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Yes we can:
The crowds boggle the mind, and the fervor verges on the religious: "We believe!" the 17,000 people jamming Hartford's civic center started chanting Monday. There were 13,000 in Boise, lining up in the cold at daybreak in a state where only 5,000 voted in the Democratic caucuses four years ago. And 20,000 converging on a downtown square in Wilmington, Del., on Super Bowl Sunday, like nothing that small city had seen in years.
There is, without doubt, a nationwide wave building behind Sen. Barack Obama, one given new life by his win in South Carolina 10 days ago, his forceful victory speech and the Kennedy family endorsements that followed, and his campaign's record-shattering fundraising last month. But the Super Tuesday primaries offered a reminder of the distance Obama must yet travel and the time he needs -- but might not have -- to translate the euphoria of packed basketball arenas into hard numbers at the voting booth.
Obama fared better in the 22-state crush than appeared possible a couple weeks ago, when he was coming off two straight losses in Nevada and New Hampshire and facing the prospect of having to compete in a slew of states against a better-known candidate with widespread establishment backing.
The Illinois senator won his home state, as well as Georgia, Alabama, Delaware, Minnesota, Connecticut, Kansas, North Dakota, Colorado, Alaska, Missouri, Utah and Idaho...
...[he addressed] "all those Americans who have yet to join this movement and yet still hunger for change.
"They know in their gut that we can do better than we're doing," he said. But "they are afraid, they've been taught to be cynical. They're doubtful it can be done. I'm here to say tonight to all those who harbor those doubts: We need you. We need you to help us through."
The campaign is betting on closing the gap further in the next week, when there are six primaries or caucuses, in places where Obama is fairly well-positioned: Maine, Louisiana, Washington state, Virginia, Maryland and the District. And the campaign says it will have the time to do the more intense kind of campaigning it prefers in big states that do not vote until next month, such as Ohio and Texas.
...In Boise, Debbi Taylor, a 50-year-old court clerk, said she drove six hours through bad weather from Ogden, Utah, to see Obama. "When my kids are excited and vote early and e-mail me to tell me about it, that's change in the world. That's something," she said.
In Minneapolis, Kevin Worden, a Habitat for Humanity director, gawked at the sight of the city's basketball arena packed to the rafters. "It's a snowball running down a steep hill and picking up all along," he said.
And in St. Louis, some of the 20,000 who attended a rally at the city's domed football stadium marveled that the event had drawn far more people than the city's popular Mardi Gras celebration the same night.
"Look at these numbers!" Helen Douglas-Taylor, a teacher, exclaimed. "We're just ready as a nation for something fresh, and he's fresh."
"Obama Vows to Change Washington"
CHICAGO -- Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama cast his chain of Super Tuesday wins as evidence that voters want someone who can change Washington and appeal to voters of both parties in the general election.
"We can do this! We can do this," Obama told supporters after collecting a string of wins that included his home state of Illinois as well as Alabama, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Missouri and Utah, as well as caucuses in North Dakota, Minnesota, Kansas and Idaho. He also prevailed in caucuses in Alaska.
"We are the hope for the future," he said, "the answer to the cynics who tell us our house must stand divided."
...Obama nonetheless exhorted his supporters to "go to work," saying the race is about pushing the country past divisions.
"It's a choice between having a debate with the other party about who has the most experience in Washington or about who can change Washington," Obama said. "Because that's a debate that we can win."
"Time is on Barack Obama's side as his momentum grows"
Coast to coast, everywhere you looked, the Democratic presidential candidates - and more importantly, the voters - shattered stereotypes and defied conventional wisdom.
Barack Obama, who was criticized by Hillary Clinton's supporters as the "black" candidate with little cross-racial appeal, won caucuses in some of the whitest states imaginable - Utah, Minnesota, Idaho, North Dakota and Kansas - along with largely black Georgia and Alabama.
...Assuming the candidates more or less split the main prize of California, the Democratic race today will be deadlocked. And that is bad news for Clinton.
In one remarkable month, Obama erased Clinton's double-digit lead in national polls, raised more than twice as much money - $32 million to $13.5 million - and destroyed any notion that the Democratic presidential nomination is Clinton's to lose.
Top members of Clinton's team have publicly acknowledged what Tuesday's results made clear: They cannot check Obama's momentum.
That's not just an admission that Clinton's inevitability strategy has failed: It also means Obama will have the time and money to march his formidable field organization - and advertising team - into the next battlegrounds, Louisiana, Nebraska and Washington State.
Most of all, the next week will bring more of the phenomenon that most bedevils Team Clinton: Obama's fast-growing, improbable status as a cool, iconic figure among students and artists.
There's a remarkable music video spreading across the Internet ginned up by soul, rock and hip-hop artists including will.i.am and Jesse Dylan - son of Bob Dylan. It sets Obama's "Yes we can" speech to music, and the music isn't bad.
Clinton isn't just fighting a candidate or even a movement, but a cultural phenomenon...
"Obama volunteer work down to the wire"
This is what a grass-roots campaign looks like. Four hours before the polls were set to close in Illinois, Sen. Barack Obama's Chicago headquarters was buzzing with activity. Volunteers seated in front of computers worked phone banks. Other volunteers were sprawled in groups using cell phones to contact registered voters in other Super Tuesday states like New Jersey. And still others worked in solitude, filling the corners of the large command center as they pitched their candidate to faceless voices over the phones.
When Obama says he is running a grass-roots campaign, it isn't just talk.
I did a double-take when I passed Pat and Pam Conway. The identical twins were seated side by side at a desk working their way through their assigned lists. Baby boomers, the pair had on identical knit suits, wore identical hairstyles and finished each other's sentences to the point that I didn't know which one was talking.
Both were teachers, but now operate Exposure Tapas Restaurant and Gallery in the South Loop.
"My brother is a retired colonel in the Army, and he convinced us to volunteer," said Pat (or Pam). "He said 'Don't give up on Barack. Everybody is saying: "I don't want to waste my vote." ' "
"But you have to change your way of thinking," one of the twins said.
The twins started volunteering about three weeks ago. They show up at the headquarters five days a week. After a couple of times paying $30 to park near the headquarters, the twins decided to take public transportation.
"That is really serious," said Pat. "I have not been on the bus in 30 years. It was a sacrifice," she said. "But it was really worthwhile."
Pam said now she understands how important phone banking is to a candidate's campaign.
"We were able to convince a lot of people over the phone to vote for Obama," she said. "We have a better understanding of the process."
Ulrik Green of Denmark was also making last-minute calls.
Green, who said he has a strong interest in politics, originally volunteered for Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign but became disappointed with some of the campaign's tactics.
"I became more and more frustrated with the whole demeanor of the campaign," Green said. "At first I didn't believe [Obama] could win, but now I have a good feeling about it.
Across the room from where Green was working, Dr. Peggy Ann Griffin was also working the phones. Green says she doesn't just make calls at the headquarters, she has called family and friends in Tennessee, New York and California.
As far as Griffin is concerned, Obama is the answer to Dr. King's dream. Instead of watching the dream unfold on TV or reading about it in the newspaper, Green wanted to be a part of Obama's campaign.
"We have been praying for a long time and God sent us a gift. All we had to do was go out and vote for him," she said.
"Obama Takes Connecticut, Helped by Lamont Voters"
Ned Lamont was not on the ballot, but his presence was nonetheless felt in Connecticut’s Democratic presidential primary.
It was the young, the rich and voters who called Iraq the top issue who helped provide the margin of victory for Senator Barack Obama in Connecticut, according to surveys of voters leaving the polls, narrowly defeating Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in her own backyard.
With 96 percent of the votes counted, Mr. Obama had 50 percent of the vote, compared with 47 percent for Mrs. Clinton. The exit polls, conducted by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International, showed Mr. Obama doing well among what some in that state might call the “Ned Lamont coalition.”
...“The Lamont campaign was part of my political awakening,” said Bill Dauphin, 47, a technical writer who attended the Obama campaign’s victory party Tuesday night at the Sweet Jane Bar in Hartford. “That’s the thing that got me off the sofa and onto the street.”
In a state where Mrs. Clinton consistently held double-digit poll leads until mid-January, Mr. Obama ran strong among voters who made up their minds in the last month, the last week and the last three days, the exit poll showed. Thousands of unaffiliated Connecticut voters joined the Democratic Party in recent weeks in order to cast ballots in the primary, and among the nearly 20 percent of voters surveyed on Tuesday who identified themselves as independents, Mr. Obama won 6 of every 10 votes.
...those most concerned about Iraq (3 in 10 voters) favored Mr. Obama, 63 percent to 35 percent...
...Mr. Obama also kept pace with Mrs. Clinton among white voters, who made up more than 80 percent of the Connecticut total.
“It means that Obama has shown that he can do extremely well in mobilizing some key groups that he really needs to mobilize in order to make a claim that he’s the best candidate,” said Scott McLean, chairman of the political science department at Quinnipiac University, in Hamden, Conn. “The wider significance would be that Obama has managed to encroach on some of Hillary Clinton’s regional strength.”
...Jeffrey Parks, a fifth-grade teacher in Hartford, said he voted for Mr. Obama. “I just think the change thing,” Mr. Parks said. “It’s time for a change, and there are some real possibilities with some new open minds and different attitudes.”
...“What we’re seeing in Connecticut is what we’re seeing across the country,” Donald E. Williams Jr., the president pro tem of the State Senate, said at Mr. Obama’s victory party in Hartford. “The more they see these two candidates, the more they’re inspired by him.”
Mr. Williams, Mr. Lamont’s Connecticut campaign co-chairman, attended Mr. Obama’s rally in Hartford on Monday night. “I brought my wife, I brought my brother, I brought my mother, I brought my 17-year-old daughter,” he said Tuesday. “I knew it was going to be history.”
"Obama 'made his mark'"
"Landslide" is too strong a term for what happened Tuesday night, when the Illinois senator took at least 12 states to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's eight.
But as campaign manager David Plouffe characterized the race against Clinton in his second -- happier -- briefing for reporters, "This is a day they clearly thought they could put a punctuation mark on this, and they're not going to do it."
CNN called Utah for Obama and the crowd at the Hyatt party cheered. They analyzed Kansas and the crowd went wild. One network called Missouri for Clinton and then changed its mind -- perplexing in the least.
But by the time Obama took the stage shortly after the polls closed in California, it was clear that he was headed for the sweetest night of his campaign.
"We know that we have seen something happen over the last several weeks, over the past several months," he said. "We know that what began as a whisper has now swelled to a chorus that cannot be ignored."
It is a chorus, he continued, "that will not be deterred; that will ring out across this land as a hymn that will heal this nation, repair this world, make this time different than all the rest. Yes. We. Can."
"Many new voters agree, 'time has come' for Obama"
...Excited campaign volunteers gathered in a Chicago hotel ballroom — where Obama celebrated his Senate victory in 2004 — to watch returns and cheer Obama.
"There is one thing on this February night that we do not need the final results to know," Obama told the crowd. "Our time has come. Our movement is real. And change is coming to America."
Obama reiterated his "respect" for rival Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, but looked to the campaign against the Republican nominee when he said, "This fall we owe the American people a real choice."
..."We are the hope of the woman who fears that her city will not be rebuilt and she cannot somehow claim the life that was swept away in a terrible storm. Yes, she can."
...Volunteers who had spent the day working at phone banks said they felt Obama's momentum growing.
Campaign worker A.J. Weiss said he reached some Clinton voters "who politely declined to talk," but "a lot of people that did want to talk (about Obama) were truly inspired, I think, by the senator."
"In the last week there's been a definite surge. People you talk to on the street, they're jumping on the bandwagon," Bush said. He decided to vote for Obama after learning of his work as a community organizer helping laid-off steelworkers in Gary, Ind., near Bush's home.
"I've been looking for a leader for a long time, and he's that guy," Bush said.
