Hillary Clinton loosened up at a packed event in Iowa City tonight — the final stop on a very long day of campaigning. She began by wishing the standing room only crowd of nearly 1,000 a Happy New Year, saying “the party just ended, right? Good, we like that! We like a lot of hearty partiers coming out to pick the next president of the United States. That’s exactly as it should be.”

“It’s not just all serious. You’ve got to have a little bit of fun in this process,” she said. “We have a lot of deficits in Washington, including a fun deficit.”

She thanked the pre-program entertainer, singer Betty Oh, with an extravagant shout-out. “Where are you Betty Oh? There you are!” she yelled. “Thank you Betty-Oh!!! I love it. From one diva to another Betty Oh, I’m so happy to see you!”

She remembered the last time she was there and the overflow crowd had to wait outside, saying there were 300 people “literally freezing to death.”

She told the story of a developmentally disabled kid that grew up in her childhood neighborhood, and admitted to making fun of him in her youth. “When I was growing up down the street from where I lived, there was a boy who never went to school. We kind of made fun of him, I hate to admit, because he was slow.”

And she performed a mocking impression of Republicans as if they just would decide to cede the general election to the Democrats — even affecting a goofy voice. “You know, the Republicans are not going to just throw up their hands and say ‘oh, it’s the Democrats turn. We have messed it up so badly! We are ashamed to go on, we’re not going to wage our usual brutal, mean-spirited, dishonest campaigns because we know they’re the better people.’ Ain’t gonna happen.”

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Obama is on day seven of his “Stand for Change” bus tour through Iowa (which has now taken partly to the air), which has taken him to four or five Iowa cities and towns each day.

So it’s not surprising that he temporarily forgot where he was while rallying a crowd in Council Bluffs - note the expert recovery
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Dennis Kucinich encouraged his Iowa supporters today to make Barack Obama their second choice candidate. Should Kucinich fail to receive the needed 15% support of caucus goers to remain viable, he asks that his supporters to realign behind Obama. The “second choice” vote is one that Obama has been pitching to voters for some days now.

“I hope Iowans will caucus for me as their first choice this Thursday, because of my singular positions on the war, on health care, and trade,” Kucinich said in a writen statement. “But in those caucus locations where my support doesn’t reach the necessary threshold, I strongly encourage all of my supporters to make Barack Obama their second choice.”

Why Obama? “Senator Obama and I have one thing in common: Change,” Kucinich said. Kucinich, also a “fringe candidate” in 2004, asked his supporters to go with John Edwards four years ago. According to sources inside the Kucinich campaign, the congressman chose Obama this time around because of comments Edwards made to Hillary Clinton on an open microphone after an earlier debate, saying candidates like Kucinich weren’t “serious.”

Senator Obama’s campaign issued a “thank you” statement, in which it was noted that “he and I have been fighting for a number of the same priorities — including an end to the war in Iraq that we both opposed from the start, reforming Washington and creating a better life for America’s working families.”

Soon after the thank you statement, the Obama issued another statement urging television networks to “allow full participation” in the upcoming debate in New Hampshire. Both the Kucinich and Obama campaigns insist no deals were brokered in exchange for this statement.

The senator phoned the congressman upon hearing the news to personally thank him. No word if Kucinich told Obama on the phone what he also said in the statement: “This is obviously an ‘Iowa only’ recommendation, as Sen. Obama and I are competing in the New Hampshire primary next Tuesday where I want to be the first choice of New Hampshire voters.”

That’s the name the press has given Obama’s new jet that’s whisking him to four different Iowa television markets today. It’s a 50-seater (31 press, the rest are for staff and Secret Service - and Obama and his sister, Auma) with a big Expressjet logo on the side of the plane.

Obama sat with his sister in the front row, across the aisle from senior advisor, David Axelrod. Secret Service sat between staff and press, which, as is typical, was relegated to the back of the plane.

The campaign has approximated press travel to total $1,500 for three flights over the next two days. Our first flight was from Des Moines to Sioux City - a 36-minute flight versus a 2-hour, 59-minute drive per mapquest.com.

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When the senator flies to New Hampshire after the caucuses, we will be flying in a different, bigger plane.

“It’s a good way to ring in the new year,” Obama communications director Robert Gibbs said last night in response to the new Des Moines register poll showing Senator Obama up four percentage points to 32% over Hillary Clinton’s 25%.

At his New Year’s Eve rally in Ames, Obama seemed pleased and announced that he was up “six or seven” points in the poll. “It’s beyond the margain of error - so we might just pull this thing off.” Of course the New Year’s Eve/Obama revelers cheered.

But caucuses are notoriously difficult to poll and even the Register cautioned relying on this one too heavily. The next morning in the sober six degree weather, Obama told a gym full of voters/canvass volunteers in Des Moines that polls are not enough. “The only thing that counts is whether or not you show up to caucus. The only thing that counts is whether over the next 72 hours, you’re willing to work for this and make the phone calls and knock on the doors and grab your friends and grab your neighbors and say it is time for us to deliver on change. That’s the only thing, that’s the only poll that we’re paying attention to is Thursday.”

He later told reporters on his plane that he hasn’t been paying “too much attention to polls at this point.” He added, “Now I think it’s going to come down to who gets their supporters out and I’ll put my money on my organization - it’s as good, and as dedicated and as intense as I’ve ever seen.”

Obama does regularly reference “recent polls” in his stump speech to prove to Iowans that he is more electable than Senators Clinton and Edwards. He tells voters that polls show that he can beat all five of the Republicans running for the nomination while other Democrats cannot. So clearly he’s paying attention to some polls.

In his final thrust before the Iowa caucuses, John Edwards stopped at his local campaign office in Mason City, Iowa, to wish his supporters a “Happy New Year” and continue firing up the base.

The crowd, swarming around the “Mainstreet Express” bus as it pulled up to the door, chanted, “We love Elizabeth! We love John! We wanna see them on the White House lawn!”

After making his way inside, the Senator stood up on a chair to address the packed crowd of supporters.

“We need you every step of the way,” he said. “Now is not the time to let up on the gas peddle. Now is the time to push the peddle to the floor.”

This remark, of course, got quite a chuckle from the national press corps. Our media van was pulled over for speeding along an Iowa highway in its rush to make it to the event on time.

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At a campaign stop in Emmetsburg, Iowa, on Monday, a man raised his hand and told John Edwards that Michelle Obama said he was a great candidate, but couldn’t win because he didn’t have enough money. Mrs. Obama’s remark, he said, was made at an event in Pocahontas, Iowa.

The man’s account—though not confirmed—elicited a strong response from the Senator.

“We’re not going to have an auction in Iowa, we’re going to have an election,” he said. “I just want to say how unbelievably weak it is to be arguing that you should be the candidate because you have more money than the other candidate.”

Edwards continued to chastise those who divert attention from the issues and focus only on a candidate’s war chest. Yet, fair or not, his campaign financing has become the subject of debate among political strategists, who question whether or not he can compete effectively in the larger state primaries. Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama reached $27,859,861 and $21,343,292 in the third quarter, respectively—and are expected to have each raised over $100 million by the year’s end on their presidential campaigns. Edwards, whose campaign is publicly financed, raised $7,157,233 in the third quarter, and is expected to close the year with about $44 million.

“When you’re resorting to arguments about how much money somebody has, you’re in a bad place,” he said. “When I win the Iowa caucuses, the money will pour in. It’s how it always works.”

Offering a final exclamation mark, Elizabeth Edwards, who was seated directly behind him, stood up and took the microphone.

“You may not be surprised,” she said to her husband, “but I am surprised and disappointed in Michelle.”

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Sen Clinton and her daughter shook hands with supporters in the cold and snow outside her event in Muscatine — and the snowman those supporters built for her outside. While Chelsea imitated its arms-out pose, Hillary buttered up the Iowa crowd, saying the snowman should be named “caucus.”

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Following up on yesterday’s email, the Giuliani campaign sent a memo titled “Looking Good,” to reporters today arguing that they remain “convinced that our strategy we have long had in place is right - bold, innovative and designed to deal with the radically different election calendar.”

Giuliani’s decision to bypass Iowa, New Hampshire and the early states—what the campaign calls the antiquated “Carter/Clinton” approach—is being questioned, but the memo argues that the new election calendar will “prove us right.” With all of the political reporters focusing on Thursday’s caucus, where Giuliani will likely finish outside the top 3 or 4, the campaign saw it fit to send this message.

“Our rivals seemingly have built campaigns based on the old calendars’ strategies — a couple of very early state wins to propel them deeper in to the nomination process. To the contrary, our plan allocates time and resources to the many states which vote a bit later…putting a high priority on spending our time and money in a proportional basis in Florida and the large delegate states voting on February 5th is clearly the right thing to do.”

Full memo after jump

(more…)

Barack Obama has taken to asking voters to make him their second choice candidate - although he jokes they’d be better served if he were their first choice, of course. Why? Well, in order for a candidate to remain viable in the Iowa caucus system, he or she has to have at least 15% support from caucus goers. If a candidate, say a Chris Dodd, doesn’t get that magic percentage, his supporters will have to realign behind another candidate.

Obama campaign manager David Plouffe told reporters on a conference call this morning that Obama and Edwards, and not Hillary Clinton, will be the two candidates likely to get support from Richardson, Kucinich, Dodd, and Biden supporters. Which could lead to Iowa success.

So Obama was sure to hear out 59-year-old Gene Blanshan, a self-described Biden supporter, at an event in Jefferson, Iowa. Blanshan asked the senator why he should pick Obama over Edwards as his second choice.

Obama spent a few minutes outlining the differences, including where he has consistently stood on issues like NAFTA, No Child Left Behind, and the Iraq war. He added, “The point I am making is in my gut, there is a consistency of who I am fighting for, what I believe in, choices I have made in my life that can give you some assurance of when I get into the White House, I am going to be fighting for you. And I am not going to be different as time goes on.”

Blanshan was immediately swarmed by the press following the event. He told us he asked Edwards the same question - and he made up his mind as to who his number two candidate is.

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