"Iowans Take Their Time in Open Race"

NY Times:

NEW HAMPTON, Iowa, Oct. 5 — A broad grin spread across Senator Barack Obama’s face as he turned to walk away from a city park here on Friday after shaking the last hand and posing for a final photograph with a clutch of supporters.

Given the political news of the week, at least back in Washington, why the smile?

“It’s not over,” Mr. Obama said, pausing for a moment to answer an open-ended question about the state of the campaign. “Presumably if they thought the race was over, they wouldn’t be taking the time to come to a town hall meeting to talk about the presidential race.”

If the chase for the Democratic nomination appears to have reached a stage of inevitability, if Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York is becoming a runaway front-runner as national polls might suggest and some of her rivals are beginning to fear, the word has not reached the voters here in Chickasaw County.

It is not that the 200 or so people who turned out to see Mr. Obama on Friday morning are oblivious to such prognostications. As ardent political enthusiasts, many of them obsessively follow them. But the voters here have not necessarily become believers, particularly before they have a chance to size up the competition when it comes to town.

“The one thing about Iowa is that we always have the ability to bring a reality check to the country,” said Randall Rolph, 56, who came with his son to see Mr. Obama, of Illinois, and plans to return Sunday when Mrs. Clinton arrives for a campaign stop.

Still, three months before the Iowa caucuses open the nominating contests on both sides of the ticket, a fresh sense of urgency is at hand for Mr. Obama as he tries to change the dynamic of the race. Mrs. Clinton, who started the year perceived to be trailing Mr. Obama and former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina in Iowa, has crept up in state polls and turned it into a three-way fight in the state, adding even more importance to the efforts by her opponents here.

On a four-day tour through Iowa this week, Mr. Obama continued to draw large crowds. He sharpened his message about his early opposition to the war, he devoted more time to voters’ questions, and he talked increasingly about the need for Democrats to choose a candidate who is honest and, ultimately, able to bring about change.

With a new sales pitch, he acknowledged that he was “behind in the national polls,” and asked Iowans for their support.

“If you’ve decided that you’re supporting me, don’t keep on waiting, because it’s going to get chilly soon,” Mr. Obama said. “The fact is, all of you are going to decide who the next president of the United States is.”

The Democratic presidential campaign, viewed at ground level in Iowa, is awash in uncertainties. Will Mr. Edwards, who started a 17-county bus tour on Friday, hold the supporters who propelled him to second place here in 2004? Will Mr. Obama turn his large crowds into real voters? Will Mrs. Clinton’s national advantages assuage concern among some voters who worry how Republicans will go after her in a general election?

Interviews with more than two dozen Democrats here this week suggest that the race remains remarkably unsettled, with voters voicing concern about Mr. Edwards’s viability, Mr. Obama’s experience and Mrs. Clinton’s electability. And several Democrats said they had yet to rule out other candidates, including Senators Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware and Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut and Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico.

“I think anybody who loses Iowa will have an uphill battle from that point forward,” Mr. Edwards said Friday in Cresco. “It applies to any of us.”

In hopes of stirring movement in the race, Mr. Obama delivered a series of speeches to mark the fifth anniversary of the Congressional vote authorizing the Iraq war. At each campaign stop, he reminded voters that he had opposed the war from the outset, unlike many of his rivals.

It remained unclear whether the message was having its intended effect.

Nell Boyd, of Belmont, said she was more interested in bringing the troops home than debating how America went to war. Still, Mrs. Boyd, 55, said she was intrigued by Mr. Obama and two weeks ago made the first political contribution of her life to his campaign.

“Hillary and Obama, it’s between the two of them. Neither one have completely convinced me,” she said, moments after chatting with Mr. Obama in Waterloo. “The part I like about him is honesty. We should stand for that again.”

Many party activists in Iowa are likely to base their decision less on a candidate’s performance at a debate, for example, than on whether they receive personal attention. And the political battalions are fully engaged, with operatives competing intensely to sign up supporters.

The trick is keeping those supporters on board.

Last month, Frank Best, 38, a councilman from Columbus City, was backing Mr. Edwards, as he did in 2004, when he was the campaign’s Louisa County chairman. But one afternoon this week, Mr. Best was formally inducted into the Obama campaign, complete with a short face-to-face meeting with Mr. Obama, who draped his arm around him as they stood with a few other V.I.P. voters moments before a rally began.

“I think he’s the one who can be elected next November,” Mr. Best said, explaining his shift. “That’s a big scare for me, that we could somehow blow this. It’s so important for Democrats to take the White House back again. After everything we’ve been through for the last eight years, we need to do it.”

The Obama campaign has studied the collapse of Howard Dean’s Iowa campaign in 2004, when he carried only two counties. At least once every three weeks, the Obama campaign calls supporters, making sure they are still committed.

On Thursday evening, as Mr. Obama headed to a rally in Decorah, his caravan detoured in Oelwein, home to one of his 31 state field offices.

“Frankly, you can be better messengers for us than a television ad from me or paid organizers,” Mr. Obama said in an impromptu pep talk to a team of volunteers making calls in a storefront office. “When people know that their neighbors and their friends are reaching out, that’s what will make a difference.”

Then, he reminded the dozen or so volunteers that he, too, had been a community organizer and that they were a central reason he remained optimistic in the face of the battle ahead.

“One by one,” Mr. Obama said, climbing into the backseat of his van. “This is old school.”