Obama '08?

I agree about georgeob. I've met OBill in Chicago, and find him to be a very congenial and generous guy. We hit it off pretty good face-to-face, but have had a few disagreements on a2k before and after the meet. That's to be expected; what counts is I consider him a friend.

National Focus Poses Challenge for Obama

By Alec MacGillis
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 8, 2008; A08



CONCORD, N.H., Jan. 7 -- For months, Barack Obama's presidential campaign has focused its organizational abilities on the small, well-defined canvas of Iowa and New Hampshire, where the senator from Illinois has been able to make his case face to face with large proportions of the electorate and aides had the time to build support precinct by precinct.

After Tuesday's primary, that compact canvas will be ripped apart, replaced by a nationwide campaign less suited to the kind of intensive organizing that Obama has used to such effect in the first two voting states. He will have to campaign in Nevada, which holds a caucus on Jan. 19; in South Carolina, which will vote on Jan. 29; and in more than 20 states that vote on Feb. 5, including giants such as California, New York and Texas.

For Obama supporters around the country, the question becomes: Where next? Can the campaign, with all its momentum, hold its own in a nationwide fight for delegates against Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.), who despite her current troubles still has most of the Democratic establishment behind her? With so little time available, and so many fewer opportunities for personal contact, can he win over voters in states in which he has until recently lagged far behind Clinton in the polls?

Obama campaign officials say they are more than ready for what is to come, pointing to vibrant volunteer networks in all the coming states, as well as offices and paid staff on the ground in all but five of them -- Delaware, Connecticut, New Mexico, Arkansas and Tennessee. The campaign has placed a particular emphasis on Feb. 5 states with a caucus, such as Minnesota and Colorado, believing they will be well suited to Obama's grass-roots approach.

Steve Hildebrand, Obama's deputy campaign manager, said the campaign is planning to compete on Clinton's home turf of New York because the state awards primary delegates proportionally and by congressional district, and not in a winner-take-all fashion. If Obama does well in parts of the state, as his campaign expects, he could walk away with as much as 40 percent of its delegates.

The campaign expects to do particularly well in about half of the Feb. 5 states that hold "open" primaries, meaning they allow independents to vote. These include the biggest prize of all, California; Hildebrand says volunteers have been making an average of 6,000 completed calls to voters per night.

More immediately, campaign officials are highly confident in their organizations in Nevada and South Carolina. Hildebrand said the campaign expects to make an all-out effort in Nevada, although Clinton is backed by Rory Reid, a Clark County commissioner and the son of Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid. Obama hopes to gain the endorsement of Nevada's powerful culinary workers' union, which may announce its pick on Wednesday.

"From early on, we always said it was a sequential process, and we built early and large operations in Nevada and South Carolina knowing that they'd be given a lot of attention," Hildebrand said. "We have to perform very well there in order to get momentum going into February 5."

The biggest challenge for all candidates will be deciding where to invest time and money, since there will be so little time between South Carolina and the many states voting on Feb. 5. Hildebrand said the campaign is still deciding how to divide Obama's travels.

If Obama manages to win Tuesday, that will make the decision much easier for him, said Jack Bass, a political scientist at the College of Charleston. Since Obama's Iowa victory, there has been such a visible movement toward him, particularly among the state's black voters, that he will not need to spend as much time in South Carolina as he might have otherwise, Bass said.

Still, Clinton has powerful assets lined up in California and elsewhere, including elected officials from the mayor of Los Angeles down to numerous assemblymen and city council members. She will also have the firepower of several major unions, including the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which has been paying for radio ads and mailings attacking Obama in New Hampshire.

In contrast, many of Obama's volunteers have been working so far under the radar that the campaign did not reach out until they had already been at it for months.

In California's Santa Cruz County, Brad Sherak, a technology executive, formed an Obama group a week after the candidate announced that he was running; the first meeting drew 75 people. For months, a core group of 10 volunteers toiled away, making phone calls, marching in parades and setting up tables at community functions.

Over the summer, Obama's California staff got in touch with the group, gave it access to its voter database to help target phone calls and sent it a list of local residents who had contributed to Obama. The group's list of potential volunteers now runs to 1,600 names.

Sherak, a political independent, said he is most encouraged by the support from his moderate colleagues in Silicon Valley. He speculates that Obama may be helped by the popularity of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R), who preaches a similar post-partisan approach. "If he can win New Hampshire, California is totally in play for him," Sherak said. "It's a much broader base than people think."

Alan Jones formed an online Meetup group for Obama in Fort Collins, Colo., last spring. He said the campaign's Colorado staff reached out to him five months ago and recently opened an office in Fort Collins outfitted with volunteers and computers from Iowa.

"Democrats are usually like herding cats, getting us to go in the same direction and present a unified message. The Obama campaign is different," he said. "Usually, you show up to be involved and they lose your information when you showed up the following week. Obama doesn't lose anyone's number."

Obama, McCain Get Early Votes

Jan 8 01:28 AM US/Eastern
By CLARKE CANFIELD
Associated Press Writer

DIXVILLE NOTCH, N.H. (AP) - Residents of two tiny towns stayed up late to give Barack Obama and John McCain early victories in the New Hampshire presidential primary.
Voters in two small New Hampshire villages, Dixville Notch and Hart's Location, cast the initial ballots just after midnight Tuesday.

In Hart's Location, Democrat Obama received nine votes, Hillary Rodham Clinton received three and John Edwards received one. On the Republican side, McCain received six, Mike Huckabee received five, Ron Paul received four and Mitt Romney one.

In Dixville Notch, on the Republican side, McCain received four votes, Mitt Romney two and Rudy Giuliani one. On the Democratic side, Obama received seven votes, John Edwards two votes and Bill Richardson one vote.
Long-shot GOP hopeful Rep. Duncan Hunter attended the vote in Dixville Notch, where results were announced before 12:06 a.m.

"It epitomizes people-to-people politicking," Hunter said minutes before the votes were cast.

Hunter received no votes in either town.

State law allows towns with fewer than 100 people to open at midnight and to close as soon as all registered voters have cast ballots.

While most New Hampshire residents have to wait until around daybreak to vote, those in the two far northern towns have been going to the polls at midnight for decades. The Balsams, located about 20 miles from the Canadian border, has been holding its early bird voting since That's when former owner Neil Tillotson, who died in 2001, arranged for early elections by having Dixville incorporated solely for voting purposes. Hart's Location began midnight voting in 1948 because most residents were railroad workers who had to be on the job during normal polling hours. Townspeople, weary of the media attention and the late hours, did away with it after the 1964 election but revived the practice in 1996.

In Dixville this year, there were three registered Republicans, one Democrat and 12 who were undeclared. Hart's Location had eight Democrats, eight Republicans and 13 undeclared.

With more candidates on the ballot?-42?-than voters in town, longtime Hart's Location town clerk Marion Varney, 86, wouldn't venture a guess Monday on how the voting would turn out. In 2004, Wesley Clark got the most Democratic primary votes in Hart's Location and Dixville.

"I don't even know for sure who I'm going to vote for," said Varney. "I think I might just close my eyes and mark the ballot."

The two places have a friendly competition about which is first to cast its ballots.

New Hampshire Secretary of State William Gardner recalls getting phone calls in years past from people claiming that Neil Tillotson had illegally cast the first ballot at The Balsams before midnight?-that they had seen it on C-SPAN.

"I'd say it was done on 'Tillotson time,'" Gardner said. "If he said it was midnight, then it was midnight."

Just for some perspective...
Didn't Bill Clinton lose the first four primaries?

In 1992, Clinton was the early favorite of the Democratic Party for the presidential nomination and was able to garner the support of many superdelegates even before the first nominating contests were conducted.[12] However, Clinton's presidential bid ran into difficulty in the opening weeks. First he finished well behind in the Iowa caucus, which was largely uncontested due to the presence of Iowa Senator Tom Harkin, who subsequently won. Secondly the campaign encountered difficulty when, during the New Hampshire Primary campaign, revelations of a possible extramarital affair with Gennifer Flowers began to surface. Clinton and his wife Hillary decided to go on 60 Minutes following the Super Bowl to refute these charges of infidelity, as Clinton had fallen far behind former Massachusetts Senator Paul Tsongas in the New Hampshire polls.[12]

Their television appearance was a calculated risk, but it seemed to pay off as Clinton regained several delegates. He finished second to Tsongas in the New Hampshire primary, but the media viewed it as a moral victory for Clinton, since he came within single digits of winning after trailing badly in the polls. Clinton shrewdly labeled himself "The Comeback Kid" on election night to help foster this perception and came out of New Hampshire as the leader by a large percentage. Tsongas, on the other hand, picked up little or no momentum from his victory.[12]

Clinton used his new-found momentum to win many of the Democratic Southern primaries, including the big prizes of Florida and Texas, and build up a sizable delegate lead over his opponents in the race for the 1992 Democratic presidential nomination. However, there were still some doubts whether he could secure the nomination, as former California Governor Jerry Brown was scoring victories elsewhere and Clinton had yet to win a significant contest outside of his native South.[12][21]

With no major Southern state remaining on the primary calendar, Clinton targeted the New York primary, which contained a large number of delegates and was to be his proving ground. He scored a resounding victory in New York City. He finally shed his image as a regional candidate.[21] Having been transformed into the consensus candidate, he secured the Democratic Party nomination, finishing with a victory in Jerry Brown's home state of California.[

His security detail has already been increased.... no worries, Snood.

Well, I was 10 years old and had to be in school at the time. But I am sure glad you were there at those JFK events so you could let us know how much things have improved. Have any details to share? Where were you standing at the time?

Nonsense. As much as I Hate to sound paranoid or like one of A2K's gun nuts: Security isn't the only thing that's improved since the 60's. A sharpshooter holding one of these is deadly from up to a mile away (That's right. A friggin mile. )




While I certainly hope nothing happens, there is no such thing as absolute security.

n the interview, Sawyer asked Obama what he thought of how Clinton has been conducting her campaign:

Sawyer: "Do you get angry at her?"

Obama: "Not really. I find the manner in which they've been running their campaign sort of depressing, lately. It was interesting in the debate, Sen. Clinton saying 'don't feed the American people false hopes. Get a reality check, you know?' I mean, you can picture JFK saying, 'we can't go to the moon, it's a false hope. Let's get a reality check.' It's not, sort of, I think, what our tradition has been."