WP, pg1: Obama Has to Hope Cheers Equal Votes; "I'll beat 'em all, beat 'em all!"

Obama Has to Hope Cheers Equal Votes
By Dana Milbank
Thursday, January 3, 2008; A01

CORALVILLE, Iowa, Jan. 2

....Big cheer. "I can't hear you!" Bigger cheer. "Are you gonna show up for caucus or not?" Biggest cheer. But at the student sign-in table outside the ballroom -- "Be awesome: Caucus for Obama!!!" urged the handwritten sign -- the numbers gave less cause for enthusiasm. Eighty-one students signed a list proclaiming themselves uncertain about caucusing or ineligible to vote. And how many filled out cards promising to attend Thursday's caucuses? A grand total of -- drumroll, please -- nine.

On Thursday night, America will finally have an answer to the question: Is Obama another Howard Dean, or can he win the nomination? Like Dean, he has challenged the Democratic establishment with a coalition of students and political independents. His candidacy, like Dean's, will collapse if they don't show up.

It is, in other words, a battle between the passion and the machine, between Hillary Clinton's establishment support and the superior enthusiasm of Obama's supporters. The Republican contest here is almost identical: a fight between an establishment candidate, Mitt Romney, and an insurgent favored by evangelicals, Mike Huckabee.

History favors the establishment's machine over the insurgent's passion: Al Gore over Bill Bradley, John Kerry over Dean, George W. Bush over John McCain. In 2008, that would mean Clinton over Obama.

But Obama's supporters promise it will be different this time, and the candidate himself had the loose confidence on the stump of a man who expects victory on Thursday. "The polls show I'm the only Democrat who right out beats every Republican they can throw up there," he told the crowd here. "I beat Mitt, I beat Rudy, I beat John, I beat Fred, I beat Mike. I beat John. Who else? I'll beat 'em all, beat 'em all! I'll beat Keyes. Who else they got?"...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/02/AR2008010203372_pf.html