Back in Iowa, Obama Celebrates the Past And Eyes the Future

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Candidates React: Obama Wins Oregon

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) spoke from Des Moines, Iowa Tuesday night after winning the Oregon primary, citing the progress his campaign had made since the January caucuses.

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"The skeptics predicted we wouldn't get very far. The cynics dismissed us as a lot of hype and a little too much hope. And by the fall, the pundits in Washington had all but counted us out. But the people of Iowa had a different idea."

At his first campaign event in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Obama drew 2,000 curiosity seekers; they barely responded to his lengthy remarks about Pentagon funding and merit pay for teachers. In those early months, he would fly in and out of the state on weekends and during Senate breaks, holding mostly events in rural communities, attended by as few as 50 people.

Iowa became a touchstone for the candidate and his senior advisers during rocky months in the summer and fall, when Obama's poll numbers were barely budging. Axelrod recalled attending a staff retreat outside Des Moines last summer, when Obama was struggling to gain his footing.

"We were being written out of the race, and these kids were just oblivious," the adviser recounted. Through that difficult spell, Axelrod added: "We'd go to Iowa, and we just knew, there's a lot here for us."

Obama spoke of a similar contrast before the crowd in Des Moines. "In the darkest days of this campaign, when we were dismissed by all the polls and all the pundits, I would come to Iowa and see that there was something happening here that the world did not yet understand," he said.

The state also served as a test market for tactics that have become standard operating procedures for the Obama campaign, such as the outreach to Republicans and independents that the campaign quietly conducted to expand the universe of caucusgoers. It also aggressively targeted students from universities and even high schools, an effort it has replicated successfully nationwide.

The Obama formula would remain the same in the 53 contests that would follow, including the final, upcoming primaries in Puerto Rico, South Dakota and Montana. And, as Obama predicted Tuesday night, it will carry him through November.

"The same question that first led us to Iowa 15 months ago is the one that has brought us back here tonight; it is the one we will debate from Washington to Florida, from New Hampshire to New Mexico -- the question of whether this country, at this moment, will keep doing what we've been doing for four more years or whether we will take that different path," he said.

"Thank you, Iowa."