHIA — Political campaigning lends itself to hyperbole, but a series of speakers warming up the crowd before Hillary Clinton took the stage in Northeast Philadelphia last night were absurd even by those standards.

Speaking to a crowd gathered for a block party outside the Mayfair Diner, one Clinton supporter called President Bush a “moron” while another suggested that America would not be worth living in if Clinton weren’t elected.

“I want to speak seriously for a moment,” thundered Pennsylvania state representative and Clinton supporter, Michael P. McGeehan. “If this country stays on the route we’re going, there will be no jobs for our kids. They’ll be no future for our kids. It won’t be worth the country living in unless we make the choice.”

A high octane Jonathan Saidel, a former Philadelphia contoller, kept yelling, “Who do we want for President of the United States?” Then he would scream directly into the microphone like an crazed heavy metal vocalist, “HILLARY CLINTON!!!”

“When it comes to Tuesday, I don’t want you to walk to the polls,” he told the crowd. “I want you to run like your life depends on it. Because it does… Ain’t gonna be no McCain in the life of my four children.”

He said that Clinton shouldn’t just win, but “crush” in the primary.

Then, in introducing Rep. Allyson Schwartz, he beamed, “it is my pleasure and honor to present someone who fights for us in Washington to vote her conscience of what’s going on in this world and not listening to some moron in the White House. Yeah, I said ‘moron.’ What, are you going to take my pension away?”

Eventually Clinton did make it to the stage, along with Chelsea, Gov. Ed Rendell, and Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter — but none were nearly as entertaining.