COLUMBIA, S.C. - For Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards, even the press credentials have to send a message.

When journalists arrived at Edwards’ primary night party location to pick up credentials, they found an interesting quote on them: ”Representing the Grown-Up Wing of the Democratic Party”.

Edwards, who was born in South Carolina and needs a win in the state since he has yet to place first in the early voting contests, accused his two Democratic opponents, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, of squabbling instead of talking about policy during the last debate earlier this week that was seen as extremely contentious.

The 54-year-old former senator from North Carolina has seized on tit-for-tat attacks between Clinton and Obama as a chance to urge voters to choose him because he is a “grown-up”. 

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- Photo credit: Reuters/Chris Keane

Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama’s post-caucus party sounded more like a soccer match than a political celebration after the first-term senator from Illinois was declared the winner in Iowa’s Democratic caucus.

“O-ba-ma, O-ba-ma, O-ba-ma” they yelled.

Then they began chanting what has become the unofficial slogan of the campaign:

“Fired Up”

“Ready to go”

Over and over and over again.

Reuters broke the news to Barack Obama’s chief strategist David Axelrod that television networks were calling a victory for his candidate.

“That’s great news,” he said. “Obviously this turnout has been beyond anybody’s expectations. I think there was a hunger for change in this country,” Obama chief strategist David Axelrod told Reuters.

Obama supporters were let into the site of the campaign’s after-caucus party shortly after the networks began calling the race.

“Ole Ole Ole Ole, Obama, Ole,” they chanted as they watched the television screens.

All the yelling at rowdy rallies has finally taken its toll on Barack Obama’s voice, but the Democratic presidential hopeful says he feels great ahead of tonight’s caucus vote.

Accompanied by his wife Michelle, Obama stopped by a downtown Des Moines food court at lunchtime and was mobbed by well-wishers and media.

Shocked diners looked up to see Obama enter through a back door and supporters started applauding and yelled out “WHOOO!!”, then mobbed the first-term senator from Illinois.

Obama spent about 30 minutes signing autographs, urging people to vote and answering questions that ranged from his tax plan, what values he feels are important in a Supreme Court nominee to healthcare reform.

“Everybody’s got to caucus,” he said to people as he greeted them and received well wishes. The caucus vote on Thursday night launches the state-by-state elections to pick nominees from each party for November’s White House race.

“I’ve been to every caucus since 1972 and I’m most excited about this one,” Karen Ritchie, a 67-year-old from Des Moines, told Obama.

Obama, who told Radio Iowa he plans to drink a concoction including lemon and ginger to help revive his vocal chords as the New Hampshire primary is five days away, gave only a short answer when asked how he was doing ahead of the vote — “I feel great, although my throat…” and pointed to his neck.

He left to shouts of “good luck” from people in the crowd.

– Photo credit: Reuters/Jim Young

DAVENPORT, Iowa - As Iowa shivered in frigidly cold temperatures, die-hard political supporters still headed out to campaign for their favorite candidates.

Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama sounded like a concerned parent when he gave some volunteers a little advice before they headed out to knock on doors to try to drum up support for the Illinois senator one day before Iowa’s first-in-the nation vote.

“You guys have your long-johns on?” he asked a couple hundred warmly-dressed supporters who yelled back “YEAH!”

“Good, ’cause it’s feeling a little brisk outside,” said Obama, as the temperature in Davenport hovered around 2 degrees Fahrenheit and a sharp wind made it feel even colder.

“It’ll be good for you — gets your blood flowing. Walk quick. Talk fast,” he said to chants of “yeah” from the warmly dressed crowd packed into a gymnasium.

Two women from Illinois, who traveled to Davenport to help Obama’s cause, said they weren’t fazed by the weather.

“I don’t care. I have a warm coat,” said one woman, who would not identify herself because she said the campaign told her not to talk to reporters. “I love this guy.”

Temperatures across Iowa were stuck in the single- or low-double-digits on Wednesday as campaign supporters made one last frenetic effort to convince people to vote for their candidate in Thursday’s caucuses.

– Photo credit: Reuters/Jim Young

JEFFERSON, Iowa — Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama likes to joke about getting seasoned and stewed.

In speeches across Iowa in the final days before the state’s Jan. 3 caucus that kicks off the 2008 presidential nominating contest, Obama regularly gets laughs and applause when he makes a clear dig at opponents like Sen. Hillary Clinton who say the first-term senator from Illinois is too inexperienced to be president.

“There have been some who say … ‘He may be inspiring and you like his ideas but you know what, he has not been in Washington long enough,’” Obama said.

“‘We need to season him a little bit more. We need to stew him and boil all the hope out of him so he can sound like everybody else.’”

Obama then leads into one of the speech lines that generates the most applause, focusing on how he is the candidate that represents change.

“I have to admit that some people have even said that electing me right now without that Washington longevity that that would be a gamble, a roll of the dice,” he said.

“But let me tell you something … the real gamble right now would be to have the same old folks do the same old things over and over and over again and somehow expect a different outcome,” Obama said.

– Photo credit: Reuters/Keith Bedford

KNOXVILLE, Iowa - When Democratic White House contender Barack Obama was asked to sum up the differences between himself and Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, he focused first on swear words.

At a campaign rally, Obama took a question from a Republican voter who said she is thinking of switching her vote. But she wanted Obama to tell her what separates him from Romney.

“That’s a long list,” he said to laughter.

But then he thought of a big difference. He said he heard an interview of the former Massachusetts governor in which Romney was asked if he had ever cursed.

“He said well, of course, but not the real harsh ones,” Obama said, recounting the Romney interview.

“I have to tell you, I’ve used some really harsh curse words. the really good ones, the juicy ones,” he said to laughter by several hundred people packed into a school auditorium.

First marijuana, now bad swear words. Anything else?

– Photo credit: Reuters/Keith Bedford

The vote in the key state of Iowa is more than a month away, but veteran Republican leader Newt Gingrich is ready to declare a winner in the Democratic presidential nomination race there: Barack Obama.
 
The former Speaker of the House — and once briefly a presidential aspirant — said in an interview on Tuesday on ABC’s Good Morning America that he thought the senator from Illinois could beat front-runner Hillary Clinton on Jan. 3 when voters in Iowa kick off the state-by-state nomination battles for both parties.
 
“My guess is that Sen. Obama’s going to win Iowa, and he’s going to win it by a substantial margin,” Gingrich said. “I have a hunch that the emotional energy that Sen. Obama’s building is more powerful than the emotional energy that Sen. Clinton is building.”
 
“It just seems to me right now, that in Iowa at least, that Sen. Obama’s built a real head of steam,” Gingrich said in the interview, nearly a year before the Nov. 4, 2008 general election.
 
His prediction came as some polls showed Clinton falling slightly behind Obama in Iowa.

– Photo credit: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque

His campaign has been whittled down to the bare-bones and sometimes he flies commercial instead of charter airplanes. But John McCain is laying out some cash to blanket New Hampshire with radio and TV ads this weekend in an effort to grab support in the early voting state.

McCain’s campaign manager Rick Davis said the ads would cover the entire state for at least the next couple of weeks.

“This is the next step in an effective campaign to start locking in voters and driving a message that seems to be resonating out there,” said Davis, who cited a poll showing that McCain was getting closer to top Republican rivals Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney in New Hampshire.

The McCain campaign, which was forced to restructure and scale back after poor fund-raising performance in the first half of the year, refused to say how much the ads would cost but said they had enough money to pay for them.

The three ads focus heavily on McCain’s military background and war-hero status. Two include an excerpt of the former Navy pilot being interviewed while prisoner of war in Hanoi in 1967.

The campaign said they will help highlight McCain’s experience and ability to lead the country.

The Arizona senator began the year as one of the Republican front-runners but has lost support from Americans in part because of he supports President George W. Bush’s increasingly unpopular strategy in Iraq.

– Photo credit: Brian Snyder

Surprise! Hillary Clinton is much warmer and friendlier than voters expected and she can even be funny.

That was the reaction among a group of about 1,000 Democratic supporters who packed into a theater in Charlottesville, Va. for a fundraiser with the New York senator and the best-selling novelist John Grisham.

“She was able to connect with the crowd,” said Dick Reppucci. “She personalized it. I thought she did incredibly well. That’s why I came to see what she was like in person. And she’s good.”

However his wife, Chris, said she was still debating whether to vote for Clinton or Illinois Sen. Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nominee. She said Clinton was “better than she had thought”.

Clinton had the crowd laughing and clapping as she talked about the trials of being a fan of the Chicago Cubs baseball team, which hasn’t won the World Series in nearly a century.

Sitting on the stage in a comfortable chair with Grisham answering his questions, Clinton spent several minutes discussing the Cubs woes and her decision to also become a Yankees fan in hopes of finally supporting a winning team.

She said her decision to support the Yankees as a young girl in addition to the Cubs, who have a history of being “lovable losers”, gives “great psychological insight into me.”

Grisham and Clinton bantered for about 45 minutes on stage, also discussing whether he would become a U.S. ambassador in a Clinton presidency as well as more serious subjects like the Iraq war and health care.

Several audience members said they were surprised at how relaxed and funny Clinton was in contrast to how she appears in debates or at formal speeches.

“She’s not this stern image that you get,” said Lynne Goldman, who brought her 86-year-old mother to the event. “She’s very sincere. Her energy is amazing.”

– Photo credit: Hans Deryk