by Frank James
WIth more than 75 percent of the Iowa precincts reporting, it’s Sen. Barack Obama 35 percent, with Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. John Edwards tied at 31 percent. CNN is projecting Obama the winner.
We expected a tight race and that’s exactly what we got, for second place.
Obama is actually leading in some western Iowa counties and apparently won Des Moines, which Edwards won in 2004.
Edwards has basically made Iowa his second home since 2004. His inability to take Iowa is fairly devastating. Where he goes from here is hard to see, especially since New Hampshire is expected to be a battle between Obama and Clinton. Edwards was never really seen as a factor in New Hampshire.
For Obama, it is definitely the strong evidence that for a lot of people he’s answered the threshold question which was do voters look at him and see a president? Tonight, Iowa Democrats answered yes.
For Clinton, it means that she needs New Hampshire to be her firewall to slow Obama down. The problem is that Obama has been surging according to polls there and Iowa should add even more buoyancy to his efforts.
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Have questions about the results of tonight’s Iowa caucuses, what’s next in the race for the White House or anything related to Election 2008? E-mail them to us and we’ll answer as many as possible during our video chat scheduled for 12:30 pm central time Friday.
