US Election:The youthful enthusiasm of Barack Obama's campaign beat Hillary Clinton's machine, writes Dana Milbankin Des Moines, Iowa.
And so, after a year of campaigning and tens of millions of candidates' dollars, it came down to this: 600 people packed into a gymnasium at Merrill Middle School ("Home of the Mustangs!") and a burly man on a stage, perspiring heavily.
"I've been sweating since 3 o'clock," said the man, caucus chairman Jeff Goetz.
For good reason. Goetz's precinct, Des Moines's 70th, is believed to be the largest in Iowa. Both the Clinton and Obama campaigns held it up as a test case that would indicate who would prevail in Iowa. Here, as elsewhere across the state, Hillary Clinton's superior campaign organisation would battle Barack Obama's passionate, but young and unaffiliated, supporters.
The residents of precinct 70, a couple of miles west of downtown Des Moines, are well educated and wealthier than average, and their caucus is not the homely living-room scene of the popular imagination. The CNN campaign bus was parked outside, and network cameras filmed all four precincts inside. Also on hand: five TV crews, including one from Japan, National Public Radio and a stream of newspaper reporters.
For reasons not entirely clear, two caucus observers dressed up as a chimp and a rodent.
As anticipated, the Clinton machine was the best organised. Ninety minutes before the caucus began, volunteers covered the school grounds in "Hillary" signs. A squadron of volunteers lined the hallways with clipboards and stickers; each precinct boasted a Clinton "decorations" captain, a get-out-the-vote captain, a transportation captain to arrange rides, and a precinct captain.
They've knocked on every door in the precinct "multiple times," said precinct chair Weiss. While supporters searched for parking far from the school, Clinton volunteers shuttled her supporters from a nearby parking lot they had reserved in advance.
The caucus chairman, Goetz, had some trouble getting things going. First he delayed the start because of crowds waiting to get in. Then he realised he didn't have a pen and borrowed one from a cameraman. Then he announced that 434 people were in attendance, before changing that to 623 and then 551 and finally settling on 554, which meant that a candidate needed 83 voters to be "viable".
Then the trash-talking began. Obama's crowd appeared slightly larger than Clinton's, but Clinton volunteer Jack Graham taunted: "Most of them are observers. Look at them - they won't be 18 for another 10 years." But then Goetz ordered supporters to group themselves by candidates in the four corners of the room - and the Obama crowd looked much larger than Clinton's and Edwards's. "We're not counting the top tier," Goetz announced.
The caucusgoers revolted. "No - we need to know now!"
The Edwards crowd counted off. The tally, 103, produced a modest cheer.
Clinton's supporters counted off next. Her tally, also 103, elicited oohs and murmurs, half-hearted cheers, and grim looks from the Clinton bleacher. Then came Obama: 231 - and a roar from the young voices in Obama's corner fills the room.
It was official: In precinct 70, Obama's Children's Crusade defeated the Clinton machine and the Edwards populists. And the rest were out: Joe Biden (46), Bill Richardson (38), uncommitted (16), Dennis Kucinich (13), Christopher Dodd (3) and Mike Gravel (1).
"We will now start the realignment," Goetz announced, like a carnival barker, and ordered the "designated arm-twisters" to start their work.
Richardson supporters held a vote about joining Obama. An Edwards supporter offered cookies to Richardson supporters.
"It looks like an explosion for Obama," concluded Jim Zeller, an undecided. "If it's gonna be a phenomenon, I want to be a part of it." Obama's young supporters started clapping and chanting "We want you!" Comito urged defectors to his side: "More undecideds! Two more coming! Come on in!" The Obama section gradually filled with Biden and Richardson supporters.
"Oh, this is huge," said a young Obama supporter.
"Big night for Hillary," a Clinton backer grumbled to his neighbour.
A Clinton supporter made a last-minute appeal to the crowd: "She's the one best prepared to fight the fight against a Republican candidate."
An Edwards representative countered: "He has a sincere concern for the less fortunate."
But the Obama precinct chairman, chewing gum, looked cocky. "Barack Obama is polling better against Republican candidates than anybody else in the field." And against the Democratic candidates, too.
Goetz read out the final tally: 289 for Obama (5 delegates), 131 for Edwards (2 delegates), 120 for Clinton (2 delegates).
Obama's youth had triumphed, and the Clinton machine was broken. "Fired up!" the Obama supporters chanted. "Ready to go." (LA Times-Washington Post service) 'Our time for change has come'
The following are extracts from Barack Obama's victory speech in Des Moines:
"Thank you, Iowa. 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 . . . 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. And our time for change has come . . .
We are choosing hope over fear. We're choosing unity over division, and sending a powerful message that change is coming to America. 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 . . .
I'll be a president who finally makes healthcare affordable and available to every American . . .
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 . . .
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 . . .
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 . . . 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 healthcare 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 . . .
Hope is 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.