Obama and Edwards

OK, small break before Bill Richardson (at 8:30, not 6:30, oops, and we're missing Biden right now, which is driving me nuts, but oh well).

Obama at the huge, massive, bizarrely alone on the snowy hills of Coralville Marriott at 1:30 pm today. Super crowded, at least a thousand people, possibly more. (I think. Don't have official counts.)

I made my way as close to the stage as I could get. We were there at 12:35, and I have no idea what people who got there closer to 1:15 or 1:30 did. Yikes. I stood by Rose, a former nursing professor who now lives near Iowa City, and Rose's grandbaby Rose.

Rose's dad used to live in Iowa City and now lives near Yosemite, and he also used to live in D.C., I think, because he mentioned that he used to know frequent EW letter-writer Mark Rabinowitz (and he mentioned that he had read this issue sometime last summer when he went through Eugene). He made buttons for himself and his mom and daughter.

Obama was incredible. I mean, incredible. I can't get the info off of the recorder, and there's really no way to tell what a masterful job he did unless you've seen him in person, but I'll be very surprised if people who saw him don't switch. (One of the people I know who was leaning toward Clinton is now pretty strong on Obama. "His message came through, and he countered a number of other people's criticisms.") I will be quite surprised if Obama doesn't take the highest percentage of the caucuses. I thought he was a bit too slick or perhaps...I don't know, a bit too...whatever, I'd be happy to vote for him. The energy in that room was so strong, so committed, so full of joy and momentum. SO many young people. SO many (not just counting Baby Rose).

Then we went to see John Edwards at a coffeeshop next to the new Iowa City Public Library. That was a much smaller venue, but it was also completely packed, with more obviously working-class people, and more obviously poor people, and more older people than were at Obama. Elizabeth Edwards came out first. They're doing 36 straight hours of campaigning, including midnight stops etc., and they're tired people. Elizabeth Edwards was so awesome ("It's easy to think about this here in the heartland, and John talks a lot about it, the men and women who built this country with their hands. our fathers and grandfathers, our mothers and our great-grandmothers, and all of those people on whose shoulders we stand today. But it turns out that they built it for Exxon, they built it for HCA, and they built it for United Health Care, and for Eli Lilly,and what they'd intended to build for us doesn't so much work for us, so in this moment, we have a chance to switch that back the way it's supposed to be.")

Frankly, looking at their children (who came out with their mom), I got all teary-eyed thinking about her cancer. Mary Culver, the wife of Iowa's new(ish) Democratic governor, came out and spoke to introduce John Edwards. She was also interesting, far more interesting than somewhat conservative Chet, her husband.

John came out, and I was so close to him! OK, I admit it, I shook his hand. Who could resist? He was also incredible, but in a totally different way. He was after corporate greed from the very beginning, and he and Elizabeth both talked about a shelter in Des Moines for homeless single moms and their kids. He called them "extraordinary," and he talked about how much his grandparents and parents sacrificed so he could have a better life, and how the promise of that was being taken away by corporations and corporate greed. "A CEO makes more in ten minutes than a worker makes in a year," he said, and the crowd booed. He talked about the the girl who died of leukemia after her insurance company refused to pay for a liver transplant and about how you couldn't negotiate with these kinds of people. (Obama had talked about negotiating and sitting down at the table and how it wasn't a bad thing to be so nice, and Edwards was just like, "These people don't care about nice. They will stomp you if they can.")

Let me just note that there was a baby for Edwards as well (the baby's older sister was wearing an Edwards '08 campaign sticker).

I don't know what will happen, let me repeat. Lord knows if I were still living here, I can only hope I'd caucus for Edwards. Clinton would be my second choice for her absolute smarts and experience, and Obama for charisma, and then probably Joe Biden. But we'll never know because I didn't go hear him!

We're going to eat dinner at the The Mill, where Richardson will be at 8:30. Looks like Edwards will be at the Mill tomorrow as well. Jeez, maybe I'll get to see Biden tomorrow! (Dodd at 8 am at the same coffeeshop where Edwards sold a whole buttload of coffees and gelato and pastries as people waited, I mean, he didn't sell them, but the anticipation sold them.) More on Richardson later.