The Los Angeles Times
Friday 04 January 2008
Des Moines - Barack Obama's surprisingly convincing win in Iowa on Thursday upended the Democratic presidential race and overturned some of the fundamental assumptions of modern-day American politics.
Voters in an overwhelmingly white state embraced an African American candidate.
Women, given the chance to vote for the first credible female White House hopeful in Hillary Rodham Clinton, voted in larger numbers for a man.
And the Democratic Party's most formidable political machine, drawing on deep-pocket donors and the celebrity of former President Clinton, was beaten by a man who just three years ago held an office no higher than state legislator.
Amid it all, Obama, a first-term senator from Illinois, changed the rules of the Iowa caucuses.
Long viewed as an insular process dominated by longtime political activists, Thursday's first-in-the-nation voting event of the 2008 campaign turned out to be a forum for unaffiliated voters and first-time participants to say they were looking for something new and different.
One-fifth of the Democratic caucus participants were independents, according to a media survey taken as voters entered precincts Thursday night - and of them, 41% backed Obama and just 17% opted for Clinton. Moreover, 57% of caucus-goers said it was their first time taking part, and first-time caucus-goers made up two-thirds of Obama's supporters.
Even among Democrats - who Clinton strategists have long argued would be her saving grace - Obama and Clinton essentially tied, winning 32% and 31% respectively.
The entrance survey of 2,136 Democratic caucus participants, called the National Election Poll, was conducted for a consortium of media organizations, including the Los Angeles Times, by Edison/Mitofsky.
The results helped answer a question that has lingered for nearly a year: Would a desire for experience in a time of war outweigh voters' desire for change in national leadership?
According to the media survey of Democratic caucus-goers, just one in five considered experience to be the most important factor, compared to more than half who said an ability to bring "needed change" mattered most. And among those who embraced change, more than half backed Obama while Clinton and John Edwards split most of the rest in that category.
For the New York senator, the results stood as a sharp rebuke by voters to a central argument of her candidacy: that she, more than her rivals, was prepared to assume the responsibilities of the presidency.
Surveys have long found that Clinton, the second-term senator and former first lady, was viewed as the most experienced and best-qualified to lead on matters of national security and war.
But voters instead endorsed Obama's primary argument for "turning the page" in Washington, an argument that essentially painted Clinton as a status quo candidate.
"Change is the driving dynamic of the race, as opposed to who has the most conventional resume or who voters see as the 'strongest leader,' " said David Plouffe, Obama's campaign manager.
The results are especially damaging for Edwards, the former North Carolina senator. Even though he barely edged out Clinton for second place the Democratic race is very much a two-person contest, pitting Obama against Clinton.
Edwards was the party's 2004 vice presidential nominee thanks in part to his surprisingly strong second-place finish here in that year's caucuses. But after campaigning in the state nearly nonstop since then, Edwards was thought by some to have the strongest organization and the best chance at victory.
Despite gaining steam in recent weeks with sharply populist attacks on "corporate greed" and lobbyists' power, Edwards on Thursday failed to win his core base of union households and lower-income people.
He placed third among union households, winning 24% of that group, compared to 31% for Clinton and 28% for Obama, according to the entrance survey.
Edwards vowed on Thursday to compete in Tuesday's New Hampshire primary and beyond, but strategists for his rivals said they do not view him as a threat, mostly because of his lackluster fundraising and the expenditure limits imposed on his campaign because of his decision to accept public financing.
Clinton, however, has the national support base and resources to forge ahead.
She retains double-digit leads in national polls and in most of the big states that vote in late January and early February.
She has raised more than $100 million and, though her once-daunting lead in New Hampshire has dwindled in recent days, she enjoys advantages there that she did not have in Iowa. It was a stronger-than-expected finish in New Hampshire in 1992 that allowed her husband to declare himself the "Comeback Kid," and strategists say many voters there remain loyal to the Clintons.
One bright spot in Iowa was her strength among older voters, a strength that could help her along the way.
"Of all the candidates, her support is the most solid, and they will be with her come hell or high water," said Ray Buckley, chairman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party.
As a result, the Democratic race has gained more sharply defined contours.
Two Democratic candidates, Sens. Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Christopher J. Dodd, both of whom made experience a central pillar of their campaigns, have dropped out. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who touted himself as the most seasoned executive, has been diminished.
Now Clinton will be the sole candidate of experience, and Obama, with Edwards in trouble, can grab the mantle of change.
If voters in other states match the mind-set of Iowa, the Clinton nomination long considered inevitable by top Democratic and Republican strategists could be in serious jeopardy.
She may encounter trouble winning additional donors, while Obama's win is likely to spur more online giving to his campaign.
Polls in other early-voting states, some of which have tightened in recent weeks, could grow even closer.
And Clinton strategists will wonder if she should have taken the advice of an aide who, last year, advised that she skip Iowa.
The aide wrote in an internal memo that competing in the caucuses, with more than 20 states including California making up a decisive national primary on Feb. 5, could "bankrupt the campaign and provide little if any political advantage."
On Thursday, former President Clinton argued in an interview in the downtown Des Moines Starbucks that his wife had to go to Iowa to "show that she could compete everywhere."
The danger for Sen. Clinton is that, instead, it shows the opposite.
Our Time for Change Has Come
Friday 04 January 2008
This is a transcript of Barack Obama's victory speech after winning the Iowa caucus.
You know, they said this day would never come. They said our sights were set too high. They said this country was too divided, too disillusioned to ever come together around a common purpose.
But on this January night, at this defining moment in history, you have done what the cynics said we couldn't do.
You have done what the state of New Hampshire can do in five days. You have done what America can do in this new year, 2008.
In lines that stretched around schools and churches, in small towns and in big cities, you came together as Democrats, Republicans and independents, to stand up and say that we are one nation. We are one people. And our time for change has come.
You said the time has come to move beyond the bitterness and pettiness and anger that's consumed Washington.
To end the political strategy that's been all about division, and instead make it about addition. To build a coalition for change that stretches through red states and blue states.
Because that's how we'll win in November, and that's how we'll finally meet the challenges that we face as a nation.
We are choosing hope over fear. We're choosing unity over division,
You said the time has come to tell the lobbyists who think their money and their influence speak louder than our voices that they don't own this government - we do. And we are here to take it back.
The time has come for a president who will be honest about the choices and the challenges we face, who will listen to you and learn from you, even when we disagree, who won't just tell you what you want to hear, but what you need to know.
And in New Hampshire, if you give me the same chance that Iowa did tonight, I will be that president for America.
I'll be a president who finally makes health care affordable and available to every single American, the same way I expanded health care in Illinois, by by bringing Democrats and Republicans together to get the job done. I'll be a president who ends the tax breaks for companies that ship our jobs overseas and put a middle-class tax cut into the pockets of working Americans who deserve it.
I'll be a president who harnesses the ingenuity of farmers and scientists and entrepreneurs to free this nation from the tyranny of oil once and for all.
And I'll be a president who ends this war in Iraq and finally brings our troops home who restores our moral standing, who understands that 9/11 is not a way to scare up votes but a challenge that should unite America and the world against the common threats of the 21st century. Common threats of terrorism and nuclear weapons, climate change and poverty, genocide and disease.
Tonight, we are one step closer to that vision of America because of what you did here in Iowa.
And so I'd especially like to thank the organizers and the precinct captains, the volunteers and the staff who made this all possible.
And while I'm at it on thank yous, I think it makes sense for me to thank the love of my life, the rock of the Obama family, the closer on the campaign trail.
I know you didn't do this for me. You did this because you believed so deeply in the most American of ideas - that in the face of impossible odds, people who love this country can change it.
I know this. I know this because while I may be standing here tonight, I'll never forget that my journey began on the streets of Chicago doing what so many of you have done for this campaign and all the campaigns here in Iowa, organizing and working and fighting to make people's lives just a little bit better.
I know how hard it is. It comes with little sleep, little pay and a lot of sacrifice. There are days of disappointment. But sometimes, just sometimes, there are nights like this, a night that, years from now, when we've made the changes we believe in, when more families can afford to see a doctor, when our children inherit a planet that's a little cleaner and safer, when the world sees America differently, and America sees itself as a nation less divided and more united, you'll be able to look back with pride and say that this was the moment when it all began.
This was the moment when the improbable beat what Washington always said was inevitable.
This was the moment when we tore down barriers that have divided us for too long; when we rallied people of all parties and ages to a common cause; when we finally gave Americans who have never participated in politics a reason to stand up and to do so.
This was the moment when we finally beat back the policies of fear and doubts and cynicism, the politics where we tear each other down instead of lifting this country up. This was the moment.
Years from now, you'll look back and you'll say that this was the moment, this was the place where America remembered what it means to hope. For many months, we've been teased, even derided for talking about hope. But we always knew that hope is not blind optimism. It's not ignoring the enormity of the tasks ahead or the roadblocks that stand in our path.
It's not sitting on the sidelines or shirking from a fight. Hope is that thing inside us that insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us if we have the courage to reach for it and to work for it and to fight for it.
Hope is what I saw in the eyes of the young woman in Cedar Rapids who works the night shift after a full day of college and still can't afford health care for a sister who's ill. A young woman who still believes that this country will give her the chance to live out her dreams.
Hope is what I heard in the voice of the New Hampshire woman who told me that she hasn't been able to breathe since her nephew left for Iraq. Who still goes to bed each night praying for his safe return.
Hope is what led a band of colonists to rise up against an empire. What led the greatest of generations to free a continent and heal a nation. What led young women and young men to sit at lunch counters and brave fire hoses and march through Selma and Montgomery for freedom's cause.
Hope, hope is what led me here today. With a father from Kenya, a mother from Kansas and a story that could only happen in the United States of America.
Hope is the bedrock of this nation. The belief that our destiny will not be written for us, but by us, by all those men and women who are not content to settle for the world as it is, who have the courage to remake the world as it should be.
That is what we started here in Iowa and that is the message we can now carry to New Hampshire and beyond.
The same message we had when we were up and when we were down; the one that can save this country, brick by brick, block by block, that together, ordinary people can do extraordinary things.
Because we are not a collection of red states and blue states. We are the United States of America. And in this moment, in this election, we are ready to believe again.
Thank you, Iowa.
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