By Ruth Marcus
Saturday, January 5, 2008

INDIANOLA, Iowa -- Arlys Breuklander, first-time caucusgoer, came into Thursday night's caucus agonizingly uncertain about her choice and torn among the three Democratic front-runners. "I'm trying to decide who would be the most electable," Breuklander, 59, said just minutes before the caucusing began. "I used to think it was Hillary; she's such a strong woman with strong experience."

Pause. "But then I also think she's associated with the old-school kind of politics."

Pause. "But I don't think that's a bad thing."

In the end, Breuklander was lured by neighbors and old friends into backing Barack Obama. "I think he could maybe bring people together more than Clinton," she told me afterward.

The caucus here, in the auditorium of Indianola High School, about 20 miles south of Des Moines, mirrored the results statewide -- and offered insights into Obama's strength. Four hundred fifty-one people turned out, up dramatically from 317 four years ago. Obama started strong and got stronger, as the groups for Joe Biden and Chris Dodd disbanded for lack of enough support to win any delegates.

When it was finished, after just an hour, Obama had 174 votes, John Edwards 115 and Clinton 95; of the lesser candidates, only Bill Richardson managed, after much cajoling, to scrape up the 68 supporters he needed to be "viable." (The math doesn't quite add up, but that's part of the somewhat chaotic informality of the caucus process.)

What was striking in Indianola, and across the state, was the pull of Obama's optimistic, inclusive message and the way his well-oiled field operation was able to translate that appeal into caucusgoers. Obama played the role of inspiring healer/transformer to John Edwards's fiery populist and Hillary Clinton's ultra-capable technocrat. Clinton was selling what one unaffiliated Democratic strategist described as the "charisma of competence" -- a la Scoop Jackson in 1976, and with similarly dreary results. If Obama was at times more gauzy than precise about exactly what change he would bring, that didn't seem to matter much to the voters who flocked to him in the end.

Voters such as Kristie Fisher, 37, who was still "soul-searching" when I met her at a Clinton rally in Cedar Rapids on Wednesday. Fisher was attracted to Clinton's "experience and exposure" but also worried about the dynastic implications of keeping the White House under the control of two families for so long. Thursday night she went for Obama, citing "a different kind of feeling and energy" from the freshman senator. "What she was saying wasn't different enough for me," Fisher said.

One unaligned Democratic strategist sees comments like Fisher's as illustrative of a problem for Clinton that could extend beyond Iowa. "This was a pretty important butt-kicking," this strategist said. "Iowa is not an anomaly. Democrats all around America are looking for somebody who is going to get us out of the ditch we're in, and unless Hillary can explain why she is that person, she's going to have a problem."

Clinton, the strategist said, came with "a laundry list but not a central idea of the change she wants to deliver."

Obama's victory shares some intriguing parallels with that of Republican winner Mike Huckabee. Each candidate is the youngest in his party's field; each drew heavily from younger voters: Obama beat Clinton 5 to 1 among voters ages 17 to 29; Huckabee bested Romney in that group by nearly 2 to 1. As different as their political philosophies are, both candidates talk of rising above partisanship to unite the country and solve its problems. When Huckabee told supporters Thursday night that "a new day is needed in American politics, just like a new day is needed in American government," he could have been channeling Obama.

But Huckabee's rise reflected, to some extent, voters' dissatisfaction with the other choices -- a sentiment not shared on the Democratic side, where even those who aren't Obama supporters can easily imagine supporting, even cheering, his candidacy. Huckabee's success also owed a great deal to the extraordinary share of Republican caucusgoers who identified themselves as evangelical or born-again Christians, about 60 percent, up from about 40 percent eight years ago. Huckabee won't enjoy such friendly terrain in most other states. And his financial situation is far more precarious than that of Obama, who as of the last reports had raised $80 million to Huckabee's $2 million.

All of which is to say that while Thursday's results may have upended the presidential race in both parties, the clearer beneficiary by far is Obama. After Obama's clear victory over Clinton in Iowa, "I don't think she can win New Hampshire," one Democratic strategist said flatly, pointing to the negligible recovery time before Tuesday's primary there. "To me, the real issue for New Hampshire is how she loses it" -- meaning, with what retooled message, and by how much.

That may be too grim a prognosis. But the era of Clinton inevitability ended in school gymnasiums and community centers across this state Thursday night.

marcusr@washpost.com