Fired Up in the Final Hours

It is the occupational hazard of the rock star to tour until all sense of time and place are lost. Barack Obama's life, before the first votes in the 2008 elections are cast tonight, has been reduced to multiple campaign speeches and long bus rides across a frozen landscape.

So when he repeatedly gets it wrong in counting down the hours to the vote, the crowd in Council Bluffs, where hundreds came to see the most exciting talent in the Democratic race, is forgiving.

Obama is now in the lead over Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, according to the last poll before the vote by Iowa's biggest newspaper, the Des Moines Register. Other polls show a dead heat.

In the final hours, he needs to persuade voters that he alone among the Democratic contenders can win November's election, and that there is a solidity behind the stirring rhetoric and the campaign slogan: Hope.

"I know how hard it is going to be," he said. But he will succeed in winning the White House and bringing change, he says, because he knows how to build effective coalitions.

"I believe that the Republican and Independents outside of Washington are also frustrated, also disappointed, have also lost trust in government, and are also tired of division. If we show ourselves to be listening we can draw them into a working majority for change, and that's how we are going to win," he said to another roar from the crowd.

Obama's crowds are generally fired up, even in conservative regions of the state like this one. Some have crossed the state border from Nebraska just to see him.

His campaign staff now need to translate that enthusiasm into concrete support, and persuade voters to give up their evening to attend a caucus in freezing weather.

"The polls look good, but understand this - the polls are not enough. The only thing that counts is whether or not you show up to caucus," Obama said.

Some of the people in the crowd have still not chosen a candidate, despite the intensity of the campaign. "He has a message of change. It resonates, but does he have the substance to back it up?" said lawyer Patrick Sondag. "He hasn't convinced me yet."

Others committed long ago. "He's not a baby boomer," said Michael Recker, a French teacher. "In the last elections, we spent too much time asking candidates what they did in Vietnam."

Recker, as a first time caucus-goer, is a target for all the Democratic candidates, but especially Obama, who owes his high polling numbers to an influx of independent and first-time voters rather than traditional party activists.

The appearance of a surge carries its own dangers in Iowa's notoriously unpredictable caucus system. The campaign is trying to damp down expectations. "We need to do well. I have not said we have to win, place or show," said David Axelrod, Obama's chief strategist.

But, he conceded, Obama needs to look like a winner tomorrow morning. "The compressed schedule means that whoever emerges from Iowa with momentum is likely to keep it in New Hampshire. There is not a lot you can do in five days to reverse it."

Axelrod is confident the campaign, with 37 offices in Iowa and an army of volunteers, will be able to turn out even those who have never made it to a caucus before, like Julie Lamb, a non-aligned voter.

"Unless there is a bad bad blizzard or a death in the family, I plan on being there," she said. Obama must be hoping she really means it.