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In Iowa, Obama sets course to unify Dems

BY ERIK GERMAN AND CRAIG GORDON | erik.german@newsday.com; craig.gordon@newsday.com

May 21, 2008

Barack Obama returned to Iowa last night, the state that launched his unlikely candidacy on a cold January night when his shocking win over presumed front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton set him on a course to the nomination.

The onetime upstart is now the party's lead contender, facing a campaign that may be almost as difficult as the one he just waged, to find a way to bring Clinton supporters into his fold.

"Some may see the millions upon millions of votes cast for each of us as evidence that our party is divided," he told supporters in Des Moines. "But I see it as proof that we have never been more energized and united in our desire to take this country in a new direction. More than anything, we need this unity and this energy in the months to come."

Obama is wasting little time savoring the prospect of becoming the first African-American major party nominee. Top Obama organizers told The Associated Press the senator has quietly begun planning to take over the Democratic National Committee and assemble a multistate team for the general election. Then there are the nuts and bolts of the campaign: His staff is hard at work building a campaign apparatus to take on John McCain in November - beefing up his communications team, traveling to Florida this week to tend a state he skipped in the primaries and drawing sharp contrasts with his presumed Republican opponent on foreign policy issues.

But experts say first he must find a way to win support among the women and the lower-educated white voters that backed her. And, they say, that may require almost a whole new campaign, one waged with delicacy and grace, lest Obama appear too eager in pushing Clinton to surrender her presidential bid.

"He won't do anything to force her out of the race because at this point he doesn't want to alienate her supporters," said Andrew Polsky, a professor of political science at Hunter College in Manhattan. "He doesn't want to become the target of their wrath."

Polsky said as long as Obama allows Clinton a graceful exit, he can still hope to win support from her voters. It amounts, Polsky said, to an "undeclared truce - he won't do anything to suggest she should leave the race and she won't attack him in a way that will undermine his standing in the general election."

Indeed, one of Obama's first big jobs will be healing party rifts, particularly with women upset Clinton may yet fail to pierce the ultimate glass ceiling.

"There will be some women who will feel so disappointed if Clinton isn't the candidate that they may not support Obama," said Vicky Lovell of the Institute for Women's Policy Research, a nonpartisan research group in Washington, D.C.

But Democratic strategist Matt Bennett said he believes the party will quickly heal. "I think it's going to be an issue for about a month," Bennett said of frustrated Clinton supporters threatening to break with Obama. "Right now, they're choosing between two candidates who are a millimeter apart on virtually every substantial issue, and philosophically as well. McCain and Obama are a mile apart, so there's no doubt where people are going to end up."

And it appears Obama has the finances to take on McCain. Obama reported he had more than $37 million on hand at the start of May compared with McCain's nearly $22 million. Clinton raised $22 million in April.