Live Iowa Campaign Journal -New Year's Eve

New Years Eve 6:30 p.m.
Des Moines, Iowa

It's been tough finding the time to keep up with this journal as the sheer burden of reporting has become so enormous. Last night it was a rafters-to-basement crush at an Obama rally in Des Moines where the candidate was more whipped up than ever. From there to dinner at the trendy downtown Centro restaurant, the veritable winter-time summer camp for all journos and political operatives. Look up the words Total Scene in the dictionary to see a picture of it.

I walked in the door only to bump into L.A. Mayor Tony Villaraigosa who was, it seems, delighted to be going back home after putting in a few days campaigning with Hillary. Then down to dinner with about every scribe and yapper known to humanity. I was with some of our HuffPost and OffTheBus comrades, flanked by a table of Joe Biden operatives. By the fourth beer I was able to wrangle a promised cabinet appointment from them if Joe is elected - either one as likely as a warm day the beach in Ottumwa.

Was up very late and got up in time to get onto a national Obama campaign conference call for the daily spin. Knocked out a quick piece on his campaign strategy and then it was time to hustle downtown to a Huckabee presser. Who knew it was gonna be one of the great moments of a dying 2007? Read all about it and learn how even Baptist ministers can be conniving politicians - in this case maybe too clever by one half.

From Huck to a late lunch and then a zip over to Urbandale to watch big ole' Fred Thompson lumber through a visit to his own campaign headquarters. Fred, as usual, doesn't have much to say about much nothin', as you know. Never has one presidential candidate done spent so much time saying and doing so darn little. Even when I threw him a softball, asking him to respond to Huck's meltdown earlier in the day, all Fred could say was "He's doin' his thing. That allows me to be doin' my thing. I really am not much concerned about what the other candidates are doing."

Natch. When you don't care much about your own campaign, it does seem pointless to worry about the other guys. Fred was decked out in a wonderful, full-length blue wool coat but, alas, no Gucci loafers.

That coat's gonna come in handy tonight as the weather is turning even colder, if that's possible, and snow is falling just east of here. That might spoil tonight's big Bill and Hill party planned for downtown Des Moines - though they have both been promising, if elected, to protect us against all those horrible uncertainties looming out there. Can Billary stop a blizzard? We'll find out.

Later tonight we'll also find out the results in the final and much-awaited Des Moines Register poll--usually the most reliable the countless surveys taken here during caucus season. So the heck with you dullards out in Times Square. This is where the real action is. See you manana - next year.

Live Iowa Campaign Journal - Blowing Bubbles
Saturday Night
Des Moines, Iowa

Chasing around Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, I traveled today from Davenport to Eldridge to Knoxville and finally back to Des Moines. And while it was only a couple hundred miles mostly along I-80, it might as well have been hopping from one world to another.

Retail ground campaigns like those run in Iowa are not just bubbles, but veritable self-contained ecospheres. Candidate events are packed with mostly self-selecting audiences and trying to venture a guess as to who's ahead and who's not, who's got the Big Mo or the Big Slow, simply by sizing up campaign rallies is a fool's errand.

During the 2004 campaign, for example, even as Howard Dean was collapsing in the polls, his closing Iowa rallies were huge, electric events. John Kerry was in ascension but his meet-and-greets were low key, sometimes even dour and funereal. Only among Edwards' folks could you feel something like authentic momentum and, indeed, he came from nowhere to almost win.

Watching Edwards this afternoon and evening, as he spoke to cheering overflow crowds, he was surely trying to replicate his last-week boom of '04. "I've felt this energy, this excitement, this momentum before and it's real. It's no accident," he said to a Des Moines audience of more than a 1000 roaring supporters a few hours ago.

Obama said very much the same thing yesterday to a jazzed up crowed and will do so again Sunday night when he's scheduled to hold a big rally in Des Moines.

And this morning, hundreds showed up an hour or so in advance to pack a rural community meeting room for Hillary Clinton.

But, again, beware of making any definitive judgments based on crowd size or mood. Go to an Edwards event and you'd think most Democrats were t-shirted steelworkers. At an Obama rally it seems the whole world is a university. And Hillary's world -at least here in Iowa-- seems composed mostly of lawyers and schoolteachers, retired schoolteachers.

At the Edwards and Obama events the room brims with the dreamers and doers who want to change the world, or at least part of it. And that's at whom the two candidates aim their talks. And they're doing it extremely well in these final days. Inside the Hillary bubble, it's a different crew. Here are the folks who want mostly to change who is in the White House and don't seem to invest that much in politics itself. Oprah may have endorsed Barack Obama, but it's Hillary who speaks directly to her audience: the more apolitical, the less ideological.

Three candidates. Two different worlds.

Sunday I will spend with the steelworkers as they go out canvassing for Edwards. Their goal: to do some last-minute changing of minds, if not of the world itself.

To read the rest of my live campaign journal from Iowa click here.

Comments

[bdd]

This is a test

[SmellTheHorse]

You cannot blame Chelsea for not talking with the press--never mind that she's not a child, but a 27 year old professional woman.
The reason Bill and Hill won't let Chelsea say anything is, there's the risk she might say something honest, from the heart, and not poll-tested that morning by Mark Penn. If you take a moment to imagine the scenes Chelsea has witnessed between her parents and Bill's various lady "friends," who could blame her for subconsciously wanting to sink her Mom's campaign by committing the ultimate Clinton sin of telling the truth? Surely Chelsea would like her folks to recede from public life, the better to protect them--and herself--from the full-glare of humiliation which will again envelop them when Bill's latest carnal escapades are brought to light by the G.O.P.

[AtomVirgo]

FOX News,
God,if Edwards wins in Iowa, and starts to move up in the polls, watch the "Fair & Balanced" Network, go bunkers. They have called him a "phony, to a pinhead." (Part of their "Fair & Balanced policy") However, this might cost them, their "Fair & Balanced" rating, that they just received.
But, it will be great for Edwards. Just like Rush was great for Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill.
AtomVirgo

[TekBoss]

I am voting for Edwards.

[Bibbo]

Whats the truth about the claim that eEdward used junk science to win multimillion malpractice lawsuits against N.Carolina OBGYN's and the fact that the rate of C-sections has gone up while the Cerepral Palsy rate has stayed the same.Also there's been an exudus from the state of OBGYN's making finding a doctor much harder for expectant mothers. If this is true what more is needed to figure this "son of a millworker" out?

[YankeeCanuck]

Bubbles! Yeh, that's what the "top three" have to offer. You'd think no one else was running.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brent-budowsky/media-insiders-shaft-bide_b_78823.html

Here's what David Brooks, Mark Shields, and Judy Woodruff have to say:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRJ2us-0ZaU&feature=user

[drivenalmostcrazy]

I must admit that Edwards is a better choice than Hillery (who I never liked and scares me more than Dubya ..cause she's smarter) or Obama (who I'm afraid will knuckle-under to various pressures)­.Kucinich is notable but I'm afraid unelectable for the same reason that Woody Allen does get action-hero movie roles.
I am however very leery of the Leadership and motives/di­rection/st­rategy of the Democratic Party at large..(Ra­hm/Nancy /Harry/ et al)that Bunch has done Us no good at all.

[BirdsEatCats]

Watching this bunch of candidates, Rep and Dem, and growing more disgusted by the day, I've just realized what we should do: Send them all to the Caucasus, not the caucuses, and get all new candidates here. All these choices, and no one worth choosing.

[laurenc]

Huffpost readers: I just found a fascinating article online and want to highly recommend it: http://www.zmag.org/content/print_article.cfm?itemID=14612§ionID=90

[outnow]

Hillary wants everything to stay the same except the she will be in power. What good is that? Obama is middle of the road and hopes things will get better. The class struggle is what Edwards would change. Like FDR he doesn't care about upsetting organized capital.

Too many American don't understand that fact. That why wealth trickles upward in a massive shift.

[amberglow]

Hey, maybe you could tell us what they're actually saying instead of how many people are there and what kind they are?

[amosduncan]

Look, you're not going to get a true account of what's going on from Marc Cooper; he hates the Clinton's guts and makes no bones about it. He's not above repeating the worst right wing sludge about them.

Still, it will be a more interesting race, to say the least, if Edwards wins.

[radlib1]

The Kennedys made their money through bootlegging. JFK still cared more about the people than his political opponents. FDR was born rich, he still cared more about the people hurt by the depression than his Republican opponents.

John Edwards was actually born poor (the son of a mill worker) and although he became rich as a lawyer fighting for the rights of poor, disabled people against the rich corporations, he still maintains his support for the poor and the middle class.

Contrast that with Mitt Romney, who was born rich and became richer by moving money offshores to tax-free Caribbean banks (Clever tax dodge, yes, moral, no). Symbolic of all Republicans -- they care more about money than they do about fairness or justice.

Face it, Republicans are scum-sucking pigs. Many Democrats are too. Only a few (like John Edwrds) are for the people.

Vote for John Edwards for President.

[NYC]

I find these comments about HRC's supporters to be ridiculous. I'm not going with a safe bet, I'm going with someone who inspires me, who I truly admire and who I believe will bring us all the change we need and get us back on track. What did you do? Take a look around the room at hundreds of people and decide they were apolitical or ignorant. You're the one who seems ignorant with these generalizations. I'm traveling, with hundreds of others from out of state to volunteer, I'm a 42 year old highly educated, informed voter and I'm INSPIRED!!­!!!!!!!!!!­!!!!!

[RedRooster]

Here's a terrific view of life on the ground in Iowa:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/12/30/92956/286/842/426308