Dems in Iowa: Son of the Future


It's a phrase that popped out of the mouth of Chris Matthews, of all people, but if Iowa is any indication, it fits Barack Obama, the victor in the Iowa Democratic caucuses.

First the numbers: Obama won a decisive victory with 38%, 8 points better than John Edwards, 9 better than Hillary Clinton.According to entrance and exit polling, his victory was pretty much total: He won the highest proportion of men and women, of Democrats, Independents and Republicans; those making more than $50,000 a year and those making less--in fact he won every income group, except the one he tied ($15-30,000) with Edwards. He tied with Hillary among union households according to CNN (another poll says he won this), and won nonunion households. The only divided category was age: Hillary won 65 and older, Edwards won 45-64, and Obama won everyone younger, including a majority of voters 17-29.

Obama won on all the choices for top issue (Iraq, the economy, health care) and he won the categories of very liberal, somewhat liberal and moderate. Oddly, John Edwards won the self-described conservatives. But the most obvious statistic in Obama's win was this: 52% of these voters named "can bring change" as the most important candidate quality, and 51% of them voted for Obama.

The most sensational number was turnout. Something like 113,000 Dems voted in the caucuses in 2004. An optimistic projection was about 150,000. At last count, this year there were some 238,000. About twice as many voters caucused for the Democrats as for the Republicans--very good news for Iowa going Dem in the general election.

And as Obama pointed out in his victory speech, he and his campaign accomplished exactly what he set out to do: bring people together, bring people in, change the dynamic. And he did so by never compromising on principle.

He sure changed the dynamic of this campaign. He's now going to be the favorite in the first two primaries: New Hampshire and South Carolina. Hillary and Edwards will contest them, and everything up to and including February 5, but there's no minimizing the momentum this victory gives Obama. By the end of the evening, candidates Chris Dodd and Joe Biden officially ended their candidacies.

While Edward's "concession" speech was a solid but graceless rendition of his incisive stump speech (he failed to even mention Obama, let alone congratulate him, and barely acknowledged his wife Elizabeth, the hero of his campaign), and Hillary gave a graceful but slightly dazed concession, Obama's victory speech was remarkable. He had the MSNBC commentators falling over each other praising it, with Eugene Robinson nearly in tears and comparing him to Bobby Kennedy. In fact, both the speech and the victory seemed to bring out the best in almost everyone on TV, at least for awhile.

About the speech: first of all, it was beautifully stage managed. While Huckabee spoke with supporters right behind him--including Chuck Norris and an attractive blond--who took the focus away from him, and supporters were also crowded close to Hillary (with Bill Clinton perfecting his version of the Nancy Reagan adoring spouse stare--he never took his eyes off her), Obama's supporters were far enough behind him that they blurred when the camera focused on him.

I've only listened to excerpts from speeches of the past few days, but I heard the same mastery of cadence tonight. He has this little hand gesture with which he seems to be conducting his own sentences--his speech was so musical, that he had that largely white audience doing a little call and response. And he repeated not only some of the resonant lines from his latest stump speech, but a sentence from his 04 Dem Convention address that got him so much attention in the first place: "we are not a collection of Red States and Blue States, we are the United States of America..."

He spoke finally about hope, and this summarized everything that made this such an historic moment. The first (literally) African American candidate to win such a victory (I say literally because, as he said, he has a father from Kenya and a mother from Kansas), a person whose victory is going to be heralded around the world and especially in the Third World--the first step to bringing this country back into the world community. A person of practical vision: serious, humane and confident.

Almost as important as the sight of Obama rising to the occasion was the proving of his organization, and his (and its) ability to get young voters to the polls. We heard a lot about the Dean campaign's use of the Internet, etc. last time, and his appeal to the young, but neither worked this well. That's good news for Democrats as well as the Obama campaign. Now we'll see if they can scale it up to do several states at the same time, and then the massive challenge of Tsunami Tuesday in February. (And that was another smart feature of Obama's speech--he gave a lot of credit to his campaign, and he spoke to their hearts--he revved them up to give their all the rest of the way.)

So the American Dash fearless forecast got the order of finish correct here, and Edwards stays alive (barely) while Hillary is no longer the favorite. (It seemed that Edwards either didn't care that he lost or it didn't register, because his speech would likely have changed little in victory. Or maybe he was just moving on.) Hillary's best strategy may be to run dutifully in New Hampshire but concentrate on the Tsunami Tuesday states, where the electoral experience available to her is an advantage in so many simultaneous elections.

But Iowa looked very much like a major "change" moment, as the commentators said, and I guess some of us got a glimpse of what we've waited for decades to see again, at least that possibility. This son of the future might be the leader we need but thought we'd never see again. And those of us of an age hope that our hopes are not dashed in the same catastrophic way as they were before, in 1963, and 1968. We have to hope that in 2008, we're given this last chance.