"Edwards, back in the South, warmed by sun and crowds"

LA Times, Top of the Ticket political blog:

John Edwards returned to South Carolina today from another distant third-place finish, this one among the chilled, leafless trees of New Hampshire. It was a lot warmer as he stepped off the charter plane into the balminess of Liberty, S.C.

His staff -- not to mention The Times' Seema Mehta -- seemed rejuvenated in the warm weather as they headed off on a lighter campaign schedule than the typically jammed one he'd been following in recent weeks with half a dozen events crammed in morning till night, not to mention the 36-hour bus tours.

His first couple of days back in the South would be more relaxed. Today, the former North Carolina senator, who was born in South Carolina and handily won the 2004 primaries there, had two “homecoming rallies” on Wednesday. The first came at noon at Clemson University, which Edwards attended for one year and where he was a walk-on on the football team. Then, he had an evening event at a high school in Columbia.

The noon rally had 1,000 people attending in a brick plaza on the university’s sprawling campus under robin’s-egg-blue skies. Everyone who traveled from New Hampshire was in a jovial mood, meandering around the university’s gentle lawns. But the evening rally was insane, truly a homecoming. An amazing drum line from Dreher High School warmed up the overflow crowd of more than 500 ardent supporters.

The Bon Jovi song “Who Says You Can’t Go Home?” was playing as Edwards bounded onto an elevated stage in the school’s cafeteria.

“Man, it’s good to be back in South Carolina,” he told the roaring crowd.

This was the most intense, excited Edwards event Mehta has seen with him on the trail. His 17-minute speech, highlights of his routine stump remarks, came to a halt at least a dozen times, stopped by cheering supporters who made his remarks inaudible. And this is a man who speaks so loudly into a microphone, you rarely have to worry about your tape recorder not catching his remarks.

“One thing I learned growing up in mill towns and mill villages in the south," Edwards said, "including right here in South Carolina, is something all of you learned, which is … you’ve got to be willing to fight for your survival. That’s what this is about.

“You need a president who takes this cause personally, not someone who reads it in book. What’s happening here in South Carolina, not someone who has somebody explain to them what’s happening with mills closing, jobs leaving; what’s happening with the school system in South Carolina. You need somebody who understands personally and who takes this battle and this fight personally. I want you to know I was taught from the time I was this big that you never start a fight, but you never walk away from a fight. And we have a fight in front of us!”

South Carolina native Arletta Wilson had never attended a political event before, and was moved to tears by Edwards’ speech, particularly the references to American jobs being moved overseas and the 47 million people in the U.S. who don’t have health insurance.

The 46-year-old Eastover resident belonged to a union, but was laid off and now works at Wal-Mart with her husband Larry, 45. Larry was raised by his grandmother who toiled in a mill, and identified with Edwards’ invoking his father's and grandparents’ work in mills.

“Everything he said is the truth,” Larry Wilson said. “Everybody else is more worried about getting elected than what actually matters. He cares about what matters.”

So it was a good day back in the South for the former senator.

"Calif. Primary: Clinton Relies On Establishment, Obama On Indies"

NBC 11 (CA), with video:

With the California presidential primary just 27 days away, candidates Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama are taking different paths to what they hope will be victory.

Clinton is relying on a list of the state's biggest political heavyweights, NBC11's Mike Luery reported.

Calif. Primary Just 27 Days AwayObama is trying to attract the youngest voters, and those who call themselves independent or even Republican.The Clinton campaign has spent months building a list of supporters entrenched in the state Democratic Party establishment.Fabian Nunez, the speaker of the California Assembly, is the national co-chair for Clinton's campaign.Dianne Feinstein, the senior U.S. senator, has officially backed Clinton.San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaragosa are backing her as well.Meanwhile, Obama has attracted standing-room-only crowds at large California venues, such as the Civic Auditorium in San Francisco, for much of the last year.Independents and college students have made up large portions of the crowds.He surged to victory on the backs of independent voters in Iowa.California independents can vote in the Democratic primary, which could be a big help to the senator from Illinois.What it all adds up to, Luery reported, is that for the first time in three decades, California is a prime-time player in presidential politics.In 1972, George McGovern won the California Democratic primary, allowing him to clinch the party nomination.California has not been kingmaker (or queenmaker) since then.For Obama and Clinton, the Golden State is critical."The fact that California is in play puts Hillary Clinton front and center of this election," said Nunez."I think that now we've moved the Feb. 5 primary up, I think it's going to be one of the key states," said Obama supporter James Shelby.All this is happening even as voters throughout the state mark their absentee ballots.On the Republican side, independents are barred from the GOP primary in California.Analysts said that could hurt John McCain, whose big win in New Hampshire came largely from independent voters."(Voters) may sit it out and wait for him and they could try to vote in the Democratic party and try to skew who they would like to see him run against," said Barbara O'Connor with the Institute for the Study of Politics and Media.O'Connor said the Republican rules will likely benefit Rudy Giuliani, who has a strong organization in California.

The candidates may all start arriving as soon as next week to get the votes and the big piles of California campaign cash that will be needed to get to the White House, Luery reported.

Barack Obama

"Nevada Savors Its Place as Maker of Momentum"

NY Times:

LAS VEGAS — Scores of college students fanned out in neighborhoods across this city Wednesday, phone banks buzzed with newly minted volunteers and endorsements were proffered as the Democratic presidential candidates ratcheted up the volume in this once-quiet caucus state.

Next in line on the Democratic calendar, Nevada was vaulted overnight into the position of breaking a tie, at least for now, after the victory of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday. The campaigns of Mrs. Clinton and Senator Barack Obama, who won the Iowa caucuses last week, seemed poised for a sanguinary struggle in the Jan. 19 caucuses, and Mr. Obama was scheduled to arrive here on Friday.

The Clinton and Obama camps rushed in volunteers and staff members from Iowa, furiously opened new field offices and saturated the airwaves with radio advertisements in Spanish and television spots promoting their health care plans.

For Mrs. Clinton, efforts on her behalf in Nevada intensified last week after her third-place finish in Iowa. Campaign staff members here impressed upon volunteers that they were direly needed. With her victory in New Hampshire, Mrs. Clinton, who long ago collected the institutional support of her party here — and until recently enjoyed a double-digit lead in the polls — is now seeking to build on her newfound momentum.

“We always knew Nevada would be important as the first Western state,” said Hilarie Grey, a spokeswoman for Mrs. Clinton here. “We can be the state that swings the momentum in an entirely different way.”

Mr. Obama won an endorsement Wednesday morning from the highly influential Culinary Workers Union local at a raucous news conference here in Las Vegas, where more than 100 members began chanting and yelling at what quickly became an Obama rally.

After praising the other Democrats for fighting for “the Las Vegas dream,” D. Taylor, the secretary and treasurer of the union and its public face, gave the nod to Mr. Obama.

Mr. Taylor celebrated something that Nevada residents have enjoyed for months, candidates who actually show up in the state. “It’s been exciting,” he said. “For the first time I know of in Nevada, dishwashers, cooks, housekeepers, cocktail servers, bartenders from all different walks of life” had access to candidates.

The union, which has about 60,000 members, is extremely influential in the Democratic stronghold of Clark County, which includes Las Vegas, and hopes to play a major role in the race, where Mrs. Clinton has had the edge for months. Alluding to Nevada’s racial diversity in relation to Iowa and New Hampshire, Mr. Taylor said, “We’re not just white bread here; we got pumpernickel, we’ve got whole wheat and we’ve got rye.”

Mr. Obama is counting on a highly organized cadre of enthusiastic supporters — he has nearly double the number of field offices of any other candidate — to edge him toward another victory.

In North Las Vegas on Wednesday, an Obama field office was buzzing with activities and people came in from the streets looking for yard signs and T-shirts. (“Tell Mama Vote Obama” remained on the wall, and there was not a sign for the taking.)

“Senator Obama has invested heavily into this state,” said Shannon Gilson, a spokeswoman for his campaign here. “We aren’t taking anything for granted.”

Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, perhaps trying to distract from the powerful union endorsement, made much hay Wednesday morning of its endorsement by Representative Shelley Berkley, whose Congressional district encompasses Las Vegas.

Mr. Obama, of Illinois, and Mrs. Clinton, of New York, have ventured into parts of Nevada that have traditionally shunned Democrats, like Elko in the north. Statewide, Mr. Obama has 11 offices total, and Mrs. Clinton has 6, including two she opened since the New Year here.

The efforts are boisterous extensions of what the Clinton and Obama campaigns have been quietly building as the rest of the nation kept its eyes on Iowa and New Hampshire.

Nevada, chosen by the Democratic Party to hold an early contest long before numerous other states decided to move their primaries to Feb. 5, has been largely overshadowed by Iowa, New Hampshire and, to a lesser degree, South Carolina.

(Republicans also have caucuses here on Jan. 19, but they are nonbinding and have been largely ignored by all but Mitt Romney and Representative Ron Paul.)

In Nevada candidates will find a booming state with a population far more concerned with infrastructure and traffic than farm subsidies and family values, and one bedeviled by some of the highest foreclosure rates in the nation.

Health care, the theme of advertising by both Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton, is the issue of the day here, along with the Iraq war. John Edwards, who pulled workers out of the state early in the campaign, has had a harder time getting traction.

“There are no real social services here,” said David Damore, a political scientist at the University of Nevada. “So to come here and tell people they need to care about the poor is not a winning strategy.”

Volunteers have been clocking phone banks for multiple shifts a day, canvassing neighborhoods not only to ferret out potential voters, but also to educate people on how a caucus works. While only about 9,000 people participated in the 2004 caucuses, the state’s Democratic Party is bracing for far higher numbers.

The Democrats are heavily concentrated in Clark County, with much of the rest of the state a Republican stronghold. But in recent months, Democratic voter registration has passed that of Republicans, and Nevada is a genuine swing state.

“The political dynamic is closer to New Hampshire than Iowa,” Dr. Damore said. “It is a place that is in transition from Old West, libertarian, small-state mind-set to ‘Hey, we are a major player,’ with gaming and politics. The Democrats have made the interior West the place to win, and this is a winnable state.”

Volunteers appear tireless. On Tuesday, Olivia Brice, a Clinton volunteer, stared intently at Eric Smith as if Ms. Brice could hypnotize him into ceasing his tirade against her candidate.

“I have nothing against her except for her last name,” said Mr. Smith, an unemployed casino worker, as he lectured Ms. Brice, one of scores of college students and other campaign volunteers who have poured into Nevada in recent weeks, giving up holidays to campaign.

A woman, a potential Clinton supporter who crouched nervously behind her half-opened front door, said, “I just hear everybody going with Barack.”

Ms. Brice replied: “That’s not true, Vivian. The only thing that matters is what is happening here in Nevada.”

Barack Obama

Obama: "Making your mark on the world is hard" (video)

HipHopForObama, video (07:08):

July 12, 2006, Senator Obama spoke at the Campus Progress Annual Conference. He spoke of his time as a community organizer on the south side of Chicago. He told a story of when things didn't go as well as he'd expected and he felt disappointed and discouraged. He said:"Making your mark on the world is hard. If it were easy, everybody would do it. But it's not. It takes patience, it takes commitment, and it comes with plenty of failure along the way. The real test is not whether you avoid this failure, because you won't. it's whether you let it harden or shame you into inaction, or whether you learn from it; whether you choose to persevere."

It hit me. That's exactly what we need to do now. Persevere. In the face of a perceived failure, we should learn from it and move on to the next challenge we face. That challenge is Nevada. You can do your part now to help out in Nevada by making phone calls to Nevada voters and encouraging them to caucus for Barack next week on January 19th. It's a very simple and straight forward process that anyone with some time and motivation can do. You can get started by going here.

Barack Obama

"Turning It Around"

WaPo, page one:

Down in polls after an Iowa loss, Hillary Clinton had no victory speech for New Hampshire. But then an unexpected thing happened: She won.--In a campaign run by conference calls, this one stood out. It was Dec. 2, just a month before the Iowa caucuses, and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton was furious. She did not yell, but her voice, serious and deep, bristled with irritation over how things were going for her in Iowa.

Iowans were not getting her message, she complained, and her staff did not seem to grasp the depth of the problem. "Our communications just isn't measuring up to our field and fundraising," Clinton said, according to participants. She snapped at aides trying to reassure her. When campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle promised a new Iowa plan by day's end, Clinton groused that she had been asking for one for weeks. Solis Doyle flew to Des Moines the next day and checked in to the Embassy Suites for the duration.

The crisis in the Clinton camp would deepen in the coming weeks as the New York senator and national front-runner headed to a devastating defeat in Iowa, only to rebound with a surprising comeback victory Tuesday in New Hampshire. The dramatic swings of fortune were classic Clinton, the latest manifestation of a boom-and-bust cycle that has helped define Hillary and Bill Clinton for the past 16 years. From defeat comes victory, from adversity comes triumph -- it was a familiar narrative filled with moments of anger, grievance and vindication.

The path to the presidency is rarely smooth, but the turmoil of the past few weeks disrupted what had appeared to be an extraordinarily methodical march to the Democratic nomination. A campaign built on a strategy of establishing that a woman was experienced enough to be president succeeded so much that suddenly Clinton became the symbol of status quo running against the agent of change, Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.). Lulled into false confidence by a gusher of money and sky-high poll numbers, the Clinton team recognized the threat late and was forced to retool literally on the fly as it jetted from Iowa to New Hampshire last Thursday night.

Along the way came the sorts of critical strategic choices and internal debates that often characterize high-level campaigns, particularly in Clinton world, according to an array of campaign insiders interviewed in recent weeks.

Bill Clinton and Mark Penn, the campaign's chief strategist, repeatedly agitated for an early assault on Obama, only to run into resistance from other advisers and campaign officials in Iowa and New Hampshire who thought it would backfire, according to Clinton advisers.

Howard Wolfson, the communications director, pressed to find ways to humanize the candidate, while Penn thought that was not the highest priority and focused instead on proving how tough she is, several advisers said. At one point, they said, Penn and media consultant Mandy Grunwald had engaged in so many "raging debates," as one put it, that they had stopped speaking.

By the last few days in New Hampshire, Clinton was no longer soliciting advice from her aides so much as telling them what to do. She sharpened her attack on Obama, portrayed him as a phony and fired back passionately in a debate Saturday night. She began mapping out a staff shake-up on the assumption that she would lose New Hampshire. She was no longer the inevitable candidate.

"Right after Iowa there was a lot of frustration," said Robert Zimmerman, a top Clinton fundraiser who tried to reassure her donors. "But then she seemed to turn a corner. She was going after primary voters, not fighting the general election. Since Saturday, they've been calling me, saying, 'It's about time. Why didn't this happen earlier?' "

But in the end, it may have been the exhaustion and stress of the moment that helped save her. Having been told so many times to reveal a little more of her personal side, she let down her guard on election eve in response to a question about how she was doing, choking up with emotion as she talked about how important the election is to the country.

Within 24 hours, New Hampshire voters -- especially women -- were streaming to the polls to vote for her, shocking everyone, including the candidate. Clinton had two prepared speeches, one for a "big defeat" and one for a "close defeat," an aide said. No victory speech had been written. Several top strategists agreed among themselves to resign if she lost.

"Everybody has a near-death experience," another adviser said. Now they hope that is all it was.

* * *

The campaign buses rolled past the Main Street Cafe and Bob's Barber Shop before pulling into the Jackson County Fairgrounds in Maquoketa, Iowa. Onto the stage bounded a woman who in many ways would be unrecognizable to those who had known her only as first lady.

The Hillary Clinton of the 1990s gave smart but turgid speeches, a little distant or condescending, and rarely engaged an audience in an emotional way. While her husband would enthusiastically shake every hand after an event, she sometimes went to wait in the car.

The Hillary Clinton of Maquoketa, Iowa, however, pumped up her crowd with rousing rhetoric and eagerly hit the rope line, posing for pictures, signing autographs and telling stories about singing to daughter Chelsea when she was young or banning smoking in the White House.

It is sometimes easy to forget the transformation Clinton has undergone in the seven years since Bill Clinton left the Oval Office. Once she railed about the "vast right-wing conspiracy"; now she boasts about working with Republicans in the Senate. The implausibility of a former first lady running for her husband's old job has evaporated. The main goal as Clinton began her campaign a year ago was to make it seem like the most natural thing that she would be the next president.

"I'm in to win," she said in her kickoff speech, her first real slogan of the campaign. But if the quotation on her Web site and in headlines nationwide signaled determination, it said nothing about why she was in beyond her own ambition. It did not say she was in to remake the country or ensure health care or end the war in Iraq. She was in to win.

And for the next nine months, she seemed to be succeeding. She deflected calls by the antiwar left to apologize for her 2002 vote to authorize the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, overcame Obama's initial fundraising edge and easily dispensed with every debate. Heading into fall with a lead of 33 percentage points in national polls, she was being described as "inevitable" even as aides insisted that they did not have an "inevitability strategy."

Her campaign team blended loyalists from both her White House and Senate days. At the top were the Big Five -- Penn, the pollster and strategist who helped orchestrate Bill Clinton's reelection in 1996; Grunwald, the admaker who worked on the original 1992 campaign; Solis Doyle, who has been at Hillary Clinton's side since the beginning; Wolfson, a key adviser since her first Senate campaign; and Neera Tanden, a policy aide in her White House and Senate offices. The five formed a de facto governing council without a clear chain of command, an organizational structure that chafed at several of them.

Others in the inner circle included campaign chairman Terence R. McAuliffe, former White House aides Harold Ickes and Sidney Blumenthal and others. But many veterans of her husband's team were kept at a distance. "There were a lot of us revolving around the perimeter, but I don't know if anyone really penetrated the perimeter," said one former Bill Clinton aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid alienating her. "We got spun like everybody else got spun."

Penn's strategy was to make Clinton look presidential -- "one tough woman," as the campaign put it. He looked to the model of Britain's "Iron Lady," Margaret Thatcher. But behind the scenes, a debate raged over whether to go after Obama.

"We should have taken Obama out earlier," a rueful campaign adviser said last week. "We should have taken him out when we were in a position of strength. We would have taken some flak, but we should have done it."

Bill Clinton argued the same thing, venting in private that the media were giving Obama a free pass and that the young senator was not what he was presenting himself to be. Penn, too, pushed for highlighting contrasts with Obama, as did some outside advisers who sent in e-mails and memos. "I don't understand how she let him walk off with Bill Clinton's message" of hope and change, said one former White House aide. "You can't beat him if you don't hit him, and you can't just nick him, you really have to beat him."

But the rest of her team resisted, especially in Iowa. "They were like, 'She can't go negative, she can't go negative, she can't go negative,' " recalled another person familiar with the debate. Those in Iowa thought it would turn off voters, recalling how they walked away from Howard Dean and Richard A. Gephardt after they savaged each other in 2004. Other strategists worried that Clinton as a woman had a harder time going negative and would look "shrill or bitchy," as one put it.

"Hillary Clinton in the role of attack dog only plays into the most negative of the caricatures people have about her," said Mickey Kantor, the 1992 Clinton campaign chairman and former commerce secretary who advises the senator. "It's not fair, but life's not fair."

* * *

As soon as she finished talking, her staff knew it was a problem, though they could not imagine just how much of one. Clinton's confusing and contradictory answer during an Oct. 30 debate in Philadelphia to a question about granting driver's licenses to illegal immigrants touched off the beginning of what Kantor calls "the trough period" of the campaign.

Advisers quickly huddled about what to do and decided that the image of all those other candidates pounding on Clinton would backfire on them the same way Republican Rick Lazio was panned for walking close to her during a debate during their Senate race in 2000. To drive that home, they cobbled together a video called "The Politics of Pile On."

But it was not a repeat of Lazio. Instead, the response seemed to fuel the impression that Clinton tries to play it both ways and the campaign's efforts to draw sympathy for her flopped.

During a speech at her alma mater, Wellesley College, Clinton talked of competing in the "all-boys club of presidential politics," and Bill Clinton a few days later compared the criticism of his wife to the Swift-boat attacks on Sen. John F. Kerry in 2004. Suddenly, the "tough woman" looked as if she were playing the gender card.

The streak of bad news continued. An Iowa college student reported that the Clinton campaign gave her a question to ask at a campaign event and Obama received strong reviews for a powerful speech at the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner in Des Moines.

Clinton's confident performance in the next debate, in Las Vegas on Nov. 15, earned her little bounce, while Obama's own confused answer to the same immigration question went largely unnoticed. When The Washington Post published a poll Nov. 20 showing Obama up by four percentage points in Iowa, it sent a shock wave through the campaign and Penn argued furiously to colleagues that the survey was off base.

Hillary and Bill Clinton became increasingly angry about the cascading events. At an off-the-record dinner Dec. 1 with members of the Des Moines Register staff they got an earful from the Iowans about their lack of understanding of the state. The Clintons were told that their field operatives were not armed with talking points about their candidate or, for that matter, about Obama.

That led to the tense conference call the next day with the Big Five and a handful of mid-level aides. Clinton went on the offensive after the call. At a campaign stop in Cedar Rapids a few hours later, she articulated for the first time what she and her husband saw as Obama's greatest weakness -- that he is all talk and no action. Voters in Iowa, she told reporters, must choose "between someone who talks the talk and somebody who's walked the walk."

Aides, meanwhile, scrambled to produce the talking points she demanded. One file they assembled against Obama disputed his assertion that he had not had lifelong ambitions to be president. An opposition researcher found anecdotal evidence that, on the contrary, he had said he wanted to be president when he was in kindergarten. No one questioned whether that detail might come across as overkill. And in the end, it proved the butt of many jokes and shook the campaign into retreating again from a direct confrontation.

* * *

Clinton headquarters in Iowa was located in a nondescript office park in the East Village section of Des Moines, decorated with hand-painted signs such as "Give 'Em Hill." The days began with a meeting known as a standup in the main open area of the office. Teresa Vilmain, the campaign's state director, told the assembled throng to clap twice if they could hear her, and then someone took a turn leading the group in a cheer -- "kind of like summer camp," as one staffer put it.

In one such call-and-response, the leader shouted out a word or phrase and the crowd was supposed to follow with a loud grunt.

H (unh)

HRC (unh)

Let's Help Her Win (unh)

The Presidency (unh)

A respected operative with deep knowledge of Iowa, Vilmain was brought in months earlier to replace another director and impose order on the operation. She developed an elaborate field apparatus and built a list of 86,000 supporters rated 1 (strong) or 2 (leaning). It was a list that skewed to older women, including more than 1,000 over the age of 90. Vilmain built a model on the assumption that 160,000 voters would caucus, meaning that if they could get the bulk of their 1s and 2s out, Clinton would win.

But Vilmain expressed frustration over not getting more resources and especially time from Bill Clinton. Solis Doyle arrived to set up shop in an office built just before her arrival and worked quickly to make sure Vilmain had everything she needed. The campaign had been using Bill Clinton mainly for fundraising and was already moving to shift him to more campaigning in Iowa.

The former president was seething over what he was seeing. When a campaign fundraiser took him aside after a Philadelphia event, Clinton grew visibly agitated at what he heard. The fundraiser, Mark A. Aronchik, told Clinton that he had spent time in Iowa and that voters there did not relate to the candidate personally.

"He was really bothered by the fact that not only had he heard that from me, but he had heard it from others," Aronchik said. Clinton reassured Aronchik that the campaign planned to send a wave of surrogates.

Clinton then launched into what was becoming a common refrain in private and, eventually, in public, complaining bitterly that the media had skewed coverage of the contest. "How in the world has she been defined as removed and unemotional and detached?" he asked. "That's just wrong."

More small gaffes continued to plague the campaign. Two volunteers were ousted for forwarding e-mails suggesting falsely that Obama is a Muslim, and Clinton's New Hampshire co-chairman, Billy Shaheen, was forced to resign after telling The Post that Republicans would jump on Obama's admitted drug use as a youth. By the end of December, Clinton was still trailing Obama in Iowa.

The campaign decided that the Des Moines Register endorsement would make or break her in Iowa, and Hillary and Bill Clinton peppered the newspaper's editorial board with lobbying calls. If she did not get the endorsement, a top adviser said, the campaign was prepared to start moving resources to New Hampshire.

Around 6 or 7 p.m. on Dec. 15, someone started screaming in Clinton's Des Moines headquarters and pointing to a Web site. The Register had endorsed her. "That was a game-changer," a campaign aide said.

But not enough of one. Clinton aides woke up last Thursday morning convinced they were peaking while Obama had flat-lined. The truth did not become clear until about 7:20 p.m., when the turnout numbers started coming in.

In a "boiler room" set up on the third floor of the Hotel Fort Des Moines, advisers cringed when they heard turnout was 180,000, not 160,000. That meant that the young people Obama had vowed to get to the polls had in fact gone. Then someone yelled out that it would be 220,000 and they knew it was over. The final turnout would be 240,000 -- about 50 percent more than the Clinton model.

After the concession speech, Clinton, stung and exhausted, gathered her staff in a suite. She pushed her way into a jammed room steaming with all the bodies and pent-up frustration, climbed onto a chair, steadied herself by holding McAuliffe's shoulder and vowed to go on. Then after everyone cleared out, she and senior advisers sat down to figure out how.

* * *

Like refugees from a war zone, the Clinton team flew out of Iowa in the middle of the night, taking the wounded campaign to New Hampshire, where they had barely five days to turn things around. Within hours, they were working the phones to do damage control. The team had arranged to staff 175 call centers to target small donors with personal appeals urging continued support. Six conference calls were set up, led in succession by Clinton, her husband and four top campaign officials.

"She spoke very candidly about her pleasures and displeasures with the way things had gone," said Michael Bronfein, a Baltimore financier who was on the call with the candidate. "She reminded us not to lose perspective. That this was a marathon, not a sprint."

Other Clinton fundraisers began registering their concerns. Suzy Tompkins Buell, a top bundler from the San Francisco Bay area, called finance director Jonathan Mantz to say that "Hillary has been too reserved about her emotions." The caution was hurting her in comparison to Obama. "Hillary has to be very guarded, where he's been very open, from his personal indiscretions or his cocaine or whatever," Buell said she told Mantz.

Clinton decided she had to show her passion and at the same time take the gloves off against Obama. On Friday, campaign officials discussed running a negative television ad about him, but decided time was too short before the primary to do so. Instead, she would take him on during a Saturday debate and on the stump.

During the debate, she flashed anger when Obama and former senator John Edwards (N.C.) teamed up against her. Aides initially blanched, worried that she would look like she had lost control. But they came to the conclusion that she looked determined. They also panicked briefly on Monday when word first came via BlackBerry and telephone that the candidate had broken down during a stop at a diner. In fact, she had not cried, but choked up as she talked about how important the race is for her and the country.

Emotions whipsawed throughout those frenetic days. On Saturday, with the approval of the Big Five, Penn publicly issued a memo mocking the Obama campaign for not capitalizing on its Iowa win, titled "WHERE IS THE BOUNCE?" The bounce showed up in the polls the very next day. Bill Clinton defended Penn during a campaign stop Monday night. "It wasn't his best day," Clinton explained. "He was hurt. He felt badly we didn't do better in Iowa."

So did the former president, and now his rage was on display. "It is wrong that Senator Obama got to go through 15 debates trumpeting his superior judgment and how he had been against the war" when he said in 2004 he did not know how he would have voted on the Iraq resolution, Clinton told students at Dartmouth College on the eve of the primary. "Give me a break. This whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen."

No one in the Clinton camp woke up Tuesday thinking she would win New Hampshire. The dining room of the Centennial hotel in Concord, where they were staying, was subdued as Ickes and Grunwald sat down to breakfast and other exhausted aides wandered downstairs for a meeting. Penn and other advisers plotted how they would recover, looking ahead to Super Tuesday on Feb. 5.

Hillary Clinton was busy planning a staff shake-up. No one would be forced out, but other new advisers would be "layered on," including Maggie Williams, her chief of staff when she was first lady; Douglas B. Sosnik, Bill Clinton's White House political director; and Roy Spence, an advertising ace and longtime Clinton friend. The question was whether to announce the moves as votes came in to shift the story line away from the defeat.

And then a funny thing happened. She won. Clinton was as surprised as anyone and went to her campaign party to deliver what originally was to be a concession speech. The message was no longer that she was in it simply to win, but to win for a greater cause. "Let's give America," she said, "the kind of comeback New Hampshire has just given me."

"Barack Obama on Morning Joe--Jan. 09, 2008" (video)

January 09, 2008 MSNBC Morning Joe, video (08:29).

Barack Obama

"Obama Draws Throng in Jersey City"

The Trail, WaPo's political blog:

JERSEY CITY, New Jersey - In his first campaign rally since his second-place showing in New Hampshire, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) spoke Wednesday afternoon to an boisterous overflow crowd at a college gymnasium, and said his loss Tuesday was a sober reminder that his message of change will be met by fierce resistance.

"One of the useful things...about yesterday was it reminds us that change isn't easy," Obama told the crowd. "Change is hard. Change is always met by resistance from the status quo." Someone in the crowd shouted back "Hillary is the status quo!"

In a veiled reference to Clinton, without mentioning her name, Obama also said that while he lost New Hampshire, even his rivals had now picked up on his theme of changing America. "We started this campaign talking about change," he said. "We talked about it while we were down, and we talked about it while we were up. Now almost everybody is talking about change."

The question, he added, was "Who will actually deliver change?"

New Jersey does not hold its presidential primary until Feb. 5, "Super Tuesday," but the crowd, at Saint Peter's College in Jersey City, was one of the largest Obama has addressed in the campaign. Organizers said some 3,000 people - not including the hundreds of journalists - were packed inside, and Obama said an additional 2,000 people were not allowed in because of concerns that the gym was too crowded. Obama apologized for an entry almost an hour after the scheduled starting time by explaining he had to greet those outside. "All across America, we're seeing crowds like this today," he said. "We couldn't let in 2,000 folks. That's why I'm a little late."

"There's something going on out there, people," Obama said. "There's something in the wind. There's something stirring all across America." He said he saw it in Iowa, which he won convincingly, and also in New Hampshire, where, "My turnout was a little short."

Showing just a bit of the strain of the nearly non-stop campaigning, Obama apologized for his hoarse voice. "My voice is a little hoarse. My eyes are a little bleary. My back is a little sore. But my spirit is strong," he told the crowd.

Obama had kind words for his most prominent New Jersey supporter, Newark Mayor Cory Booker, whom he called "The up and coming rising superstar."

New Jersey politicians are largely split among Clinton, Obama and former North Carolina Senator John Edwards.

Obama headed to New York after the rally for a sold-out fundraising dinner at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in midtown, coming directly into Hillary Clinton's home turf.

Most of New York's Democratic Party establishment, including black leaders, have lined up behind Clinton as a favorite son, but Obama has about 15 or so prominent supporters who expect Obama to wage a targeted guerilla campaign in key, heavily black congressional districts in an effort to pick up a few delegates.

Obama's New York supporters today attempted to paint the New Hampshire result as short of a loss. "He has prevailed and is in a very competitive position," said State Sen. Bill Perkins, the first local black official to endorse Obama. "His two percent difference in the New Hampshire primary is a remarkable testament to his ability to turn out and create some excitement."

Bronx Assemblyman Michael Benjamin, who is planning to travel to South Carolina with his wife to campaign for Obama, said "It's early in a long race. ...Those Super Tuesday states are a greater cross-section of America."

Barack Obama

"Clinton's team downplays crying episode"

Newsday with video (00:46):

A day after her big New Hampshire comeback, aides to Hillary Rodham Clinton downplayed the notion her campaign would be on the scrap heap if she hadn't nearly cried on Monday.

As Clinton savored her 47- to 34-percent win over Barack Obama with female voters here, the 64-year-old woman whose question prompted the former first lady to puddle up told reporters she voted for Obama because Clinton was too "stiff."

Clinton's team huddled at her Chappaqua mansion Wednesday to plot out her next moves. Outside the gates, a debate raged over her one minute of public emotion, its impact on the race -- and whether it was truly unplanned (those who were in the room insist it seemed spontaneous).

Her campaign, digging in for a long fight against the Illinois senator, portrayed her three-point victory over Obama in Tuesday's primary here as proof of her larger success in connecting with women voters and not a windfall from one compelling TV clip.

Clinton often says she's flabbergasted by the fact George W. Bush was elected because he was the kind of guy people wanted to have a beer with. But on Monday, she inched closer to becoming the kind of woman other women invite for a cup of coffee.

The mantra from Camp Clinton yesterday was that the candidate has "found her voice" in New Hampshire.

"There is a great emotional connection between women and Hillary; whether it was the one moment or other things, I can't really say," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), a Clinton supporter, of the diner episode.

But Feinstein, like other surrogates, took pains to emphasize the candidate's toughness, saying the former first lady had a "steel spine."

A sleep-deprived Clinton, speaking on NBC's "Today" show Wednesday, said she thought the moment that actually turned the tide was Saturday's debate, when Obama and John Edwards teamed up to portray her as the defender of the status quo.

"It was the first time that the leading candidates actually were asked some very pointed questions about what we stand for, what we've done to help other people, what our accomplishments are and what we want to do for the future," she said.

Howard Wolfson, Clinton's spokesman, called the debate the "pivotal moment."

Clinton's advisers are keenly aware they walk a fine line in allowing the candidate to display emotion. Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Woman and Politics, said Clinton might be penalized in the long run for displaying an emotional reaction to the stress of a campaign, especially among male voters.

"If a man sort of chokes up and gets a little emotional about something, it's sort of showing that softer side," Walsh said. "But I think for a woman, it's still that really tricky balance that women candidates still walk, which is keeping those emotions in check, because if you don't, then you're seen as too soft."

One thing is for sure: Clinton's burst of warmth is translating into cold cash. Campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe told reporters yesterday the campaign had collected $1 million in the 12 hours following her victory and $3 million since Jan. 1.

"Change"--BBC World Service (audio)

BBC World Service, with audio:

I was on the BBC World Service as a blogger who supports Barack Obama. The other candidates represented by bloggers were John Edwards, Hillary Clinton, John McCain and Mike Huckebee.

Barack Obama

"How New Hampshire Upended The Democratic Race"

Thomas B. Edsall:

Manchester, NH -- The conventional wisdom today about the results of the New Hampshire Democratic primary does not take into account the complexity of the multiple forces at play.

There were at least five factors influencing the outcome in Hillary Clinton's unexpected victory here on Tuesday: the so-called "Bradley effect;" the different ways in which primaries and caucuses filter voters; the geographical distribution of the turnout increase in New Hampshire between 2004 and 2008; a shifting gender gap; and the greater number of young voters and college students in Iowa than in NH.

The outcome of the Democratic contest here suggests the emergence of the so-called "Bradley/Wilder/Dinkins effect" -- a discrepancy between election results and poll data in races in which African American candidates win 5 to 10 percentage points fewer votes than predicted. (The effect was first noted in Tom Bradley's 1982 race for California governor, when polls pointed to a win but the result was defeat by a white opponent.)

"Anytime you've got white undecided voters pulling the lever choosing between a white and a black candidate, that is when the race issue is most important," notes Drew Westen of Emory University. "Both campaigns' internal polls showed a 10 to 12 point Obama lead; to see that evaporate into a three-point loss, when he didn't have any gaffes, that has a ring to it."

According to Andrew Kohut of the Pew Research Center, "The failure [of polling] on the Democratic side has to do with the fact that Clinton ran best among groups of voters who most often refuse polls -- poorer, less well-educated people. These are also the very people who are reluctant to vote for a black candidate."

A separate finding - that Clinton performed best in New Hampshire yesterday in communities with the highest turnout increases between 2004 and 2008 - lends indirect support to the Bradley effect thesis. MIT political scientist Charles Stewart found that "Clinton did better, on average, in the towns that had the biggest [positive] change in turnout across the four years. Conversely, Obama did worse." Stewart's analysis of NH voting data showed that a "strong predictor of how Obama did, town by town, are the results from '04. Dean country is now Obama country."

Stewart also found that, conversely, John Kerry country has become Clinton country: "In the towns where Kerry beat Dean in 2004 [Clinton country now], turnout increased by a total of 31.4% between 2004 and 2008; where Dean beat Kerry, turnout increased by a total of 27.5%. That's not a huge number, but in a close race, you need everything you can get."

Clinton's machine may well have proved more effective than Obama's in pulling out new voters. Another way to interpret the finding is that a small but significant fraction of white voters turned out to actually cast ballots against a black candidate. The two interpretations are not mutually exclusive.

A number of political analysts question a Bradley effect in New Hampshire, including Ben Smith of Politico and Matthew Yglesias of The Atlantic. The difference of opinion will likely persist among political scientists and pollsters.

Yet if race has become a factor, it will challenge a central premise of this year's primary election: that the historic movement behind Obama reflects an electorate that has become sufficiently color blind - 54 years after Brown v. Board of Education -- to elect a presidential candidate who happens to be black.

Results of the Iowa caucus last week raised expectations less sustainable in primary states: a Democratic caucus acts as a filter, its cumbersome rules limiting participation to the relatively more committed social activists.

At the same time that race apparently worked against Obama at the margins in the Granite State, gender favored Clinton. Clinton lost among men by almost identical percentages, 12 points in Iowa (23-35) and 11 in New Hampshire (29-40). Among women, however, although Clinton lost by 5 points in Iowa (30-35), she won by solid 10 points in New Hampshire (46-36), an overall 15 percentage point spread.

Another point: there are substantially fewer young and student voters in New Hampshire than in Iowa -- 22 percent of Democratic Iowa caucus goers were under the age of 30, compared to 18 percent of New Hampshire primary voters. Stanford political scientist David Brady points out that the student bodies at the University of Iowa, Iowa State and the University of Northern Iowa far outnumber their New Hampshire counterparts.

Obama has done exponentially better than the three African Americans who sought the presidential nomination before him: Shirley Chisholm, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Nonetheless, at the moment race remains the most salient of factors.

Few Democratic politicians, especially Clinton, would publicly cite Obama's race as a liability. But in brutal political terms, this unstated vulnerability may be used to persuade leaders of the party establishment and fundraising network to stick with Clinton through what is now sure to be a bruising fight until at least February 5, and perhaps all the way to the convention in August.

Obama, in the coming months, will have to show that he is, in the words of U.C. Berkeley political scientist Jerry Lubenow, "more than a quicksilver candidacy, shiny and appealing but elusive and difficult to grasp, long on poetry but short on prose.... Hope is a difficult target to attack, but at some point he will have to define a more precise destination and map a path to it. As he addresses that reality he becomes more vulnerable."

At the core of the Obama campaign is a message of possibility -- what he calls hope -- that transcends racial politics. The electorate is on a steep learning curve, and Obama may yet prove to be the candidate who moves the country closer to its full potential in terms of equality.

Clinton, in turn, cannot afford to defeat Obama in a way that offends blacks or racially liberal whites -- both crucial constituencies for Democratic victory in November.

Clinton is a polarizing figure and, consequently, if she is the 2008 nominee, she will need a high turnout among core Democratic voters in order to have a chance at winning the White House. Any voters she drives away during the primaries may well stay at home or vote against her on November 4, a development she has to avoid at all costs.

Barack Obama

Obama: "Bill Clinton 'took liberties' with my words" (with video)

CNN's Political Ticker, with video:

Watch Sen. Obama's interview on American Morning.

(CNN) — Barack Obama accused Bill Clinton of twisting some of his early remarks on the Iraq war in a speech the former president gave the night before the New Hampshire vote.

"Bill Clinton was taking some liberties with my statements," Obama told CNN American Morning anchor John Roberts Wednesday, after his narrow loss to Hillary Clinton in the Granite State’s Democratic primary.

Clinton had alleged that the media had not properly reported on remarks the Illinois senator had made, saying that Obama’s policy stands on the war had actually been identical to those of his wife, New York Sen. Hillary Clinton.

"I'm not clear about what the contradiction is," says Obama. "I said from the start that Iraq was a bad idea. I also said from the beginning that if we were gonna go in then we would have an obligation to our troops and that's been a consistent position of mine. So, the notion that somehow that diminishes my clear unequivocal statement of opposition to the war even before the Congress voted to authorize it actually doesn't make much sense."

Obama won the Iowa Democratic caucuses by 8 percentage points over Clinton, but lost the New Hampshire primary to her by 2 points, despite showing a lead in most pre-vote surveys.

Obama says the record-setting Democratic turnout in Iowa and New Hampshire bodes well for his campaign. "What's pretty clear is that the American people are taking this process seriously. They want to bring about the fundamental change in how our politics works."

Barack Obama

BREAKING: "Richardson Ends Bid"

AP:

MERRIMACK, N.H.- New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson ended his campaign for the presidency Wednesday after twin fourth-place finishes that showed his impressive credentials could not compete with his rivals' star power.

Richardson planned to announce the decision Thursday, according to two people close to the governor with knowledge of the decision. They spoke on a condition of anonymity in advance of the governor's announcement.

"Hillary Wins New Hampshire, But the Presidential Race Has Just Begun"

AlterNet:

After New Hampshire, voters will have a month for a second look at the top candidates.--Americans have long complained they don't get a chance to pick their presidential candidates after Iowa, New Hampshire and other early primaries. This year will be different. For both parties, but especially for Democrats, the nominee will not be chosen until at least February 5th, when 22 states and Democrats abroad vote.

In the interim, there will be four more weeks of intense campaigning and scrutiny, especially as the Clinton and Obama campaigns jockey for front-runner status, as the Clinton campaign retools and focuses on big states, as the Obama campaign takes lessons from its narrow loss in New Hampshire, and as the Edwards and Richardson campaigns make final attempts to win in close-to-home states -- Nevada and South Carolina -- and shape the debate.

Clinton's razor-thin victory in New Hampshire was a surprise only because the pollsters were so out of touch with the voters -- off by 10-15 points in a number of instances. But New Hampshire is a state where Hillary was long favored and had much of the Democratic party establishment backing her. New Hampsphire was always the place for the "comeback kid scenario," reprising Bill Clinton's experience in 1992, when he came in second to Paul Tsongas.

One of the problems for Obama was that he had two candidates to fight with. Bill Clinton, who is popular in the state, went after Obama with a surprising ferocity, as did the Clinton camp as a whole. As Arianna Huffington documents, they threw everything at Obama but the kitchen sink in the last few days: "So now Hillary's sputtering campaign strategy has shifted to telling voters, 'Whatever you don't like, that's what Obama is.' Clinton and her surrogates are attacking from every direction, hoping something will stick. The attacks are as varied as they are contemptible. ... Put on your galoshes, the mud is mighty thick."

Obama's New Hampshire staff, in contrast, made some mistakes, focusing on canvassing and calling voters in the final days instead of increasing visibility with supporters on the street holding signs. Pollsters were reminded that some whites who say they will vote for an African-American candidate do not follow through. In some locations, there were problems with voting machines; however, Obama campaign insiders did not feel they affected the outcome.

New Hampshire, like Iowa, had record voter turnout. That growing public engagement will encounter a political fight where, increasingly, the gloves will come off. The broad questions in the Democratic debate -- Obama's message of inclusiveness and hope versus Clinton's emphasis on toughness and experience -- will only sharpen. The shine and gloom will come off both of the leading candidates and, hopefully, the party's ultimate nominee will be better for it.

As the contests move state by state, what can progressives expect? Interviews with contacts on the campaigns and in progressive groups on Tuesday night offered these tidbits:

Michigan -- The state's primary is January 15, and only Hillary Clinton and Dennis Kucinich will be on the ballot. That is because the Democratic National Committee penalized the state for moving its primary up and stripped it of delegates. The Kucinich campaign will likely use the contest to put impeachment on the map, said one leading progressive organizer with ties to the candidate.

Nevada -- The DNC sanctioned its contest on Saturday, January 19, to give labor and Latinos a bigger voice in the primary process. The Nevada vote comes down to winning Las Vegas, which has two-thirds of the state's population and arguably is the strongest union city in America. A well-placed contact on the Obama campaign said "the union endorsement is a lock," probably referring to the Culinary Workers Union Local 226, which is the city's best-organized union. The former grassroots organizer visited the union's headquarters six times in recent months.

Before Clinton's victory was announced on Tuesday night, anti-nuclear activists and anti-free trade activists said they were not about to give the Obama campaign a pass. One group was planning to send 100 activists to the state to underscore Obama's support for nuclear power. Obama's home state, Illinois, has many nuclear power plants. Another group said it would emphasize Obama's support for free trade, a sensitive topic for unions. They're hoping the Edwards campaign will join these efforts.

Before Clinton's New Hampshire victory, there were rumors her campaign would bypass Nevada and the South Carolina primary the following week and focus on Florida, which comes just days before the February 5 vote in 22 states. But progressive organizers in Nevada who know the Clinton campaign staffers say they are shrewd, capable and not to be written off.

South Carolina -- The DNC also moved this primary up to Saturday, January 26, to enable the state's sizable African-American population to have a say early in the process. Obama has cut into Clinton's lead in recent months, according to polls; however, his loss in New Hampshire undermines the assumption that state would be "a walk in the park," as one Obama insider optimistically said before Tuesday's vote count. Slowing Obama a few days before Florida's primary -- and before the big February 5 vote -- could give the Clinton campaign the boost that it is seeking going into that day's 22-state contest.

Florida -- The DNC also stripped the state of all its delegates because it moved its primary to Saturday, January 26, ahead of the February 5 vote. However, one progressive organizer said the Clinton campaign will be putting a lot of effort into winning the state, because, even with its symbolic vote, it will create momentum as nearly half the country votes three days later.

The New Hampshire primary is not the end of the process, but the true beginning of the second round -- one where Democrats will get a second chance to take a close look at their eventual nominee. They'll see if the glow surrounding the Obama campaign can hold up under closer scrutiny, just as they will see if the Clinton campaign can truly revive itself.

The weeks ahead will also give John Edwards and Bill Richardson a final chance to make their cases, and hopefully remind the other candidates how the party has a notable constituency for what are often characterized as 'liberal' positions.

In other words, stay tuned and don't hold your breath!

"Obama camp: In for, up for fight"

First Read (MSNBC):

Obama Campaign Manager David Plouffe issued a strategically revealing memo this morning. It’s one part spin ("Coming off an impressive win in Iowa and taking the once inevitable frontrunner down to the wire in her firewall state, it is clear that Obama is well-positioned to become the next President of the United States.") But mostly a window into the campaign’s attitude that they know they are in for a fight and that they are geared up for one. This may be as much a memo to donors as it is to reporters, who the campaign wants to remind that they have a lot of cash and a lot of organization. And, as we noted in First Thoughts this morning, with 15 of the 22 Democratic races on Feb. 5th potentially allowing independents to vote, this is looking like a fight. (Our own Tim Russert calls it Ali-Frazier.)

But a lot still depends on Nevada and South Carolina. In the memo, the Obama campaign notes their strength in caucus organization (Remember Iowa) and that Nevada is a caucus. Ironically, in Iowa, it was Clinton with the labor backing. In Nevada, it’s looking more and more like Obama’s going to be the one with that. But Clinton has been ahead in every major poll in the state and with her win in New Hampshire, any Obamamentum has been effectively squashed for now, creating the standoff we’re looking at.

Nevada should serve as something of a lead-in to South Carolina, where almost half the Democratic voting electorate is black. Obama and Clinton have split black support until the past month or, which has seen Obama with decisive black support. But he trails woefully among whites, particularly blue collar, less-educated whites. Can Edwards actually help him here and pull enough of those voters to him if he has a decent finish in Nevada? We’ll see. It’s going to be tough, as Richardson is going to be a real player there too.

The full memo:

TO: Interested Parties

FROM: David Plouffe

DATE: January 9, 2008

RE: The Next Four Weeks

Coming off an impressive win in Iowa and taking the once inevitable frontrunner down to the wire in her firewall state, it is clear that Obama is well-positioned to become the next President of the United States. As the people of Iowa and New Hampshire demonstrated, the American people desperately want change they can believe in. Barack Obama is the candidate to deliver that change by bringing people together, standing up to the special interests, and telling people what they need to know.

Our campaign now turns its focus squarely to Nevada and South Carolina, and February 5th. Today, we kick off the next phase of our campaign in New Jersey, an important February 5th state.

Fundraising
In the 4th Quarter of 2007, our campaign raised $23.5 million -- over $22.5 million of which is for the primary election. In that quarter, we added 111,000 new donors for a total of 475,000 donors in 2007.

In the first 8 days of 2008, we raised over $8 million and gained 35,000 new donors. Since midnight last night, we have raised another $500,000 online. We continue to build a grassroots movement that makes us best-positioned to compete financially in the primaries and caucuses coming up.

Nevada
We have built the same caucus operation in Nevada as we did in Iowa, with focused and effective precinct captains in over 95 percent of the precincts in the state, and multiple captains in many precincts. We have also been reaching deep into the electorate, securing commitments to caucus from habitual Democratic voters, general election voting Democrats and Independents.

In a significant boost to our efforts, we received the endorsement of the SEIU local in Nevada late last night.

This is the first time Nevada has had a precinct caucus so organization is paramount, both in terms of shaping the overall electorate as well as the added challenge of getting voters to locations that are unfamiliar to them.

South Carolina
We have seen dramatic movement in South Carolina since Iowa, resulting in healthy double-digit leads for Senator Obama in recent public polling. We have by far the strongest organization in the state according to neutral observers and believe that, as the gateway to February 5th, South Carolina will provide our campaign enormous momentum heading into those twenty-two states.

Obama also has the support of several key political figures in South Carolina, including former Governor Jim Hodges, Charleston Mayor Joe Riley, and former party chairs Joe Erwin and Dick Harpootlian.

February 5th
We now have staff in nineteen of the twenty-two February 5th states and will be adding to the remaining three – Delaware, Arkansas and Connecticut – by the end of the week.

In the six caucus states – Colorado, Minnesota, Kansas, Idaho, Alaska and North Dakota - we have been engaged in heavy organizing and voter contact. In many of these states, our opponents are not engaged in any organizing. We firmly believe you cannot build a caucus operation in a matter of four weeks, so we are at a decided advantage in these states where we have already identified tens of thousands of Obama supporters and where, in the last five days, the number of new volunteers and supporters has exploded. We are in the process of mailing past caucus-goers and our ID-ed supporters in those states. We are also preparing aggressively for vote-by-mail in states like California and Arizona, where we have mail pieces hitting this week and an exhaustive phone program in place to identify supporters and make sure those ballots are returned.

In all of the February 5th states, we have active chapters at most colleges and universities and are pursuing support from independent voters aggressively where they are permitted to participate, which is in most of the states. California and New Jersey, two states the Clintons have pointed to as firewalls, both will have healthy independent turnout in the Democratic primary.

We expect to see a great deal of movement to Obama from superdelegates in the coming days, seriously eroding the Clintons’ existing advantage in this universe.

To fully execute a robust February 5th strategy, it will take tens of millions of dollars. Our financial picture is strong and growing stronger by the day, which will allow us to have a significant paid media presence to go alongside our grassroots operations in our target February 5th states.

We expect, as we begin to see significant national poll movement, that there will also be positive poll movement in the February 5th states. Obama saw substantial gains in the individual February 5th state polls in December opening up a lead in Georgia and seeing a seriously tightening race in California.

We will be releasing later today our final fourth quarter 2007 estimates, as well as some numbers for the first eight days of January for both dollars raised, as well as number of total donors and new donors acquired in these periods.

The coming weeks will be challenging and no doubt filled with more haphazard and relentless attacks, but we believe we could not be better positioned for the next twenty four states. Our goal is simple – to win as many states as we can in the next twenty-eight days.

Barack Obama

"NPR News Special: Analysis of the N.H. Primary"

NPR with audio (48:07):

Presidential hopefuls Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) emerged as the victors of the New H179ampshire primary on Tuesday. Political analysts discuss New Hampshire's results and look ahead to Michigan, South Carolina and Super Tuesday.

Guests:

Ken Rudin, NPR's political editor, writes the weekly "Political Junkie" column on NPR.org

Arnie Arnesen, host of "Chowder in the Morning" and "Political Chowder" on New Hampshire radio and TV; member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives for 8 years

Ed Rogers, Republican strategist; senior deputy to campaign manager Lee Atwater for Bush-Quayle, 1988

Steve McMahon, Democratic strategist; media adviser for Howard Dean's presidential campaign in 2004

Andy Gobeil, host of South Carolina's "The Big Picture," a weekly news and public affairs program

Clarence Page, journalist and nationally syndicated columnist with The Chicago Tribune

"Hey, Where's My Caucus Gonna Be?"

Dwight Pelz, WA state Democrats (email):

To find out where to go for your caucus, go to: http://www.wa-democrats.org/caucusfinder What is a caucus, you may be wondering? A caucus is a neighborhood meeting where you vote for the Democratic candidate for President. The Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary showed us that this is an open contest without a solid frontrunner, and it is all the more likely that there won't be a clear winner by February 9th. You can find an overview of the caucus process by going to http://www.wa-democrats.org/caucusinfo.

"He’s Staying in Campaign, Edwards Tells Supporters"

NY Times:

MANCHESTER, N.H. — Reminding voters that less than one week ago he took second in the Iowa caucuses, John Edwards said Tuesday night that he would continue his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, despite his distant third-place showing in the New Hampshire primary.

Speaking to supporters gathered in an old textile mill here, Mr. Edwards repeated his determination to stay in the race.

“Last week I congratulated Senator Obama when he finished first and I finished second in Iowa — one race down,” Mr. Edwards said. “Tonight, I congratulate Senator Clinton and Senator Obama. Two races down; 48 states left to go.”

Elizabeth Edwards, introducing her husband, sounded disappointed but tried to project an upbeat tone. “This day, we have taken steps,” Mrs. Edwards said. “Not as big of steps as we wanted.”

Mr. Edwards has set his sights on the Jan. 26 Democratic primary in South Carolina, the state where he was born and where he won the primary in 2004. On Wednesday morning, he plans to fly to Liberty, S.C., for two days of campaigning, starting with a noon rally at Clemson University and continuing on to Charleston.

Advisers to the campaign said Mrs. Clinton’s victory in New Hampshire on Tuesday proved that Mr. Obama was vulnerable.

“We’re not going anywhere,” said Joe Trippi, an senior adviser to Mr. Edwards. “We’re going to have three candidates who are rolling it through all 50 states.”

Many of Mr. Edwards’s supporters, hopeful that he could win states in the South, said they believed he should stay in and compete there.

“No way should he get out of the race,” said Tony Giunta, a retired auto worker, shaking his head for emphasis. “Once he hits the South, the tables are turned. I think he’ll take all the Southern states.”

"Being for Both"

Josh Marshall (TPM):

TPM Reader DB ...

Based on what I was feeling, there were two turning points for Clinton in the past week. One was a report that people were chanting "Iron my shirt" at her during a rally. The other was John Edwards' idiotic statements about Clinton tearing up at an event. Mix that in with the subtle media digs at Clinton's gender in recent months (descrptions of what she's wearing, how she "emasculates" men, etc.), and I think you had a tremendous push back from women, and men, who are tired of the misogyny underlying this campaign. It swayed me toward Clinton the past few days, even as I cheered for an Obama coronation.

Howie P.S.: Greg Sargent posts "Exit Polls: Hillary Regained Ground Among Late-Deciding Voters."

Barack Obama

"NPR Interview: Obama Analyzes N.H. Performance" (with audio)

NPR, with audio (08:55):

Sen. Barack Obama said Wednesday that rival Hillary Rodham Clinton had done better among women voters in New Hampshire's primary than many had expected, helping propel her to a victory in the state.

Speaking to NPR's Morning Edition on Wednesday, Obama acknowledged that Sen. Clinton "Clearly ... did better among women than she had anticipated and than many of the pundits had anticipated."

Obama said his campaign planned to set the record straight about his position on the war in Iraq, which former President Bill Clinton, stumping on behalf of his wife, had taken to task in recent days. The former president suggested that Obama's voting record on war-related issues in the Senate had been little different than Sen. Clinton's.

"We're going to have to call him on it," Obama said.

"The press has already pointed out that he's wrong about this, but he keeps on repeating it," the Illinois senator asserted. "It is indisputable, I opposed this war from the start."

His Senate vote for funding the war in Iraq "is perfectly consistent with my position that it was important to make sure that our troops had the equipmnent and the tools that they needed at a time when things were very dicey," he said.

Looking ahead to South Carolina's Jan. 26 primary, Obama said there is "no doubt that we are in a very strong position to win."

The state's strong African-American base is widely seen as a significant boost to Obama's chances there, but the presidential hopeful said he was "reaching out not just to the African-American community, but to people of all walks of life."

Barack Obama

"Breaking News: Big Nevada service union endorses Obama "

Top of the Ticket, LA Times political blog:

On the night that he came in second in the New Hampshire primary, Barack Obama came in first with the Nevada chapter of the large Service Employees International Union. He won that important union's official endorsement a few minutes ago.

The influential union's 17,500 health care and county worker members will come in very handy for Nevada's Jan. 19 caucuses. The union's choice will come as a serious disappointment for both Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, who both coveted it too. And the timing late tonight is likely no accident.

Union president Vicky Hedderman said just before midnight that the union's decision came during a late-night conference call of the executive board Tuesday, the Associated Press reported. But the timing of such a rapid news release without elaborate media attendance comes as a convenient public relations counterpunch to Clinton's narrow New Hampshire election win Tuesday night.

It also gets the SEIU endorsement in ahead of another anticipated Obama endorsement Wednesday by Nevada's Culinary Workers Union, Local 226, which has 60,000 members.

Hedderman said Obama is a candidate "who could take the campaign all the way to November."

Obama has previously received the endorsement of SEIU state councils and locals in five states, including Illinois. Edwards has won the endorsement of SEIU's California State Council, which could make its 600,000 members available to help him.

Under SEIU union rules, the Nevada endorsement allows SEIU locals in other states to lend volunteers and resources to its Nevada counterpart on behalf of Obama.

Ten days left.

Barack Obama