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Obama win rocks Clinton, Edwards

BY GLENN THRUSH | glenn.thrush@newsday.com

12:36 AM EST, January 4, 2008

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DES MOINES, Iowa - Barack Obama rocked the political world with a decisive victory in Thursday's Iowa caucus -- with Hillary Rodham Clinton finishing in third place fractionally behind John Edwards, a staggering blow to a candidate once viewed as her party's inevitable choice.

The freshman senator from Illinois, riding a generational wave of dissatisfaction with the political status quo, captured 37.6 percent of the Democratic caucus vote, with all caucus precincts reporting. Clinton trailed John Edwards 29.8 to 29.5 percent.

Obama's victory marked the first time an African-American candidate has won such a vital primary or caucus, and the candidate emphasized the historical nature of that achievement last night.

"Years from now you'll be able to say 'This was the moment when it all began,'" Obama told hundreds of giddy, chanting supporters at a Des Moines sports arena. "This is the moment when we finally beat back the politics of fear and doubt and cynicism."

The campaign now slingshots ahead to New Hampshire where a badly hobbled Clinton will try to recover her lost momentum and reclaim her husband's 1992 "Comeback Kid" mantel by the Jan. 8 primary.

Clinton still holds a narrow lead in recent New Hampshire polls, about seven percent on average, but history shows that Granite State leads vanish overnight after dramatic wins, like Obama's.

The defeat marks a stunning reversal of fortune for the New York senator, who was cruising to her party's nomination before a protracted slide that began after a disastrous Oct. 30 debate performance in Philadelphia.

Clinton remained upbeat after the first defeat of her eight-year political career. "I'm so ready for the rest of this campaign and I am so ready to lead ... I am confident and optimistic," Clinton told about 300 supporters in the ballroom of the Hotel Ft. Des Moines at 9:20 p.m. last night.

The former first lady, flanked by Bill Clinton and her daughter Chelsea, congratulated Obama and Edwards, thanked Iowa Democrats and said she would pitch her message to "like-minded independents" and "Republican voters who have seen the light."

After months of highlighting her foreign policy experience Clinton focused almost exclusively on domestic policy, signaling a possible shift to the "It's the economy, stupid" mantra of her husband's victorious 1992 campaign.

Her loss is likely to rekindle a debate inside her campaign over whether she should have seriously contested Iowa, a state where she had no organization before Feb. 2007. She addressed those concerns last night, saying, "We have always planned to run a national campaign."

Democratic caucus goers turned out in huge numbers -- a record-breaking 200,000 -- 40 percent above the 2004 turnout. Some polling places were so crowded that the caucusing had to be delayed to accommodate the throngs or people jockeying for spaces in jammed school and church parking lots.

Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd and Delaware Sen. Joe Biden, who both polled less than one percent, dropped out of the race after the polls closed.

Some Clinton supporters blamed the magnitude of their candidate's defeat on New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson's alleged instruction for his supporters to back Obama -- a charge both camps denied.

Edwards, who has struggled to raise cash, promised to soldier on, telling his faithful he would compete seriously in New Hampshire.

As expected Obama dominated college campuses in Ames, Iowa City and Des Moines. Clinton didn't reach the viability threshold -- the number of votes needed to capture a single delegate -- on the Drake University campus in the state capital.

But his strength was statewide, spanning all ages and races. Obama seemed to enjoy a significant advantage over Clinton in the state's African-American enclaves, besting the former first lady in one Waterloo caucus site, according to the Obama campaign.

That's a critical development: Black voters have been skeptical of Obama's electability and his Iowa win could catapult him ahead in the closely-fought Jan. 26 South Carolina primary, in which nearly half of voters are black.

"You have done what the state of New Hampshire can do in five days," Obama told his backers.

"You have done what America can do in this New Year of 2008."