Hillary Clinton has been positioning herself of late as the candidate of “change.” Don’t listen to that noise, says Barack Obama in Carroll, Iowa. I’m the REAL change candidate.
Sound Bite: Imitation’s the best form of flattery. I’m getting flattered a lot. Suddenly everybody’s for change.”
January 3, 2008 is fast approaching but some Iowans have had enough already. Here’s a “Caucus Lament” from musician Jason Walsmith of The Nadas and Kyle Munson from The Des Moines Register.
At a town hall meeting in Sioux City, IA, Barack Obama talks about the role of government in assisting working people in need.
Sound Bite: “That’s what our government should be doing — is lifting these barriers off the shoulders of people so they can live out their dreams and create a better country. along with a better life for themselves.”
YouTube is teaming up with the Des Moines Register to solicit caucus videos from Iowa voters. Here’s the pitch:
Share your opinions, campaign trail videos, interview other Iowan voters, or offer your predictions for what will take place in the most exciting caucus season in decades. Then on January 3rd, document your caucus experience and show the rest of the world what the Iowa caucuses are all about.”
Academy Award winner Tim Robbins joins the Edwards “Main Street Express” bus tour in Iowa and speaks to a town hall meeting in Des Moines. Robbins says the media is bamboozling voters and that Edwards has “the best chance to beat Republicans in the general election.”
Sound Bite: “Eight months ago with eight viable Democratic candidates running, we were being sold a fiction that this was a two-candidate race. Why? No one had voted yet. We’re the voters. We decide who the frontrunner is.”
Three Obama precinct captains in Iowa testify for their man.
Marian is a small farmer. She’s having a house party and she’ll have cookies.
Dr. Jay Brown — he’s an allergist — says Obama inspires him.
Professor Hal Chase — who sounds like the voice of HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssesy — says he digs Obama’s integrity, intelligence, unselfishness and commitment.
For those of you who can’t get enough of Michelle Obama, Barack Obama and Oprah Winfrey preachifying and spechifying, here’s the trio at an event on Saturday in Cedar Rapids. They’re “fired up and ready to go” in this 20-minute clip.
Even though he lags Clinton and Obama in the national polls, John Edwards is very competitive in Iowa. Here he fires up the troops in Des Moines before setting out on — what else — another bus tour of the state.
Sound Bite: “This cause is about making certain that America rises, that America rises up again. That America rises up in a way that not just a few do well but that everybody in this country does well.”
it’s all Oprah all the time this weekend for the Obama camapaign — a whirlwind tour with stops in Iowa, New Hamsphire and South Carolina. Can Oprah’s blessing do for Obama what it does for authors and advertisers? We’ll see. But there’s no doubt that the Big O can turn out the crowds and the media.
Oprah deals with Obama’s “experience” issue.
Sound Bite: “I challenge you to see through those people who try and convince you that experience with politics as usual is more valuable than wisdom won from years of serving people outside the walls of Washington, DC.”
As the Iowa caucus fast approaches, Barack Obama takes a look back at his year stumping throughout the state and asks Iowans for their votes on January 3, 2008.
Sound Bite: “What happens in Iowa will shape this race like no other event.”
John Edwards has a new 30-second spot running in South Carolina. He talks about his hardscabble youth — dad had to borrow $50 to “bring me home,” the mills where his father worked closed (but you knew that) and John saw “how devastating bad government and corporate greed can be.”
Sound Bite: “Growing up here. You never stop fighting and you never forget where you came from.”
MESS
In a 30-second ad running in Iowa, Edwards says “We’re going to have to be willing to take on this corrupt system and change it,” or we’re going to leave “our children” with a “mess.”
