Obama makes final Iowa push

Thanks voters for vindicating his faith in US

Barack Obama was welcomed by 25,000 people at a rally yesterday at Western Gateway Park in Des Moines. He thanked Iowa voters for handing him a caucus win in January that helped set him on the path to the White House. At left, he greeted brothers Cole and Hunter Norris during the event. (JAE C. HONG/ASSOCIATED PRESS)

DES MOINES - For all of Barack Obama's wistful talk about launching his presidential bid on a cold day in Springfield, Ill., 21 months ago, the true center of gravity for his candidacy is this politics-crazed city and state, which first vaulted him into the front-runner status he still enjoys.

So it was fitting that four days before the election, Obama yesterday made his way back here, the site of his big win in the Jan. 3 caucuses that cemented a special relationship with Iowa that he built over dozens of campaign trips.

"It is good to see so many familiar faces," he told the 25,000 people who gathered under bright sunshine in a downtown park. "Really, this campaign began here - you helped launch this campaign. So, the people of Iowa, I will always be grateful to all of you. Always be grateful to you."

The crowd size and the message - a version of the "closing argument" Obama has been making for himself and against GOP rival John McCain over the past week - were certainly of the general-election variety. But even as he warned supporters about "slash and burn, say-anything, do-anything politics" from the other side in the final days, he worked in uplifting references to his environs.

"On the day of the Iowa caucuses, my faith in the American people was vindicated, and what you started here in Iowa has swept the nation," he said, noting the high turnout, active volunteers, and grassroots activism that has propelled his campaign. "A whole new way of doing democracy started right here in Iowa."

And there were a few reminders of the state's unique, folksy political culture that so many White House hopefuls have come to know over the past four decades. Obama spoke from a stage ringed with hay bales and pumpkins, "HOPE" painted on their orange skins. The Lincoln High School marching band took the place of his major-label recorded warm-up music.

Many Iowa caucus-goers who supported Obama came to give him a final sendoff.

"He's back to thank us," said Marilyn Reese, a 71-year-old semiretired teacher who was decked out in a bright yellow Iowa Hawkeyes sweatshirt. "It started here and we're going to see to it that he finishes it right."

Indeed, this was not merely a thank-you tour. Iowa is a key part of Obama's plan to build a path to the presidency by winning several states that President Bush won in 2004.

Public polls have consistently shown Obama with a large lead over McCain here, but McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis, told reporters yesterday that the campaign's internal polling showed the race "dead even." He cast Obama's decision to visit Des Moines as evidence that the Illinois senator was worried about holding his edge.

Davis said he was confident about the race across the country, asserting "probably one of the greatest comebacks since John McCain won the primary."

Obama's campaign showed its confidence, too, disclosing yesterday that it was pushing deeper into Republican territory by launching TV ads in North Dakota, Georgia, and McCain's home state of Arizona, all of which seemed like lost causes for Obama just weeks ago.

Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe, told reporters that it was encouraged by tightening polls and initial results from early voting. "We're always looking for opportunities to expand the map, and these three states are close enough," he said. "It's enough in the realm of possibility that we want to put a little extra effort here at the end."

The only substantive change in strategy is the purchase of advertising time. The campaign has been running ground operations in all three states, and Plouffe said Obama has no plans to travel to any of them before Tuesday.

Plouffe insisted that the expansion into the three states would not detract from the campaign's efforts to both hold the states that Democrat John F. Kerry won in 2004 and maintain its edge in a handful of traditional GOP strongholds, including Colorado and Virginia.

Plouffe also detailed some early-voting trends that he said augured well for Obama. He said that as of Thursday night in Florida, where Republicans usually top Democrats in early and absentee voting, Democrats had cast 200,000 more ballots. In Nevada, 43 percent of the Democrats who have cast ballots already are voters who have never voted or voted only sporadically.

Initial results such as this across the country, Plouffe asserted, are beginning to indicate "how this election is likely to unfold."

"The die is being cast as we speak," he said.

Scott Helman can be reached at shelman@globe.com.